Practical tips for leaders
Practical tips for leaders
- Pick your battles – where possible build choice and flexibility into your activities and programme.
- Provide adult support for any young person with PDA so they have someone to talk to if they feel anxious.
- Minimise rules of activities where safely possible. Explain any reasons why something can’t be done or why it needs to happen. Make sure you do this when the young person/adult is calm and not ‘in the moment’ as processing meaning and explanations can be difficult at these times.
- Consider anxiety management: reduce uncertainty, recognise underlying challenges and plan for these.
- Treat meltdowns as panic attacks, support throughout and move on. Avoid high levels of language and times of high emotion as the person will not be able to processing your meaning.
- Support sensory needs – see advice.
- Keep calm. Proactively collaborate & negotiate to solve challenges. If a person feels your decisions are ‘fair’ and they trust you in one activity it will make future instructions easier.
- Disguise and manage demands where possible – you could word & position requests indirectly e.g. wouldn’t it be nice if someone did the washing up? It’s so much fun putting away pens – you can even have a race to see who is quickest!
- Consider joint activities to make them seem like ‘fun’
- Try humour, distraction, novelty and roleplay to make demands more engaging for the person.
- Be flexible in your programme and always have a plan B.
- Switch up strategies: One strategy won’t always work and often typical strategies to support autistic young people will not work. Be flexible and try new ideas often – ask for help from your ACC Inclusion (or similar) if you are unsure!
- Use a formal body to give instructions - e.g. The Government says that we must... The Scout Association says. Sometimes, depersonalising a request and making it feel that the request is not just for them and is nothing you can control can help a person with PDA to follow it.
- What are your child’s strengths?
- What difficulties does your child have that you think we should know about?
- Has your child any sensory difficulties that may impact them at a Scouting event?
- How might your child’s diagnosis affect them within Scouting events?
- What helps you at home / school to support your child?
These questions can be completed as part of the parent-carer questionnaire and built into the young person’s Support Plan.
- Communicate instructions simply and make expectations and reasons clear. ‘I told you so’ is unlikely to work. Consider usual visual stories to support understanding.
- Embrace YouShape and make sure the young person has a key part in choosing their programme and in choosing activities to obtain their badge requirements.
- Allow flexibility in attendance, working and deadlines as these can all increase anxiety.
- Allow regular breaks throughout sessions, this might be a quite space away from others (identify this place with support of member) or perhaps a physical break such as a short walk or a game outside.
- Share program of activities prior to events happening – talk with parents about whether giving information in advance helps with anxiety and engagement or whether it gives too much time for the young person to worry – each person will be different.
- Work together so the young person feels like they have control over decision making and are not being ‘made’ to do something by an adult.
Don't forget...
The parent/carer framework is a great tool to use when exploring how to best support a young person with additional support needs.