I began this journey about 7 weeks ago. Well, technically I started it back in April.

I was teaching academic writing and offering tuition support to adults every Wednesday. These adults were engaged in an Autism Studies diploma with UCC here in the Kilkenny office.

Through my engagement with the learners it quickly came to light that the majority were Special Needs Assistants with some people in Special Schools and a couple of people were parents of autistic kids.

During the classes and in conversations it was discovered that most of them felt like they lacked training and support surrounding challenging behaviour.

So, I conducted a study and discovered this appeared to be a prevalence among SNA’s across Ireland.

7 weeks ago I developed a brief outline of a possible course curriculum and put up my suggestion online.

Within 12 hours I had over 300 enquiries looking to know when was it starting.

So, that sealed the deal. I set a start date and got to work on the course content, using my proposed outline as a guide.

I am now on workshop 4 of the first run of this course. And I have loved every minute of it. Although I still haven’t completed all the content, it’s a race against myself to get the last workshop finished before it starts next Thursday!

And with me working outside the house, plus workshop 4 still running, this is proving quite a challenge.

But I do love a challenge 😍

So, I’m very much looking forward to the 2nd run of this workshop series, which I hope will eventually be available in the schools.

If you are interested in signing up please click here to be taken to the booking page. Alternatively you can contact the office via email.