The placement that made me

This blogpost aims to provide an account of my experience with the Research in Practice (RiP) opportunity, which led me to be awarded with the SCDTP 2024-25 impact prize.

When I started my PhD in October 2024 and found out I had to do a placement I was sceptical, but I was wrong! I started thinking about this and whilst scrolling Twitter (where I no longer have an account and refuse to call X) one day saw a post by the Department for Education (DfE) stating that the government was to start long-term reform plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). A group of experts had been assembled with the sole purpose of increasing the understanding of inclusion and support for neurodivergent children and young people in mainstream education and reporting back to the government. Professor Karen Guldberg, previously the Director of the Autism Centre for Education and Research and currently the Head of the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, had been appointed Chair of the DfE’s Neurodivergence Task and Finish (T&F) Group.

I found Karen on the University of Birmingham’s website and emailed her directly, with my biography and why I was interested in joining the group. To my surprise, she replied immediately stating that they’d been looking for someone to join a research group that was supporting the work of the T&F group, someone with both mainstream secondary and autism experience. I fitted the criteria perfectly.

To cut a long story short, the SCDTP approved the placement, and I was to be their ‘guinea pig’ – the first student to complete the RiP. I was happy with this; I like Guinea pigs! I started the placement on May 1st with a meeting with Professor Laura Crane who I had admired the work of for a long time. It was surreal, suddenly I was her colleague. The first few weeks was lots of reading and catching up with what the research group had been doing up until that point. The group was made up of myself, Karen, Laura, another PhD student Charlotte Brooks and Dr Rebecca Bartram, we also linked in the University of Warwick’s ‘What Works in SEND’ team. I went to Birmingham for an autism network meeting shortly after I started where I made some fabulous connections with experienced academics, charities and other PGRs. I became an ‘honorary’ University of Birmingham guest in both their autism network and their community of PGRs which has continued since my placement ended.

My duties and primary responsibilities to the research group were to support with primary and secondary data collection and analysis to inform the ongoing work of the T&F group. Additionally, I wanted to deepen my understanding of good practice in autism education, especially in terms of identifying solutions to systemic issues at varied stages of an autistic student’s educational journey and to gain greater awareness and understanding of how academics can support policymaking through their research.

Karen’s arm of the Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group was looking at the use of profiling tools to assess the strengths and needs of neurodivergent children and young people. This is important because the idea of making education more accessible for neurodivergent young people needs to have a strong solid base to work from. There are different tools being used in different areas of England, but a neurodiversity profiling tool which was developed by the University of Portsmouth has been rolled out more widely than the others for testing. The task and finish group wanted to know how effective a tool like this was, and whether its implementation could provide support for neurodivergent children and young people in school. It was envisaged that a tool such as this may be useful in the early identification of neurodivergence and lead to a reduction in formal referrals and consequently reduce the waiting time for a formal assessment. My job was to find out how this tool was being used ‘in real life’ and whether it was having the expected impact. I suggested that I visited Bristol, where there was a pilot of the use of the tool underway. The research group agreed this would be really useful and the ethics got underway. The University of Brighton also supported this with funding from the QR fund. The ethics approval process was taking too long, and because my placement was time sensitive it was decided that my project should be a consultation, rather than research. This meant that although it still needed to be undertaken ethically, it didn’t need to go through the ethics process.

The consultation aimed to explore the experiences of all stakeholders involved in a pilot of the Neurodiversity Profiling tool that has been taking place in Bristol. I arranged the whole consultation myself and went to Bristol for four days to speak to schools, parents and the NHS provider who is leading the operational process of implementing this tool across the local area. I ended up with a completely full diary, I had meetings with parents, secondary schools, a pre-school and nursery, the health provider and had a meeting with a primary school online. The meetings were all recorded and transcribed using MAXQDA which I had learnt use during the placement which is going to be so useful going forward. The meetings went amazingly well, and the communities clearly felt comfortable talking to me, one-hour visits turned into three-hour visits, invites to meet additional staff members and tours of schools. I have reflected upon this since and recognise that the ability to make people feel comfortable and open to honest discussions is a position of privilege, and when you hold such a position, it allows you the potential to make a positive difference.

The placement facilitated so many speaking and writing opportunities; I was invited to speak about my placement at a Community Partnership Event that was focussing on the perspectives on adolescence in Sussex for the Understanding Childhood and Adolescence Research Excellence Group from the University of Brighton and at our PGR conference. Additionally, I disseminated the findings at the University of Birmingham’s Education conference. I wrote a short document about language for the ‘What Works in SEND’ team and a full report of the consultation for the research group. Karen used my summary slide deck to present my findings to the T&F group and the DfE. In August I spoke about the challenges of the mental health in undiagnosed autistic children and young people on the waiting list at my first non-university conference. One school I visited allowed me to name them in a written case study which I was particularly proud of. The case study was used as an example of what a positive impact a school can have on the whole community by exercising excellent inclusion practices and focussing on mental health. I am still in touch with the school now. I have also stayed in touch with the research group form the University of Birmingham and continue to help code the last bit of qualitative data. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again and speaking at their education conference at the end of November where I have just had my abstract about participatory research accepted.

My placement was amazing, it gave me a glimpse of the work that goes on behind the scenes in government and in universities that I had no experience of before. I have experienced the differences and tensions between policy, practice and research and how academics can influence government policy. I had not previously considered that academia were used in this way and it has given me ideas for my future post-PhD. I have been to the House of Lords, and travelled up and down the country, which may seem trivial to some, but for me this was a challenge to overcome. The opportunities that the placement gave me are wide-ranging both personally and professionally. I have so much more confidence now, in myself, my work and the importance of my own PhD research into autistic young people’s experiences of mainstream secondary school. And … I won a prize for the possible far-reaching impact of my placement.