Windsor Academy Trust receives an award from the Sheila Coates Foundation Rapid Response Fund
23rd November 2022
Windsor Academy Trust has been awarded £5,000 from the Sheila Coates Foundation ‘Rapid Response Fund’ to help support autistic young people in mainstream education.
Designed to enable quick, responsive solutions for autistic students, the Sheila Coates Foundation offers small awards to secondary schools and colleges in the West Midlands, the North East, North Yorkshire and West Yorkshire through its Rapid Response Fund.
Funding can be used in three key areas:
- Mental health and wellbeing
- Increasing autism knowledge and expertise in schools and colleges
- Enhanced access to specialists for assessment, advice and interventions
The grant received by Windsor Academy Trust is the highest amount awarded and will be used for a short-term solution which can be put in place immediately.
Dr Dan Owen, Director of Secondary for Windsor Academy Trust, commented: “We’re delighted to receive a grant from the Rapid Response Fund. We will use the funding to create a digital resource to capture and share the lived experiences of autistic pupils and their parents’ relationship with school. Our aim is to work with autistic pupils already in our school and their parents, alongside those autistic pupils who left us recently and their parents, to create compelling video content about what helped them succeed, what didn't and how we can work together to foster better understanding between school and home, and make sure that autistic pupils can thrive. We think we are good at this - but we want to be even better.”
The funding received is from the Foundation’s fifth round of grants. In 2021 and 2022, four rapid response rounds helped over 6,000 autistic students in 186 schools and colleges to overcome the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.
For further information about the Sheila Coates Foundation, visit https://www.sheilacoates.foundation/