Chichester University SEN LIBRARY PROJECT

SussexWorld

Transcript

00:00 So my name's Keely and the reason why I wanted to create the Send Library project is mostly

00:07 because from my previous experience on placements I really noticed the academic disadvantage

00:13 of those who are in those positions and sort of just the way that they inevitably fall

00:19 behind in like their performance. I just don't think it's fair on them and through research

00:24 that we've done as a group and through our degree in general we've sort of really found

00:29 out that there's really like not enough resources and books available for those children and

00:34 the demand is not meeting the supply at all.

00:39 So I'm Katie. I was kind of interested in it because I do a lot of work with children

00:44 with special needs so I've kind of seen like first, second hand how hard it is to get books

00:50 that are accessible. So there's a little boy that I work with who's completely blind but

00:56 he isn't able to access Braille books because they just aren't in the libraries. Like you

01:02 just can't get them and they're so expensive to get privately. So I think yeah just making

01:09 like that drew my attention to it and then just making it more accessible because I think

01:13 books is something that everyone should be able to access.

01:17 My name's Jessamyn. So I have a sibling who has a form of special educational needs and

01:23 I also work with children with disabilities. And so I'm a SEND specialist so through my

01:29 work with children with disabilities and in a special needs school I found that there

01:35 was not a lot of texts available so I was really passionate to try and get some more

01:40 of those in libraries.

01:42 So one in six children in England have a form of special needs so proportionally a sixth

01:49 of the percentage of books in libraries and available should be targeted to those children

01:54 with those difficulties. With the petition we're hoping to get it to 10,000 signatures

01:59 because that means we'll get a response from government and if we manage to get it to 100,000

02:04 then that could be debated in Parliament which would be really good to creating some legislation

02:08 or some guidance for that from the government to try and make it happen.

02:14 We met with Felicity Course at the West Sussex Library Service. So there are a few books

02:21 available in large print and braille. She did show us but they're more proportioned

02:26 in the larger libraries so it's a lot harder to find those in smaller local libraries.

02:34 There's not a huge amount. They do have quite a few graphic novels they showed us for children

02:47 who struggle to read more high text heavy books. But we found that with the sensory

02:56 stories and things you have to apply on the website to get that so it's not readily available

03:02 within the library and because there's not a huge amount of text you could be waiting

03:08 a while for one to become available back in the library to get it out again.

03:13 We're mainly looking at braille books and large print texts, books with coloured paper

03:18 for dyslexic children, books, so they're called high-low books, so they're high interest but

03:24 low intensity reads. So for children that are a bit older and they have higher older

03:31 wanting to read books about things that their peers are reading about but not being those

03:36 complicated chapter books, books with page fluffers and board books and things so that

03:43 can help children who have physical disabilities and they struggle to turn the pages.

03:48 Another thing we noticed there was more of a supply for older children and adults of

03:52 the supplies of books but there was barely any for like primary age children so that's

03:56 one thing that we really wanted to address and we really wanted to change that. And we

04:01 also started off this project back in September. We went to the West Sussex Library Bus Service

04:12 and we found that the supply for special educational needs children was so small and out of a whole

04:21 massive range of books there was a tiny, tiny section which was aimed towards them children

04:27 and we just thought this is unacceptable and that was something we wanted to begin with

04:32 addressing and then we just broadened that out to think actually we could change this

04:36 in the whole library service.

04:37 Not for the library's lack of wanting, so the libraries say themselves that they want

04:44 more texts in their libraries but they're just not available. The school library bus

04:49 service said that they would love to have a larger section, they showed us and it's

04:52 probably that big, the amount of braille and large print texts they have, but they said

04:57 they'd love to have more of them but they're just not being produced by the publishers.

05:03 They can only buy from a certain distributor as well because of their restrictions with

05:09 their contracts but we need to get more publishers to start producing these adapted texts.

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