It was great to see everyone at our Coffee and Cake with PPCV virtual meeting at 10:00 am on Wednesday 12th May. The meeting was chaired by Claire and we were joined by Helen and Emma from the NSPCC who talked to the groups about P.A.N.T.S. Below is a summary of the discussions.
P.A.N.T.S
The Together for Childhood program is an NSPCC initiated program that has a Plymouth base. The aim is to bring families and partners together to make communities safer for children. It uses a play-based approach to encourage healthy relationships for all children with a focus on children with SEND.
With the help of their friendly dinosaur Pantosaurus, Talk P.A.N.T.S is a simple conversation to help keep your child safe from sexual abuse. The NSPCC has created a number of resources for parents and professionals to share with children to support and encourage conversations around the subject. There are guides for parents, children with learning disabilities, autistic children and deaf children. The NSPCC is currently developing a guide using Makaton. A separate blog post will be created with links from the PPCV site to these resources on the NSPCC site.
During the meeting, a parent asked if there was a version of these guides available for older children/young adults. A link was recommended which explains the concept to 11 to 25-year-olds with learning disabilities. This will be added to the P.A.N.T.S blog post and the Children Young People page of the PPCV website.
Another parent asked if there was a version of P.A.N.T.S which could explain to an autistic child that P.A.N.T.S also applies to how you treat other people. For example, whilst your privates are private, so are other peoples. She felt that this needed to be explicitly spelt out to some autistic children to support social situations and avoid misunderstandings. It was understood by Helen that this is covered by schools as part of the RSE (Relationship and Sex Educations) but it was acknowledged that this may not be happening in schools as well as it should be, particularly with regards to children in mainstream schools with learning difficulties or autism.
Helen and Emma are keen to share the resources with parents and carers of children and young people with SEND for feedback. Katie will facilitate collecting feedback via social media.
Next Meeting
The next Coffee and Cake meeting will be held on Wednesday 26th May 2021. Everyone is welcome.
Helen and Emma will be coming back to join us on Wednesday 23rd June to discuss feedback from parents. As always, everyone is welcome to ask questions and to give feedback.
