Rachel Ineson Independent Occupational Therapist

05/11/2025

21/10/2025

This is great news! I am ready and have availability from December 2025 to support children and families using the ASGSF. I can offer specialist, trauma-informed and neuro-affirming occupational therapy and sensory integration at The Cocoon Therapy Space in Durham. www.rachelsensoryot.co.uk or info@rachelsensoryot.co.uk 😀

Adoption Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) announcement.

We are pleased to hear that the ASGSF will be continuing next year (2026/27) and that applications can now be made for therapy that starts this year and continues into next year.

We hope that this announcement provides a measure of reassurance to our adopters. We will share more information once we have it.

You can read the statement at: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2025-09-04/hcws908

16/10/2025

Misinformation and disinformation affects everyone - especially people who are vulnerable....😥

06/10/2025

A Newcastle consultant says about 900 affected babies are born in the region each year.

04/10/2025

I could not agree more.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has announced that an extra half a million children across England will soon receive free breakfasts, as part of an expanded government initiative

Why this isn’t the good news it looks like:

1. It’s a sticking plaster, not a solution.

Free breakfasts may fill stomachs in the short term, but they don’t fix the root issue: families simply don’t have enough to live on. Food insecurity isn’t solved by one extra slice of toast in school halls.

2. It normalises child poverty.
Politicians can present this as a “win,” but what they’re really saying is: We expect half a million more children to be too poor to eat breakfast at home. That should not be a cause for celebration.

3. It shifts responsibility away from government.

Instead of tackling wages, housing costs, or benefit shortfalls, the government hands schools the problem. Teachers and school staff are already stretched — now they’re expected to pick up another role as caterers of last resort.

4. It hides the bigger picture.

Hungry children don’t just need breakfast; they need three meals a day, adequate heating, and a safe home environment. Breakfast clubs don’t fix cold houses, empty cupboards, or parents skipping meals.

5. It puts schools under more pressure.

Breakfast provision sounds simple, but in reality it means staffing, space, time, budgets, safeguarding, allergies, cleaning up… all squeezed into mornings that are already chaotic. Another “initiative” without infrastructure is another burden.

6. It risks stigmatising children.

Yes, some schools run breakfast clubs well, but we can’t pretend stigma doesn’t exist. Children know who “needs” free food, and that carries social weight. Accessing breakfast at school shouldn’t become another marker of poverty.

7. It frames the problem as individual, not systemic.

The announcement suggests the problem is that children don’t eat breakfast — not that the economy is failing families. Language matters. It shifts blame subtly onto households instead of addressing political choices that deepen inequality.

8. It’s not actually universal.

Half a million sounds like a lot, but it’s nowhere near all children in poverty. Provision is still patchy, eligibility is unclear, and many families will still fall through the cracks.

9. It overlooks dignity.

Families should have the dignity of feeding their children at home without fear of debt, eviction, or destitution. Outsourcing meals to schools reinforces dependency instead of restoring security and autonomy.

10. It lets politicians claim credit for crumbs.

When the bar is set so low that feeding hungry children toast is treated as progressive policy, we’ve lost sight of what social justice should mean. This isn’t bold reform — it’s damage limitation dressed up as compassion.

The real question isn’t “should children have free breakfasts?” — of course no child should go hungry.

The real question is why so many children need them in the first place. And that’s on political choices, not parental failings.

Emma
The Autistic SENCo
♾️

28/09/2025

I have watched this morning & LOVED it! So clear & so relevant. Thank you Munira - Children's Occupational Therapist . I've signed up for the as life with my own little PDAer hasn't made much viewing possible this weekend, but I'm loving how all the content will inform my practice at The Cocoon Therapy Space. Thank you too - The PDA Space 😀

23/09/2025

Donald Trump's words and (in)actions regularly upset the mood in our household, and by sharing his outrageous stance about autism it became personal today. I had pre-warned my news-aware 12-yr old autistic daughter that this was coming. Baffled, she responded: "There's ALWAYS been all of us. We're just everybody else. But better." 😊

Like many of you, we know you may have felt unsettled by recent comments from the Trump administration linking autism with paracetamol (known as Tylenol or acetaminophen in the US), vaccines, and other supposed causes. These claims have been widely rejected by medical experts and autism organisations, and it’s important to be clear about the facts. ✏️

🔇 Please note: any comments that are offensive, or spread misinformation, will be deleted.

What does the science tell us? 🔬

- Vaccines do not cause autism. This has been extensively studied and disproven.
- Paracetamol use in pregnancy has not been proven to cause autism. A handful of weak studies have suggested possible links, but higher-quality, well-controlled research shows no reliable evidence of a connection. Pregnant people should continue to follow NHS guidance.
- Rising autism diagnoses reflect awareness and understanding. More people are being diagnosed/self-identifying because professionals and society have better understanding, not because of a new environmental “epidemic.”

Why is misinformation so harmful? ❌

Repeated claims about supposed 'causes' of autism are not only inaccurate, they perpetuate stigma, worry for families, and distract from what really matters. Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference. There is no 'cure', nor should there be. Instead, research should focus on improving understanding, respect, and support so autistic people can thrive.

Our call to action ⬇️

We urge policymakers, the media, and public figures everywhere to use caution, clarity, and humility when speaking about autism. Families deserve evidence-based guidance and reassurance, not fear and confusion.

Your lived experiences, voices, and needs matter far more than political noise. What makes the real difference is support, understanding, accommodations, and respect.

To learn more on autism and neurodiversity, you can start here: https://daisychainproject.co.uk/about-autism-neurodiversity/

05/09/2025

💚 "One person's experience of a school isn't the same as another" 💚

I’m a trauma therapist and I work with families of children who are not fine at school. The more stories I hear, the more I am concerned that this area is full of psychological techniques being applied in ways which, unfortunately, can make things worse rather than better.

It’s a basic tenet of trauma therapy that a traumatic event needs to be over before a person is ready to process and recover from what happened to them. They need to be safe. If they aren’t safe, then the first priority should be changing the circumstances to make sure they are safe. That’s because there is nothing wrong with a person feeling highly distressed when the situation that they are in is dangerous to them. It would be far more surprising (and concerning) if they were calm. Fiddling whilst Rome burns, we might say.

I use the metaphor of the burning house to explain this to people I work with. If your house is burning down, and you go running to tell someone, you’re going to be frightened and distressed. Maybe you shout at them ‘My house is burning down! Help me!’. If their response is to tell you to quieten down and concentrate on your breathing and that they’re sure it’s not that bad, you’ll get more upset and probably angry. You know your house is burning down! You need actual help, right now, not a breathing exercise! They aren’t listening to you! You really need them to know how bad it is and they don’t get it. You’ll shout louder, or maybe you’ll push past them to get to someone else who does understand. They might get angry with you then because they’ll say you’re being aggressive and ignoring them. If they have power over you, they might even punish you for your behaviour.

Your fear and distress as your house burns isn’t a sign of you having an emotional or mental health problem, it’s a sign that your survival system is acting as it should, to keep you safe. That’s what it’s there for. It gets triggered when we are in dangerous situations. Of course, it does also make mistakes sometimes – perhaps you’ve experienced a house fire in the past, and when the smoke alarm goes off in the house your survival system gets triggered even though it’s just the toaster. Then we might want to intervene to help you feel safe again.

With children, there’s a tendency to assume that their distress, particularly about school, is always an emotional mistake. The assumption is that they are feeling the way they do in error, like running out of the house when the smoke alarm goes off. This means that the solutions offered are calming strategies or anxiety management – or even being told not to be so silly, just join in and stop making a fuss. Adults do this with good intentions. We want to show them that the world isn’t as scary as they think it is. We don’t dislike the things they dislike, and so we think that if they understood the world as we do, they would be fine. To this end, we tell them that they are wrong to feel the way they do.

What this means is that when child is distressed about school, they are offered emotional regulation strategies. It’s assumed that the school is safe and the right place for them to be, and once they learn that, the better it will be for everyone. The solution to the problem (from this perspective) is for the child to stop feeling distressed about school, and then everyone will be happy.

But school isn’t always okay, and one person’s experience of a school isn’t the same as another. For some young people, their school feels like a hostile environment, day after day. They find things like the pressure and comparisons, the lack of privacy, the frequent transitions, the playground and the way that people talk to each other extremely difficult, and that doesn’t get better by doing it more. This doesn’t have to be true for everyone in the school to be true for some young people. One person’s happy place can be another person’s nightmare (look, some people climb very high buildings for fun!). Some young people feel unsafe and unhappy at school, but everyone is telling them that the problem is them and if they just did some more mindfulness or deep breathing, it would all be okay. This is really confusing for them.

For them, it’s like the house is burning down. They are highly distressed, they don’t feel safe, and being offered calming strategies feels like they aren’t being listened to. Not only will they not work, but they also have the potential to make things worse, because they tell the child that the problem is them.

That isn’t to say there isn’t a place for calming techniques - but it’s when the problems have been listened to, acknowledged and changes have been made. It’s when the fire has been put out. Now the house isn’t burning and the immediate danger is over, so we might be able to take some deep breaths and regroup. At that point, we might need to calm ourselves down so we are ready to rebuild. We might be ready to use the Thera-putty, or the breathing exercises, or a guided relaxation. But they won’t help put the fire out. For that, we need water and a fire engine. Actual change.

That's what I'm talking about in my online mini-course, Burnt Out By School?

This, and my other school courses, are half price until Sunday. They can be watched as many times as you like for 12 months.

https://courses.naomifisher.co.uk/back-to-school-sale/ -1712935501946_1
Illustration by Eliza Fricker.

02/09/2025

So true! I see this soooo often in my own family and the neurodivergent children I work with. Connecting bodily sensations with emotional and behavioural responses is one of the core principles of and unpicking behaviours to understand the "why" can be life changing, at any age.

What PDA Feels Like From the Inside

"But you WANTED to go swimming!"

Sound familiar? Here's what might actually be happening inside a child's nervous system 🏊‍♀️

Wanting to do something and being able to handle the demands of doing it are completely different experiences for children with highly sensitive nervous systems.

We can all relate to this feeling to some extent. Think about a time when you really wanted to do something - maybe attend a social event or take on a new project - but as the time approached, your anxiety kicked in. Your heart raced, you felt overwhelmed, maybe you wanted to back out despite genuinely wanting to participate.

For children with PDA, this experience is much more intense and happens with much smaller triggers. Here's what might be happening inside:

💭 "I really want to go swimming"
⚡ Getting ready = transition = demands detected
🚨 Nervous system activates: "THREAT!"
😰 Heart racing, can't think clearly, feeling trapped
🏃‍♀️ Fight/flight response kicks in
😭 Meltdown happens

From the outside, it looks like:
"They're being difficult about something they wanted"

From the inside, it feels like:
"I want to go but my body is screaming danger and I can't make it stop"

This is why traditional logic doesn't help in these moments:
- "But you said you wanted to!" (Their nervous system doesn't care what they wanted)
- "If you don't get ready, we can't go!" (Increases the threat response)
- "Last chance!" (More pressure = more activation)

What their highly sensitive nervous system needs:
- Time to adjust to transitions
- Reduced pressure around the demands
- Understanding that the anxiety response is genuine and intense
- Support and patience, not consequences

Children with PDA aren't being manipulative when they want something but struggle with getting there. Their nervous system is working overtime to protect them from what feels overwhelming 💝

Tomorrow: The myths that prevent us from truly understanding this experience

25/08/2025

I'm thinking ahead to September/October/November and I have spaces available for new Sensory Assessments and Interventions 😃 at The Cocoon Therapy Space in Durham.

I work with all people of any age, any . I'm approved to provide AGSF funded sensory integration, and I have a special interest + of pda /demand avoidant profiles and autistic teen girls / young women. Please check out my website for more details.

I believe in fair pricing and am fully transparent about the costs you see on my website. I don't add hidden extras, do 'mini' sensory assessments, or use unqualified staff.

If you are curious, unsure, or just lost in a system I'd love to have a chat. No pressure, just neuroaffirming support 😃

www.rachelsensoryot.co.uk
info@rachelsensoryot.co.uk

Image shows me (Rachel) and my dog Waffles "both" smiling broadly enjoying the sensory experience of being in a forest surrounded by trees

17/08/2025

Re-share

We hear “bored” a lot from children and young people when actually it can sometimes mean dysregulated, in need of connection, sensory seeking, burnt out and do not have the executive functioning capacity to manage activity, alexithymic and do not have the words to communicate what is going on for me, interoceptive differences that mean I cannot interpret my internal sensations and emotions….. always be curious 👀

06/08/2025

A great visual explaining the EHCP process from Sunshine Support

⚖️ The LEGAL Timeline They Don’t Want You To Know About… ⚖️

Too many parents are told to “wait and see”… But! The truth is there’s a legal timeline that Local Authorities must follow for EHCPs - and you have every right to use it. But they don't like us sharing this post, because it gives you a brilliant visual of what you need to know as a SEND parent or SENCo.

Right now, before September and before any scary SEND reforms roll in, is the perfect time to:
✔️ Request an EHC Needs Assessment
✔️ Check your child’s current EHCP
✔️ Make sure their needs are assessed and provision is legally locked in

This timeline shows exactly what should happen - and by when. No more delays. No more excuses. No more waiting.

✨ If this all feels like a lot, we’re here to guide you. Drop us a message at enquiries@sunshine-support.org.uk or DM - our team is ready to help.

We also have an in-person workshop where we can help you write this application face-to-face, book your earlybird ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1345139842479