The SEND VCB Project was set up by Yvonne Newbold in April 2017, in response to being contacted by several hundred parents following an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour about violence in children who had an additional need. Like many of the parents who got in touch after the programme, Yvonne had been unable to access any services, advice or information about her own son’s behaviour for many years, and had felt blamed, judged and ashamed of this issue which she felt must be all her own fault. She had also believed that this sort of violence was very rare and that her own family were very unusual. The programme was aired 15 years after the violent episodes had started in her own family, and she was shocked to realise how many other families were affected, and how, all these years later, that these hundreds of families were still unable to access any help or advice.
Yvonne organised a Conference to bring as many of this group of families together as possible, with the purpose of breaking the silence on this hidden and massively underacknowledged issue, and to start conversations to pool ideas and insights on how to best help families in this situation. That day The SEND VCB Project was born. Here’s a link to a video made at the Conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnKelhUkwfA&t and here are some of the things we found out that day about what these families needed most https://yvonnenewbold.com/resources-on-send-vcb/1548-2/
Facebook Community – Private Group for Families
Immediately after the Conference, Yvonne started a Facebook Group to enable all the parents who attended the conference to keep in touch, and together to find ways of tackling violent behaviour in children. It is a private Facebook group only open to families of SEND VCB children, and it has now developed into a cohesive and mutually supportive community with 4,500 family members. Here’s the link to this private group, please pass it on to anyone who is facing these challenges in their own families https://www.facebook.com/groups/421839288150939/
Facebook Community – Support Group for Men
We also now have a men’s group for dads, step-dads, grandads and uncles, run on similar lines to the support group for families, where difficult issues can be discussed in a safe environment from a male perspective. To join, please follow this link https://www.facebook.com/groups/584119188764221/
Community of Practice for the SEND VCB Project
We have lauched an online Community of Practice for professionals and support staff who work with children and adults who have additional needs and extreme, complex or otherwise difficult behaviour. It will bring people together from all areas of health, education and social care enabling the sharing of good practice, ideas, concerns, and information within a safe and supportive space. To join, please follow this link https://www.facebook.com/groups/COPSENDVCBProj/
The SEND VCB Project – Public Page
We also have a public Facebook page sharing information, insights and discussion on topics related to SEND VCB. To visit the page, please follow this link https://www.facebook.com/TheSENDVCBProject/
Further Resources
Yvonne has written about several issues related to SEND VCB as well as making a series of videos on this topic too. These two links are great places to start to find out more about the SEND VCB Project philosophy
Written Resources https://yvonnenewbold.com/resources-on-send-vcb/violent-challenging-behaviour-the-basics/
The SEND VCB Video Series on Facebook – https://yvonnenewbold.com/yvonnes-top-ten-videos-on-send-vcb/
Online Training and Webinars
There is currently a series of 16 training webinars, each one focusing on a different aspect of the difficulties facing families of children with additional needs and disabilities who also have difficult and dangerous behaviour. Other topics are in development and we’re open to suggestions,, so if there is a topic that you would like added to this list, please let Yvonne know by emailing her – yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
1. How to reduce extreme behaviour in SEND children
2. How to keep brothers and sisters safe and happy
3.How to feel happier and less exhausted as a SEND parent
4. Understanding childhood controlling behaviour and how to address it.
5. How to be heard as your SEND child’s expert advocate
6. How to help a demand avoidant child cope better with life
7. Understanding Communication and how it impacts on behaviour
8. Understanding anxiety & how to reduce it in both you and your child
9. How to boost your SEND child’s self-esteem
10. How to reduce stress with SEND children about screen & internet use
11. Additional needs the teenage years & how to navigate extreme behaviour
12. Sensory processing, its effect on behaviour, and what you can do to help
13. Change transitions and routine, how and why they impact on behaviour and what you can do to help
14. How to navigate lockdown as a SEND family
15. How to overcome the guilt, self-doubt and criticism of being a SEND parent
16. How to plan Christmas around your SEND child’s needs
To find out more about what is covered in each webinar, please follow this link – https://yvonnenewbold.com/webinars-for-parents-professionals-about-extreme-behaviour-in-children-with-additional-needs/
Our starting point is that extreme behaviour in SEND children is highly likely to come from anxiety-led deep distress, fear, confusion and feeling threatened, and therefore it needs a very different approach to the mainstream traditional discipline methods that are deeply embedded in our cultural beliefs and values. We promote strategies that seek to identify and then to meet a child’s unmet needs, and to work collaboratively with the child to build a stronger relationship based on kindness, understanding and compete acceptance of who they are.
Turning things around in a family takes a lot of commitment, tenacity, patience and hard work, and there are no overnight quick fixes. This is a process whereby the adults around the child have to master and perfect a completely new way of doing things, and it takes time and practice to get it right. However, there are now several hundred families who have worked with Yvonne through the project and as a result have now significantly reduced their child’s violent episodes and other extreme behaviours, sometimes eliminating these behaviours altogether. When this happens, parents barely mention those difficult times in how they tell it, instead they talk about how happy their child is now and how close their relationship has become. That’s what it’s all about because happy children are rarely violent. 400 success stories in two years is something that everyone at the project is immensely proud of.
Yvonne is now supported by a small team who are all parents from this group of success stories
Workshops for Professionals
Professionals are welcome to attend any of the webinars, although Yvonne has also provided tailored training for teams within workplaces, adapting the material to fit the needs of each particular client group and the staff who support them.
These workplaces have included
- Residential care homes for adults with a learning disability or autism
- Mainstream schools
- Special schools
- Local Authority residential respite units for children with complex needs.
For more information about bespoke training for your workforce, please contact yvonne@yvonnenewbold.com
Training being developed
Yvonne is working on providing training in different formats, and specifically tailored to the needs of the professional workforce. This should be available by the end of 2021.
Research Project
It has quickly become apparent that the reason there are so few services to meet the needs of these children and their families, and such little training available to service providers and front-line professionals is because there has been very little academic research carried out into SEND VCB so far. Until a need is identified and evidenced through robust research, spending on services and training cannot be identified.
Yvonne has addressed this by teaming up with a post-doctorate team of researchers at Northumbria University, and together they have undertaken a qualitative research project with 115 volunteer families from the closed Facebook Group. The study is called “Behind Closed Doors” and looks at the impact of SEND VCB on family life.
Using a secret Facebook page, all the participants were allocated pseudonyms to maintain confidentiality, and then were asked 15 questions about the reality of their daily lives. In total, this group of courageous parents contributed 220,000 words of real-life harrowing and heart-breaking narrative about SEND VCB family life.
The first article from this research is already published, with more on the way. Here’s a link to the article which has appeared in The Journal of Adult Protection http://bit.ly/2D23FqT This article focuses on why a safeguarding approach isn’t the right model to support the parents in this situation. The research has provided such a rich source of data that other articles will look at a range of aspects of how SEND VCB affects family life.
Conference and Talks
In addition to the workshops, Yvonne is a highly regarded conference speaker, and often speaks about SEND VCB and other related topics at events all over the country. Here is a video link to one of her earlier conference talks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP5nG8CDz3k&t
The Future of The SEND VCB Project
Forming a CIC not for profit company
We are hoping to establish the Project on a more firmer footing by becoming a Not for Profit CIC company called Newbold Hope. Up until now it has been entirely self-funded and run on a shoestring budget. Yvonne is living with a terminal cancer diagnosis and this work has developed from her “bucket list” aspiration to do something to improve the quality of life for the children and parents of families where there is an additional need. It’s now time to think about the long-term future of the project, so that this work can be built on and continue long into the future.
E-learning online courses
We have run two pilot online e-learning courses which have had very encouraging feedback, and we are looking to build on this experience to make all the material from the current workshop series available online as e-learning courses, with versions available for
- Parents
- School staff
- Clinicians and other healthcare professionals
- Social Care Staff
- Children – We are also planning further online courses for the children themselves as well as for their brothers and sisters, around the topic of feeling good about who we are.
What families say
“I think the course content is absolutely excellent and hugely helpful to families living with SEND VCB. Thank you so much Yvonne, your support and guidance means everything to me, and the course is truly fabulous.”
“The course has been so helpful and so refreshing to actually feel understood and be given clear strategies to help us manage our situation easier”
“The course is very interesting and enlightening – Yvonne’s insights and strategies are great”
“I am finding the course really useful. It’s so insightful and so kind in its approach to the issues. Kind-hearted. I think kindness is the key to it all for me. For me it’s about remembering that no matter how hard it is for me, it is not her choice to be this way and it’s a million times harder to be her. I totally believe this course has already helped me be a better parent to my daughter”
“It is such a relief to have someone who understands the struggles that parents of children with SEND VCB have daily. I feel more confident about using the recommended strategies and feel I have a better understanding of my child”
“A wonderful course that makes all the sense in the world and supports and enhances all of the books I have read on neurodiversity, behaviour and psychology in an attempt to help to support my boys. An amazing easy to follow resource which really is beginning to help in a way that no parenting course before this ever has…& I have done quite a few!”
“It´s a very well thought out course, packed with information and very easy going and a good pace for families with not much spare time!”
“This course has given me reassurance that I am not losing my mind. I am so glad I joined this course, and got to appreciate Yvonne’s kind, caring and reassuring videos…. and of course Malcolm’s too! I hope many more SEND VCB families get to take part in this course and benefit from it too-without it I may well have sunk without a trace. Thank you all so much.”
“I have really enjoyed being part of the course. You and your team have done such a fantastic, supportive and informative job. It has really helped us and i am very grateful. Things have improved and my son is now expressing his needs more which enables us to give him the support he needs instead of him not getting overwhelmed or becoming aggressive. I am so pleased i have been part of this project and hope that you can continue the invaluable work that you do to help other families as well.”
“The course has been everything I had hoped it would be. The practical skills and background information on SEND VCB have been very helpful but also easy to understand and very relatable to my circumstances. In the last 5 weeks we have only had one violent episode at home (we still get challenging behaviour, but not as much). The course has helped me to develop the skills to deal with the fallout from it at home. I think it would be immensely valuable to have an online course for professionals.”
About Yvonne Newbold MBE
- Yvonne is a Mother; and everything she does is from an “Expert-by-Experience” perspective
- Author of The Special Parent’s Handbook
- Multi-award winning writer, speaker and trainer
- Member of several national policy & strategy forums including –
- NHS Assembly Member
- NHSE&I Transforming Care Children and Young People’s Steering Group
- LeDeR Programme – National Independent Advisory Group
- NHSE&I Vaccination Equalities Team – Disabilities Task and Finish Group
- NHSE&I Health Inequalities Oversight Group
- NHSE&I Learning Disabilities and Autism Advisory Group
- NHSE&I Dynamic Support Systems Working Group
- NHSE&I Citizen’s Advisory Group
Everything Yvonne does is inspired by her son, Toby, who is now 27 years old and living in a residential care home for adults with a learning disability a few roads away from the family home on the Surrey/South London borders. He is at the heart of The SEND VCB Project, and Yvonne is immensely proud of how he has been able to move on from some very difficult years to the happy, outgoing and engaging young man he is today. Toby left home following Yvonne’s own health issues. She is living well with Stage 4 cancer and she has been on very successful on-going life-prolonging cancer treatment since 2012. The SEND VCB Project emerged from her bucket list and has gone from strength to strength ever since.
The Special Parent’s Handbook
Yvonne wanted to write the book that she wished someone had been able to give her when Toby was first diagnosed. She wanted to pass on everything she had learnt about SEND parenting, including chapters on education, long-term hospital admissions, how to get the very best out of the multi-disciplinary meetings so that your child’s needs have the best chance of being met, how to deal with the intrusion of so many professionals wanting to know about every aspect of your family life and how to ensure that all your children have the very best chance of a safe and happy childhood, making good memories to last a lifetime. It quickly became an Amazon #1 Bestseller, and is now read by as many professionals as parents. You can find out more about the book by following this link to the Amazon page, where you can also read the 40 Five star reviews https://amzn.to/2T4UiQo
Please get in touch via email – yvonne@sendvcb.com
©Yvonne Newbold 2019
Next Steps…..
Webinars, training, Facebook Support, resources to read or watch
Have you been to one of Yvonne’s webinars yet?
They cover a range of topics relating to behaviour issues in children with additional needs, and are packed full of insights and strategies that can help you to support a child in moving beyond their extreme behaviour patterns towards much happier and calmer times with a brighter and much more hopeful future to look forward to. Due to NHS England Funding, current webinars only cost £2.50 each, with free places for families in financial hardship. For more information please click this link – https://yvonnenewbold.com/webinars-workshops-courses-and-books/
FACEBOOK – Closed Support Group for Families – https://www.facebook.com/groups/421839288150939/
FACEBOOK – Closed Support Group for Professionals and staff who work with this group of children https://www.facebook.com/groups/2970473609629763/
FACEBOOK Public Page – for everyone https://www.facebook.com/TheSENDVCBProject/
Follow me on Twitter @YvonneNewbold
Read or watch more about how to help a SEND child with extreme behaviours https://yvonnenewbold.com/resources-on-send-vcb/
More Support
Yvonne runs a Facebook Page called The SEND Parent’s Handbook for parents of children with disabilities and the professionals who work with their families.
If you are a parent of a child who has SEND VCB, Yvonne also runs a closed Facebook Support group, which you would be welcome to join, called The SEND VCB Project – Support Group for Families
There is another Facebook Page called The SEND VCB Project – Public Page which is for anyone to find out more about this and closely related issues, and it’s open to everyone
If you’d like to buy a copy of “The Special Parent’s Handbook”, which is the book I wish someone had been able to give me on the day Toby was born. It’s got virtually everything I’ve learnt since about Additional Needs Parenting so that SEND parents don’t have to go it totally alone.
Here’s the link to order yours
Alternatively you can order it from Amazon – here’s the link to the page
Yvonne is a member of the Amazon Affiliates Program which means that if you click on an Amazon link from this website and subsequently make a purchase, she will be paid a small commission.
December 2019
