SEND Masterclasses

Joan Adams – Head of Service (Access to Education) Birmingham City Council and Real Training & ESF Apprenticeships tutor

Joan has over thirty years’ experience working in education and supporting special educational needs.

She is currently Head of Service (Access to Education) at Birmingham City Council, and is also Operational Lead for its SEN Assessment Review Service, leading an overall team of forty staff. Prior to this, as Area Lead, Joan led a team of specialist teachers who provided a high quality cognition and learning support service to nearly 200 mainstream schools, running termly SENCO Network meetings across the City.

Joan co-designed and now tutors on our Advanced SEND Leader programme. She is also a tutor on Real Training’s NASENCO and Cognition and Learning postgraduate courses. She has nearly a decade’s worth of school-based experience in various teaching and SENCO roles. Joan holds an MA in Special Educational Needs and Inclusion from The University of Wolverhampton.

Rob Jenkins – Co-Founder The Dyscalculia Network and Real Training & ESF Apprenticeships tutor

Rob is the co-founder of The Dyscalculia Network. The Dyscalculia Network provides training and advice for teachers and parents of pupils who have maths difficulties. He has over 15 years of experience teaching young people with special needs. Over the past ten years, he has focused specifically on helping children struggling with Maths working in both independent and state schools.

Rob is a member of The British Psychological Society, as a Certified Educational Assessor (including Access Arrangements). He holds an OCR Level 5 Diploma in Teaching Learners with Specific Learning Difficulties (Distinction) from Helen Arkell and is co-author of The Maths Difficulties and Dyscalculia Assessment, designed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an individual to help formulate a teaching intervention plan.

In December 2023, Rob was voted onto the Crested Council to represent issues about Dyscalculia and Maths Difficulties throughout specialist schools in this country.

Sarah Norris – Educational Psychologist and Mental Health Programme Lead at Real Training

Sarah joined Real Group as a senior educational psychologist, having had over 13 years’ experience working within a local authority. She has worked extensively with schools and young people with a range of SEN needs and across all age ranges.

Sarah’s specialism is in the field of mental health and young people with social and emotional needs. She has a diploma in solution-focused practice, has worked therapeutically supporting young people, and developed, delivered and managed an early intervention-based approach with a mental health service in her previous local authority role. Sarah is deeply interested in the wellbeing of young people and what educational practitioners can do to help and support them.

In her current role as Mental Health Programme Lead at Real Group, Sarah has responsibility for developing training courses across Real Training. She also continues to work in schools in south west London providing educational psychology services to mainstream and specialist provisions.

Dr Hélène Cohen – Lecturer, Educational Consultant, ESF Apprenticeships and Real Training Tutor

Dr Hélène Cohen is a professional, dedicated and enthusiastic teacher and leader within education. She has nearly 40 years of teaching experience across all age ranges, from nursery to post graduate, and has been a SENCO, a Senior Leader in a range of settings: state mainstream, MLD, dyslexia provision, independent sector.

Hélène has been providing INSETs for over 30 years, with a focus on SEND, but also covering areas including leadership, thinking and learning skills, formative assessment, and a range of aspects of communication skills essential within teaching. Hélène is currently a tutor for the NASENCO and iSENCO Masters awards and a range of Level 7 Senior Leader apprenticeships with a SEND and advanced SEND focus, as well as being a sessional lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church university.

A genuine passion for helping people learn, whatever their barriers may be, has helped Hélène to develop a range of strategies that support everyone in the classroom, pupils and teachers alike. Hélène’s chapter included in “Selective Mutism, in our own words” by Carl Sutton & Cheryl Forrester, details how she supported a girl with Selective Mutism over a number of years. Hélène also produced the internationally used IWB materials for the Sounds-Write phonics programme.

Dr Kathy Jones – Specialist Educational and Coaching Psychologist

Kathy is a Specialist Educational and Coaching Psychologist who set up Goodlife Psychology Ltd., a psychology and coaching consultancy based in Hampshire, in 2021. She has practiced in the field of educational psychology since 2001, and prior to this worked as a teacher in Southwest London. She has worked for several local authorities on the South Coast of England and with both Southampton and Winchester Universities, tutoring and facilitating learning for trainee EPs and school Special Educational Needs Coordinators.

She has also implemented national projects within local authorities, including the National Programme for Specialist Leaders of Behaviour and Attendance.

As an Educational Psychologist, Kathy has worked for many years with a variety of children, young people, educators and parents, helping them to use sound psychological models and evidence-based practices to improve their professional practice and/or lived experiences. Kathy has developed a specialism in mental-health and wellbeing which she brings to her consultation, coaching and supervision work.

Dr Joanna Wood – Senior Educational Psychologist and Real Training module leader

Dr Joanna Wood is a Senior Educational Psychologist at Real Training and leads a team of educational psychologists at our sister company, Real Psychology.

She is also a module leader on our Senior Mental Health Lead Advanced Award. Prior to becoming an Educational Psychologist, Joanna spent fifteen years teaching in London secondary schools, including as Head of Science in a PRU.

Her particular areas of interest include adolescence, school exclusion, mental health and staff supervision. She has published widely including articles in a Wellbeing Toolkit for Teens, (produced by Nurture UK). She is also an Accredited Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) practitioner, and an Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) trainer and supervisor.

Dr Sue Sheppard – Educational Psychologist and Real Training module leader

Dr Sue Sheppard is a senior educational psychologist with over 30 years of experience in autism. She has been a consultant to the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism (part of the National Autistic Society) since 1996 and was a close colleague of the late autism research pioneer, Dr Lorna Wing. She is embedded in the DISCO diagnostic training team which is nationally and internationally recognised.

Sue has worked as a specialist Educational Psychologist for numerous London boroughs and has been instrumental in setting up provision for children with ASD across early years, primary and secondary. She continues to work in schools and with families and undertakes specialist psychological assessments of autistic children and young people. A key focus of her current work is the well-being of autistic girls.

Sue is Real Group’s specialist EP for autism and module leader for Real Training’s postgraduate courses in autism. She has also been a specialist speaker in autism at University College London.

Sue is also chairing the Expert Reference Group for the Whole School SEND units on Autism and is the lead content writer for the project.