Spring Newsletter
2019
Dear parents and carers,
From spring chicks to spring dances, both pupils and staff have been working hard to continue the
excitement from the end of the autumn term. 2019 has certainly started as we mean to go on. This term’s
themes have been ‘People in the Community’ and ‘Space’ – some of the work this term has been ‘out of
this world’!
Not ones to rest on our laurels we are already working hard on improving the school further. We have built
several links with a range of schools in a bid to share knowledge and good practice. We have been
working very closely with Hedgewood School, who are setting up classrooms in a similar model to our
own and we have been using their knowledge of their Early Years to develop our practice further. We
have also visited Step By Step, Paddock and Frederick Hugh House to work on a range of projects.
Another school we have worked closely with this term is Eaton House The Manor School, similar to last
year pupils from Pink and Red Classes were involved in a collaborative art project. The artwork produced
was then sold at auction and proceeds will be going to the Rainy Day Fund.
A group of staff from each of the school provisions within the ABA in Schools forum have been using
'Zoom' to discuss the use of digitized data across the schools. Our main objective is to look at developing
an app for data to taken, moving away from paper data collection. So far we have analysed what data we
take at each school and made a comparison to see what we would require from an app. The next stages
are to find a digital designer to help create the app and get an idea of costings.
This term we held our first STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) week where the
pupils learnt about and experienced a range of topics and activities including volcanoes, slime, BeBop
mazes and of course our new best friends the chicks. Each school was fortunate enough to be given 10
eggs to care for and nurture before and after they hatched. The pupils had lessons with the chicks and
opportunities to learn about what they need to do keep them safe and healthy. The chicks have now left
us and are at a free range farm in Surrey.
Pupils have been on a range of outings this term which have tied into their themes, including Kidzania
where pupils learnt about the different people that help us in our community – they had the chance to
dress up and act out these roles and earn a bit of Kidzania cash whilst doing so. Other trips that have
taken place include the Planetarium, Picturehouse and Flip Out.
Mother’s Day activities took place and pupils had an opportunity to make and decorate a bowl made from
a clay cast of their own hands. Afternoon tea was also provided for pupils to share with the special people
in their lives.
In February we attended the Jack Petchey Awards ceremony at the Wandsworth Civic Suite. We were
delighted to see Kenny collect her student award as well as Liz Burns (Green Class Supervisor) collect
her leader award. Congratulations to both winners!
A range of class assemblies have taken place this term, allowing pupils to celebrate and learn about
different people, events and cultures. This has included Martin Luther King Day, Chinese New Year,
International Women’s Day and St Patricks day amongst others. We also took part in World Book day,
where the pupils and staff dressed up as their favourite book characters.
Spring Newsletter
2019
A big highlight of the year so far for Park House has been Evie – for those of you who don’t know, Evie is
a Cocker Spaniel puppy belonging to Liz. Evie has been coming into the school since January, spending
Thursday afternoons with the pupils and staff. Evie has been supporting pupils who may be frightened of
dogs, as well as teaching the pupils how to care for a dog. Next term Evie will be working with pupils on a
Thursday and a Friday developing pupils tolerance of dogs as well as providing well-being and exercise
opportunities.
At Tram House School the Kaspar project has been proceeding at pace and we have been getting to
know the systems and processes it can produce to identify the interactions with our pupils. In our early
sessions we have been looking at who would benefit most from this piece of equipment with some
interesting results that certainly lead us to thinking of the potential successes in the future. The project
continues into the summer term – so watch this space!
Great progress has been made with the Sixth Form project over the last term. We have secured a base
within South Thames College with pupils due to start transitions before Easter break and attend up to 3
days a week after the holidays. We showed a group of parents around the college with great feedback
about the facilities available. We are very excited about the future opportunities this will provide our young
adults going forward.
Kieran Bird Jon Ascot
Head of Park House School Head of Tram House School
Term Dates
Summer 2019
Term starts: Wednesday 24th April
INSET day 23rd April
Bank Holiday Monday 6th May
Half Term: Monday 27th May–Friday 31st May
Term Ends: Tuesday 23rd July
Autumn 2019
Term starts: Thursday 5th September
INSET days 2nd to 4th September
Half Term: Monday 21st October–Friday 25th
October
Term Ends: Thursday 19th December
Parent Facebook group
A friendly reminder about our parent
Facebook group where we share useful
reminders, events and news on a
regular basis.
If you would like to join the group please
contact Dan Thurman on
danthurman@beyondautism.org.uk.
Visiting Post-19
If you’re planning your child’s next steps after
school and would like to have a look at our
Post-19 facilities, please contact David
Anthony, Head of Post-19, on
davidanthony@beyondautism.org.uk.
Staffing and Recruitment
We’ve had a number of staff join the team since the
start of 2019! A big welcome to the following
ABA Tutors…
Latoya Giddings, Melody Yau, Christina Efthimiades,
Gemma Johns, Ismail Ahmed, Iris Fernandez
Gimenez, Rezwana Naseha, Imogen Lee, Jadeen
Barton, Claudia Sosa, Rupert Bolton-Green, Ariela
Spalla, Geneviah Magrin, Joshua Ariyu, Aysha
Khatun, Jade Lloyd, Liam Lusted (Post-19) and Paul
Libson (Post-19).
Olivia O’Brien joined the team as Executive Assistant
to the Heads of Schools. We also welcome Gloria
Jimenez Tabares and Sandra Jimenez Tabares who
join as School Cleaners.
In the charity team, welcome to Matthew Wicks who
has joined as Outreach Consultant.
We also welcome Marta Martin Perteguer (Speech,
Language and Communication Needs Teacher) and
Constantina Diamantopoulou (Outreach Administrator)
to Early Years.
Also welcome back to Chloe Jorgensen (ABA
Consultant) and Lucy Christie (Marketing and
Communications Manager) who have returned from
maternity leave.
We are sadly saying goodbye to the following ABA
Tutors this term…
Susan Popiel, Teresa Soto Renne, Eliot Keirl, Ina
Rubil-Smith, Anna-Evangelina Nikitaki, Pierre
Raphael, Emily Childs, Kamaria Grant-Brooker,
Lauren Beadle and Ana Anton (Post-19).
We are also saying goodbye to the following Cover
Tutors: Miguel Stilwell, Celina Mesquita, Vanessa
Gandarinho and Maria Acosta as well as Laura
Reader (Outreach Administrator) and Maria Stanek
(School Cleaner).
From the Therapy team we are saying goodbye to
Charlotte Phillips (Speech and Language Therapist)
and Eleni Zachmanoglou (Senior Occupational
Therapist).
We wish everyone the best in their future endeavours.
Admissions
This academic year, Admissions has been
busy! So far, we have had 10 new pupils start
in a range of classes, across both schools. All
are settling in and become part of our
community.
We continue to have spaces in the schools
and are filling these to reach capacity.
Spring Newsletter
2019
Eaton House the Manor Art Gallery
In February we attended an Art Gallery at Eaton House the Manor. Following the
success of last year’s gallery, we were delighted to be asked to be involved again
this year. Eaton House pupils and staff created a range of artwork from smaller
individual pieces, to group canvases to sell on the night. We were blown away by
the generosity of parents and are extremely grateful to everyone who attended and
made purchases at the auction!
There were several pieces that were particularly special to us on the night as they
were created collaboratively between Eaton House and Park House School. Some
of the Eaton House pupils came over to Park House and created the pieces with
Pink and Red Classes. It was great to see the pupils work together on the pieces
and seeing the finished articles on stage.
Thanks once again to Eaton House for hosting and for their continued support for the charity.
Table Cricket Tournament
It was raining 4s and 6s in February
as a group of Tram House School
pupils attended a Table Cricket
tournament at The Oval. Hosted by
Lord’s Taverners, the tournament
saw 9 local schools competing
against each other.
Our pupils played well in their
games and in the true spirit of
cricket, there was a great deal of
sportsmanship on show throughout
the day with everyone celebrating
each other’s success.
Huge thanks to the Surrey Cricket
Foundation and Lord’s
Taverners for hosting the event.
Safer Internet Day
With the internet becoming such an important
part of daily life and also for our teaching, in
January we spent a day teaching pupils
about the importance of internet safety and
how to keep safe whilst enjoying the internet.
Collaboration with Hedgewood School
The partnership with Hedgewood has
continued this term with two of their
Supervisors visiting Park House to discuss
their use of Essential for Living. They
observed classes and looked at programmes
that we were running before having a
discussion around how they have found the
programme so far. This link is an invaluable
one for us to enable us to continue
developing our practice and procedures as
part of our dedication to delivering
excellence.
Spring Newsletter
2019
Our Amazing Animal World
As part of animal awareness day, Our Amazing Animal World visited the
schools. Our Amazing Animal World are a company of professional animal
handlers who make school visits with groups of rescue animals for children to
observe and learn from.
The group brought in a variety of animals from snakes to tortoises giving the
pupils exposure to animals that they may not normally come across as well as
providing them with a complete sensory experience. Pupils were encouraged to
explore the different animals by stroking, holding and feeding them.
Huge thanks for Our Amazing Animal World for coming in to the schools and
giving our pupils this experience.
World Book Day
There were some
fantastic costumes
this year for World
Book Day as the
pupils came in
dressed as their
favourite book
characters.
Each class took part
in different activities
based on their chosen books from singing songs,
to creating artwork, to trying out different foods
from the book.
And of course, well done to all of our best-dressed
winners!
Ready to Hatch Project
As part of British
Science Week
BeyondAutism Schools
took part in the Ready
to Hatch project run by
Living Eggs. Ready to
Hatch is a two-week
project of incubation
and hatching of live eggs. At the end of the project
the chicks were re-housed on free range farms in
Surrey. Amongst many other things, our pupils will
be learning about life-cycles, caring for live
animals as well as learning new vocabulary.
We are extremely grateful to the British Science
Week Kick Start grant scheme for providing the
funding for both Park House and Tram House
School to take part in the initiative.
Spring Newsletter
2019
A word from the charity
Tracie Linehan, CEO
The Spring term brings lighter mornings and longer evenings, giving us much to smile about. This was
reinforced by hatching the chicks at both schools and it was a joy to have them chirping their way through
meetings! Both schools have benefited from significant upgrading work – Park House School has new
windows and an order is being made for air conditioning throughout; Tram House School has had the
flooring repaired.
We are proud of our schools and committed to ABA resulting in us frequently showing visitors around.
This term we have welcomed prospective new parents, Councilor Angela Graham, the Deputy Head of
TreeHouse School, Annie MacDowell CEO of Share Community Charity and Charis Penfold from
Achieving for Children. We also hosted the ABA in Schools Forum, a UK-SBA Special Interest Group –
our teams are collaborating on project groups to develop digital solutions to data collection, to develop
pupil wellbeing and to develop effective cross-schools moderation.
We are proud to challenge and have increased our active response to news items, as well as sharing our
opinion on issues such as exclusion rates and EHCPs across the social media networks. You can follow
us on Facebook facebook.com/BeyondAutism, Twitter twitter.com/BeyondAutismUK and LinkedIn
linkedin.com/company/4984403 as well as keeping up to date on our website www.beyondautism.org.uk.
This is year 4 of our 5-year strategy: Empowering People, Launching Lives and you can read about our
achievements to date in our annual review publications beyondautism.org.uk/about-us/our-impact. I have
included a one-page document in this newsletter highlighting the strategic activities for this year. One of
the exciting new developments will be the Research and Learning Hub which we are aiming to launch in
December 2019. Staff from across the organisation are involved in working parties to ensure that this new
service is a great success. In addition to this service development we have secured funds from the Big
Lottery Fund and Children in Need to continue our Early Years’ Service, which is free to parents. We are
aiming to increase the number of groups we can offer. Not forgetting Post-19, this service is seeking a
new hub to open in September 2019, extending our offer to new areas of London.
We are now looking to the future and starting to form our strategy to 2025. I would like many of our
stakeholders to be involved and will be inviting you to participate in consultation events throughout the
year.
Recent funding successes
• Early Years’ Service has received funding from Children in Need and the Big Lottery Fund
• British Science Week funded two egg hatching programs in the schools.
• The Hedley Foundation awarded a grant for the sensory garden redevelopment project (returfing the
area and purchasing equipment for Park House School Early Years Foundation Stage play area).
This funding is on top of Andrew Robertson’s staggering contribution of £3,409.75 fundraised for
BeyondAutism by running the Richmond Marathon
How your fundraising has helped our children and young adults
A proportion of the money raised by the Royal Parks Half Marathon team last year has been spent on
much needed equipment across the services; including tablets with pre-loaded communication software
for the Early Years’ service and for Post-19 students (these will be used as a communication device,
teaching tool, and recording daily living activities amongst other things). Some of the funds raised were
also put towards vocational/employability related books for the Post-19 library.
Spring Newsletter
2019
Proceeds from a carol concert organised by one of our community partners, Eaton House the Manor
School, also enabled us to purchase several sensory tunnels to be used in Occupational Therapy
sessions and vibrating timers to be used as a valuable teaching tool.
The staff appreciation donations given to staff over the festive period to thank them for their dedication
and hard work are being spent by teams on social teambuilding activities, ask your class to find out what
they did! Thank you for your generous donations.
Parent Forum – following the success of the raffle and bake sale last term, we are delighted that the
Parent Forum are contributing some wonderful fundraising ideas and we look forward to seeing what their
next project holds. Watch this space…
Fundraising updates
Facebook birthday fundraisers – thank you to those parents that have done birthday
fundraisers on Facebook for BeyondAutism. So far, you have raised £360 through
this method! Please do continue to encourage birthday fundraisers as we receive
100% of the donations since Facebook do not charge a transaction fee.
AmazonSmile – BeyondAutism is now on AmazonSmile. This means you can raise
money for BeyondAutism at no extra cost to yourself, simply go to
smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1082599-0, login using your existing amazon account and
shop as usual. 0.5% of the cost of the product will be donated to BeyondAutism.
Partnerships
Kieran and Pippa delivered an assembly to Floreat School about
BeyondAutism. Floreat Wandsworth will be holding their own
miniature fundraising event in the near future.
Eaton House the Manor School pupils came to Park House School to
take part in a collaborative art project. They then went on to host an
auction selling these pieces amongst others. Thank you to Sam Curtis
who kindly purchased some wonderful pieces of art for Park House
School.
Events
An enormous thank you to all the people that take on challenges on our behalf, your dedication is vital to
the charity – and hugely appreciated. Here are some upcoming challenge events:
• Vitality 10K, 27th May
• Royal Parks Half Marathon, 13th October
We do still have spaces left for our annual Quiz Night on Wednesday 1st May so please contact Pippa
Day at pippaday@beyondautism.org.uk or call 020 3031 9705 to book your table!
Spring Newsletter
2019
Our Five Year Strategy: Year 4
Our Services – At the leading edge of outstanding ABA provision
Our Finances – A viable and sustainable organisation with healthy free
reserves
We will:
• Keep up to date with financial reporting.
•
Increase primary school fees for new placements.
•
Prepare 2 year forecast across all services.
•
Extend 2 year forecast to 5 years.
•
Refinance Future Builders
•
Open an account with Lloyds and consider transfer of all activity.
•
Transfer surplus funds to higher interest accounts.
•
Review and establish trading structure for Outreach & Training.
Our Properties – State of the art, in the right place at the right time
We will:
• Secure premises for the Charity office, Early years service and sixth form.
• Take steps towards making Park House a designated primary provision
and Tram House a designated secondary provision.
•
Establish a second Post-19 hub.
•
Map out property considerations in new service project plans.
Our Fundraising – Donations, voluntary raised income and time build a
platform of support
We will:
• Introduce and train new staff in generalist fundraising activities and
relevant systems.
•
Establish processes for managing key Trust/Corporate relationships.
•
Make large trust applications for projects, services & capital.
•
Develop website donation vehicles.
•
Embed the ThankQ update.
•
Create another BeyondAutism event, as well as the quiz.
•
Establish Corporate engagement.
Our Communication – Our brand and profile make us the “go-to”
organisational for expertise and services
We will:
• Develop a strategy for becoming thought leaders in the world of education
& autism.
•
Build on our events portfolio.
•
Develop marketing strategies for all services as they grow and promote
awareness of ABA.
•
Embed the concept of impact into the organisation so we can deliver an
impact report by the end of 2020.
•
Extend our website to provide more information about autism and ABA, as
well as giving each service their own website presence.
•
Focus the information we share around case studies.
•
Develop a communication process to improve internal communication.
Our People – Inspired to be their best, are
valued & recognised
We will:
• Develop a Graduate/New Leader
Scheme
•
Develop a ‘bank’ worker scheme for all
services.
•
Develop a Wellbeing strategy and train
all line managers in wellbeing initiatives
•
Increase the opportunities to represent
the organisation externally, at
recruitment fairs & events.
•
Implement HR Database & Self Service
System
Outreach:
We will:
• Secure the budget for the Outreach & Training Service
• Secure a service level agreement 1 Local Authority.
•
Develop partnerships with new Local Authorities.
•
Develop new training courses.
Post-19:
We will:
• Develop a training package with an emphasis on training in an adult
setting.
• Establish an internal ABA supervision group focusing on behavioural approaches
in an adult setting.
•
Evaluate the staffing structure to see if it is fit for purpose as the service
develops.
•
Provide external CPD in the form of postgraduate study.
•
Enlist an improvement partner to help evaluate the service and ensure it follows a
cycle of improvement.
•
Develop new partners in local authorities, both in the care and employment
sectors.
• Establish a college link programme to ensure students have access to specialist
courses.
Park House School:
We will:
• Establish a Parent Forum
•
Separate SLT and form ELT
across both schools
•
Develop partnerships
•
Develop EYFS outside
space and teacher expertise
Tram House School:
We will:
• Embed and extend the sixth
form provision
•
Develop the Kaspar project
•
Develop a parental MDT
support hub
Early Years:
We will:
• Extend the early years service by running 5 days a
week or operating an additional room.
•
Set up the service at new locations
•
Have a new location with outdoor space
