Just pleasantly floundering around.....

Lockdown has certainly meant I have 1) been on a lot of local walks and 2) 'milked' my city as much as I could such that there are few corners of it that I haven't explored. This was a walk my main walking buddy and I did in a highly urban area. I made up the instructions unsure of whether they would work or not - but they worked well so I thought I would share the instructions to the 'out there'. You'll need to adapt a couple of bits - like the names for example. If anyone does it - I'd love to hear how it went! Random Walk Instructions ·       Walk straight unless told otherwise. ·       At T junctions toss coin head left tails right ·       At bends, follow bend round. ·       If you reach a dead-end, turn around and walk back and continue with the instructions. 1)      Walk forward. 2)      Take the first opportunity to turn rig...

  I just read an article about how rape prosecutions were in decline. So, the article went on to explain, there was a (long overdue) government review and fundamentally the outcome was that some targets were set for more prosecutions. No more funding, no more preventative or proactive measures put in place such as education, training or raising awareness, no more resourcing within the police to support rape victims. At best, this will bring the lack of rape prosecutions into focus for a while. It reminded me of a time when Accident and Emergency Departments were given the target of seeing anyone who walked in their door within the first ten minutes. I heard anecdotally that this resulted in someone being given the job of holding a clipboard and ‘booking in’ new arrivals within said ten minutes and then the patient had to wait the same amount as time as before. Totally ineffective, and what’s more, the ‘clipboard person’ was actually a resource removed from elsewhere. With no furt...

For many years now I have been reading absolutely everything I can get my hands on about emotional literacy/intelligence and resilience. It's not just because I write books for children about the stuff, it's also because for personal development as emotional literacy is pretty key to self-awareness, self regulation,  and generally finding life more manageable! I didn't have great role models in my childhood for emotional literacy and I suspect this triggered my perpetual search for answers. So recently, I decided to compose some videos aimed at - not the age I write for - but the age I have always taught: Key Stage 2 aged children (7-11) although I think some of the videos could be used with older children. My aim is to support parents, carers and teachers with helping their children develop emotional literacy. All of the videos can be found, described and added to each week here.  If it helps one person - I am happy!