Autism & Neurodiversity North Scotland (A-ND) offer help and support to autistic and neurodivergent individuals, their families and wider support networks.
As of May 2023, the A-ND team provide direct, ongoing support and services to 150 individuals and their families across Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Moray and the North of Scotland.
As part of their wide range of services, A-ND established their Keep the Promise Pilot Project after receiving funding from The Promise Partnership through the Corra Foundation. The project involves two groups of eight families, where dedicated support workers undertake home visits with one group to learn about the child’s home environment, with the aim of understanding their wider circumstances.
Gette Cobban, ACVO’s Senior Development Officer, who works to support organisations who deliver The Promise in Aberdeen, spoke with Janet Gauthier, Team Leader, and Julia Christina Clark, Support Worker, about their work with the Keep the Promise Pilot Project, discussing what impact this service has on the families and how the project follows The Promise, Scotland’s guarantee of ensuring all children grow up safe, loved and respected.
“The Keep the Promise Pilot Project was established to trial enhanced support with some of our children and young people,” says Janet.
“By visiting children in their homes, in addition to in Playscheme, we have greater opportunities to gather information surrounding their family background, home environment, and the wider context of their lives outside of Playscheme.
“We therefore sought to build deeper relationships, become more consistent in the child’s life and learn about their home environment through Keep the Promise.”
“We work as a small team comprising of Janet, myself and our other Support Worker, Tristan Mathers,” Julia says.
“Two members of the team go out on each family home visit, where one is able to spend time with the child, whilst the other spends time with the family.
“We sit, we listen and we offer understanding to the family, whilst building a relationship with the child outside of Playscheme. It’s a truly cherishing experience being able to support these families at a deeper level.”
Keep the Promise goes hand-in-hand with A-ND’s Playscheme service, meaning the children involved in the Pilot Project attend the Playscheme service in addition to their home visits.
Both Janet and Julia agree that they have noticed a huge difference in the children’s wellbeing as a result of being part of the Keep the Promise Pilot Project.
“We have strong relationships with all of the children at Playscheme, but see an improved depth of support when we are able to have increased dedicated time with families,” Janet says. “Home visits provide consistency and more opportunities to tailor support to what is best for each individual child, with having dedicated time.”
“We sit, we listen and we offer understanding to the family, whilst building a relationship with the child outside of Playscheme. It’s a truly cherishing experience being able to support these families at a deeper level.”
The Keep the Promise Pilot Project was established March 2023, with home visits being implemented from May 2023. Although this has only ran for some months, Janet and Julia share the great impact that the project has had so far.
Julia describes one of her key children, who previously found it challenging to regulate his emotions in a way that was safe for him and others. This caused considerable challenges for him and his family, and impacted their ability to partake in activities together:
“Through the time that we have been working with him and his family, we found out that he likes social stories. These stories really help autistic and neurodivergent children by explaining social situations, allowing them to feel more prepared when they happen.
“We tailored some social stories for him, and we have really noticed a huge difference when he then spent time with his family.
“For example, one meal time he was able to stay at the table with no feelings of distress or anxiety. It’s beautiful to watch the relationship with his family, and the way that they have listened and properly taken on all of the resources that we have helped to create with them.”
“It has been amazing to see each individual family find the solutions that are best for them,” Janet adds.
“We really feel that we have been able to build a strong relationship with his parents, and his sister as well. The Keep the Promise team are all able to pool our collective knowledge of what his life looks like, to then use this to understand the triggers that can set off his distress.
“As a result of our social stories, that we have learned through our home visits with him, we are able to prepare this child and give him the knowledge for any anticipated situations, such as a walk in the park or meal time with his family. We can then turn a potentially negative experience into something positive.”
Janet continues, emphasising the way in which the support in Playscheme is improved through Keep the Promise.
“In Playscheme, we are limited in the extra time that we can spend with families.
“However in Keep the Promise, we have dedicated, protected time with those families. It really feels that we can walk with the families, and that we are going in the same direction in terms of understanding around their child.
“We have a clear focus on preventing challenging situations, rather than hearing stories from some families about a situation that has happened after the fact. We are then able to act proactively with the family to find the solutions that are right for them.”
“Being able to provide this extensive, tailored support definitely feels better as practitioners, for the family and for the child themselves.”
“Keep the Promise is essentially taking an unpredictable situation and making it predictable,” Julia states.
“A lot of the children that we support through Keep the Promise, we find where their anxieties lie and we try to alleviate these feelings by explaining known challenging situations for them.”
Janet continues: “Being able to provide this extensive, tailored support definitely feels better as practitioners, for the family and for the child themselves. Keep the Promise is really beneficial across the board in this sense.”
The passion that Janet and Julia have for the project radiates in their words as they describe their feelings of seeing the significant impact that Keep the Promise has on the children and families.
Julia expresses: “Being able to witness the impact of Keep the Promise is so special to us. The children across this project, as well as Playscheme, hold a very deep place within our hearts.
“The more time you spend with someone, the more you understand their unique language. It’s about being able to speak each child’s individual language. Understanding their words, vocalisations or other noises which they may use to communicate is truly beautiful and fills you with such a level of joy.”
“A lot of the children we support do not communicate verbally, this is just not part of their world,” explains Janet.
“At A-ND, one of our key values is creating an environment that is right for our children. We do not want them to try changing themselves to fit, we are going to change to fit them.
“So this is a really key example with communication differences, especially when we have more time with the child so that we can join in and understand them more.”
Janet continues:
“The only way a child can grow up safe, loved and respected is if you understand them and have a solid relationship with them. This is what our project aims to achieve by following The Promise.”
“At A-ND, our main vision and goal is to create fulfilling and happy lives for people who think differently,” says Janet. “We have seen the benefit of extra time with a dedicated team and clear focus, and our hope is to provide that same depth of support to every person we support.”
“To achieve this, we need things to change on a local and national scale”, adds Julia.
“From there, we can get more staff involved in the project and offer further support to more children.
“We have already seen so much growth and so much change with the eight families we have supported. This has been extraordinary, and we want this to expand and continue.”
“The world can be so overwhelming”, continues Janet. “So what we really want is to work with families, discover what they need, and how we can help them along their journey through life.
“With Keep the Promise now in place, we have been able to deepen our relationships, further our understanding and spread the message of what life can look like for these children and families.
“We strive to be innovators, finding new approaches and ways of working with the children and their families. This is what we look forward to achieving with Keep the Promise in the future.”
