Levenshulme High School’s SENCo, Debbie Jefferies, has recently been awarded with the “Partnership Project Award” for her work with Healthy Schools’ Kelly O’Brien on the “Embracing Your Unique Self” booklet. This is a resource Kelly has put together for neurodivergent students, to help them better understand themselves and their sensory profiles as they make their way through secondary school. With the project in its early stages, Debbie provided support throughout and organised an important student focus group to gauge opinions from the young people themselves. Thanks to the collaboration, the resource is ready to be rolled out to several schools throughout the Greater Manchester area. As it is Debbie’s final year before retirement, it’s a fitting end to a great career. Congratulations!

This past academic year, Levenshulme High School has also had several members of staff take part in HAVEN training. HAVEN stands for “Hearing, Accepting, Valuing Every Neurotype” and is a school-based intervention supporting neurodivergent students to find and share common interests in a student-led environment. The implementation has found great success and positive student feedback throughout all year groups in the school, and Levenshulme High is committed to training more members of staff this school year.