Aside from being a clinician who has always been interested in neurodevelopment and neurodiversity, I am the mum to two children who have their own unique neurodevelopmental profile of strengths and challenges. Both are “quirky” and need a little more intervention and support at school, yet they absolutely fall in the category of “not being bad enough” for school to refer to Educational Psychology. I am lucky, from my NHS experience and personal connections within educational settings, I have more knowledge of assessment pathways, processes and neurodevelopmental conditions than most. Yet even with this knowledge, I found myself often floundering in the dark, not knowing how best to help my children and where to seek out the support. If I found it difficult to know where to go or how to get help, how difficult must it be for parents or carers will far less knowledge? It was this that drove me to finally pick up the courage to develop UP.
I always wanted UP to be a complimentary service to NHS and Educational provision, not a replacement. With my eldest child we sought private advice from a specialist teacher around dyslexia, as well as a neurodevelopmental NHS referral in parallel. The results from both were helpful - but only addressed a small and narrow part of their specific needs. It was down to me to take the most pertinent aspects of both assessments and disseminate them to school. It was also down to me to create the recommendations and identify the appropriate support based on these stand-alone assessments. Again, I thought, what was needed was one thorough and holistic assessment that looked at the full spectrum of my child’s strengths and challenges - and even better, gave me recommendations that were tailored to help them thrive and succeed. Hence UP was born.