England Rugby’s Post

Transcript

Neurodiversity is the variety of needs and learning needs, social needs, cognitive ability across people. People's minds work differently. And the way in regards to rugby, the way that they play and the way that they learn and the way that they can be coached needs to be adapted accordingly. We see a lot of it in the club, so we see how children react in training, how they are at game time, how they deal with situations on and off the pitch, how they are in general, just moving around the club as well, and it's our place to make sure we're best supporting them and making sure those needs are met through reasonable adjustments that we can do with our coaches and with our clubhouse, and with just the adults that are looking after them. So there's a few things that we've done. So we've got guides that they can look at any point. We've got two SEN leads that they can call upon if they've got a situation that they want to have dealt with, they want to know how to handle it. If there's a behavior that they're seeing regularly that they won't talk about. And then we also have coaching classes as well. So we have them on all sorts of things. But at least once a year we have them SEN as well, where we sit down and talk about what to look out for, what that means. Now, the interesting thing about supporting a player with neurodiversity is it's not much different to supporting a player that is neurotypical, to be fair. It's just one other thing that you need to think of. Just one other thing we ask people to take into consideration, and it's as simple as that. It all started with the concept of highlighting the need and creating like a need breakdown in terms of and that was the first thing that we really consulted on and looked at together, where Stacey built a framework, for example, it would say, ���Hi my name is Ben, I have ADHD��� and within that it's so this can look like this and it means I need you best to support me in that way. And that's where I consulted on and said, these will be the traits that you'll kind of see really common ones, but these are the things the coaches can do. And originally it was really aimed at the idea of the coaches and saying to the coaches, if a child has ADHD who is presenting in these ways, they may have ADHD and therefore it's best to support them in this way. And then from there, it kind of snowballed into, now we're going to create a WhatsApp group, now we're going to train it. So we created resources for training for the coaches as well, going through how best to support the children, how best to support the parents. It's then turned into we're now looking at a players passport, for them to travel up with. So they go through the years with their passport, which the children can add to, take away from whatever they want. And that's very much going to be in their hands. It's very much going to be an individual player passport for the child. What do you want your coach to know? What is it that you don't like this or is it that you do like this? Is it that you really like praise? Is it that when you're upset and you storm off, you need to breathe for ten minutes? Or is it that you want someone to come and check that you're okay? And that's kind of the next stage that will go into a really individualised support plan. The more information we have, the easier it is for us to manage. The parents see them every day. Their teachers see them every day. I'll see them once a week or we as a coaching group see them once a week. Somebody I might identify as, you know, troublesome. If I don't know about their condition, it's really difficult to manage. But because we've been together with this group for so long, the parents now, there's a free flow of information. So if they're going to get assessed, if they're going to something, if something's changed, if their medication change, then they come and tell me. And then it's really, really easy to manage. It's interesting because some parents will not be quite forthcoming with with their child's needs, because I think it's going to be at the detriment of their playing career. But that's absolutely not the case. You really should be forthcoming with it, because it allows the adaptation to be there and the support to be there as it needs to be. I absolutely love it because as a parent of a SEN child, it���s really stressful whenever you take them anywhere because you never know how they're going to deal with the surroundings and here is a huge safe space for him. So when we're over at the club, he'll go off and play with his friends, and I don't have to worry about what may or may not happen. The coaches absolutely look after the children, so whenever he needs anything, he'll go to the coaches rather than rely on me to have to pick that usual kind of responsibility up. So the coaches actually make us, as parents, feel a lot more comfortable. We can relax, we can enjoy time with other parents and just enjoy watching the game for what it is. I think it's huge for sport because it's really difficult for children, especially high functioning ones whose disabilities are extremely hidden so no one can see just off the face of it, what struggles they go through on a daily basis. I think it's incredibly important that we keep raising awareness. Very proud of the people that really seen this. This is something that we should have implemented, you know, quite a long time ago. And you can see from the numbers that the mini and youth are growing a lot that people are actively seeking our club now, knowing that we've got these identifying areas in place to help their children. And I think it's just a wonderful thing, the children don't know no different, parents don't know no different. It's individually wrapped to that child, which is just a really good, positive, amazing thing that the club are doing now. Rugby is a progressive sport, so we don't put, you know, our under eights on a pitch, full contact, scrums, throwing them up in lineouts or anything like that. It actually progresses really, really slowly. So for a child that starts at age five, for example, actually rugby's fun. It's all about fun. You might not be playing a game of rugby, you might be playing a game of Bulldog. But actually what you're learning is how to run up as a line. They don't realise they're learning that, but that's what they're learning. And then it goes to tags, and then it goes to a little bit of contact and then it goes to a little bit of rucking. So you get these gradual progressions. The nice things for neurodiverse children is that that then gives them time to process each step as they go. By the time I get to an under-15 age, they are doing those heavy scrums and they are making big tackles, they've had all that time. Oh yeah, I remember when I was in the under-nines and you know, someone tackled me and it hurt. The pain is going to end. I don't need to worry. You would hope that the parents see that and understand we get them up when we go again. There really are small differences that you can make that can make a huge difference to that player's enjoyment of the game, and that's really important. And that's what we want to make sure people are aware of. Team sports are just a fantastic opportunity for everybody to benefit from, but even more so for neurodiverse players. And I think it's just really important that we support them and allow the game to grow even better.