Haley Graham

And I think it's really important we help them to feel that they have the skills, the tools to feel confident to help their children. And yeah, I mean, I think certainly as a therapist in sort of my own private practice, I'm able to sort of help parents think about autism and also think about ways of helping their children. But there's nothing... What's the word? There's nothing complex about it.

Maybe that's not quite the right word. You know, it's not rocket science, then, what I'm suggesting. It's still things like just being curious, you know, being curious about their experience, what's going on for them.

I think that sort of curiosity is so important because I think for me personally, and I think I can say, you know, for my family, what I see in the people that I work with, whether they're adults or kids, you know, is this sort of negation of experience. We're told it can't be that way. It can't be like that.

So actually, for somebody to be curious about your experience and be open and accepting and empathic about that experience, you know, it can be absolutely life changing. That then helps to support the mental health, the mental health difficulties that arise as a result of autism.

From where I stand, you know, autism in itself is not a problem. It's fitting into society that makes it a problem. And mental health problems result from that. So actually, we're helping these children with their mental health.

Well, I've written one. I've written two, but the second one hasn't been published yet.

The first one is about mental health. So it uses stories about woodland animals to explore trauma, anxiety, OCD, loss, shame, attachment. The idea is that it helps educate, but helps sort of improve understanding. And I think through understanding, then we find compassion and empathy. Also to help big people, adults have compassion.

conversations with children and young people, because that's so important. Being able to talk about our mental health is so important.

One of the sort of favorite stories, it seems, is one called Shadow Monster. And the analogy there is they don't have names. They're just the names of the animals. So there's a mouse and a badger. The mouse has a monster in the cellar.

and the monster is obviously a metaphor for anxiety I mean it's really exploring OCD actually you know it's more than anxiety but I know that sort of people working with kids have used it to explore anxiety and I've done some sort of great work with it so you know they're sort of full of those sorts of

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it started off in 2019, basically with me providing pro bono work two days a week to local schools. And now today we're sort of a team of 20 people. We've got 12 therapists working and providing support to 90 families a week. So that's sort of one-to-one specialists, psychotherapeutic support for children, young people and their parents.

metaphors and in the story the journey of the mouse is actually having to face the fear so he has to look the monster in the face and when he looks the monster in the face you can finally see that actually it's not a monster at all it's actually a load of brambles that are sort of down in the cellar that have grown through a small window but he has he has to face it first and he has to attack it and he has to be very brave then it just disappears

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've had some great feedback from parents, but I'm also from teachers, you know, working in pastoral roles or in send roles within schools, doing that work as well. And therapists, some of my own, I say that my own therapists that don't belong to me, but the therapists that I have working for the charity, they use them too, which is just wonderful.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that the distance, you know, having that degree of separation, making it about animals and sort of having those metaphors really can help us to engage with something that otherwise could be too scary, too scary to look at.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hope so.

Okay, so the second book is based on a series of interviews I did with late identified autistics. In those interviews, they told me their stories. And out of all the interviews, themes arose related to autism. And the themes that arose were loneliness, masking, vulnerability to abuse, sensory sensitivities, and persistent drive for autonomy, PDA, whatever people want to call it.

So actually, what I've done is I've used a similar sort of idea. So I've written five stories individually.

interwoven into a sixth and their stories set in a fantasy world aimed at teens uh the fantasy world is called galateria um the stories are very much inspired by the lives of the people that i interviewed and they very much explore the themes that came out of those interviews and it's sort of i suppose the idea is that when people read it they might see themselves in it or you know they might gain

a better understanding of what the felt experience is of being autistic.

October, I'm hoping.

They can Google me. I think I'm probably on quite a few websites, but they can find me on LinkedIn particularly or Instagram. So you could look at our websites, Bounce Brighter Futures. So just search that.

Yeah, Hayley Graham, author, Hayley Graham, author.

Oh, okay. So I'm going to say what I'm trying to do is trying to encourage people to think. I think the world would be a better place if we were all more thoughtful. And if we are more thoughtful and consider other people's experiences and have empathy and compassion, yeah, I think that's what I'm aiming for, is to help people just think and be more thoughtful.

Yeah. I mean, it's sort of distilling it down, I suppose. But I sort of think that, you know, it's easy, isn't it, just to say this is right, this is wrong, you know, take a side. But it's about taking some time to think and be more thoughtful.

I am very grateful for the offer to come along.

You know, we also provide some support to sort of teachers in schools and that sort of thing as well.

In running the charity, the biggest challenge, 100%, is money. It's funding. It's such a hand-to-mouth existence. You know, you're in a position where you've only got three months' money. And you're sort of building sandcastles in the air. So, you know, it's because you're sort of trying to sort of plan and grow and think about the future.

And at the same time, you know, if the money doesn't come through, you're going to have to fold. And that's what it's like. I mean, it's such a hand-to-mouth existence. And it's not getting any easier, you know, getting harder to get money.

So our sort of clients, if you like, our service users, I mean, we provide mental health support. And we were having a conversation the other day as sort of a small, you know, just small group of us in the team. And I would say... Probably 50% of the children and young people that come through our door either have a diagnosis of autism or are on the pathway or, you know, have a diagnosis of ADHD.

So it's a very, very high proportion of the children and young people that we work with are neurodivergent.

Gosh. Yeah, it's a big question. I mean, it's very wide ranging. I would say, and I think it's probably reflected everywhere, that the complexity of what we're seeing is increasing. So, you know, we don't get a lot of kids now just presenting with sort of maybe a little anxiety. There's a lot of trauma there.

So we're seeing a lot of complex problems within the kids that are neurodivergent, presenting often with difficulties with school attendance. So we're getting a lot of that as well at the moment. A lot of kids who are just really struggling with school.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I suppose it's across the board. I think bullying definitely is part of the picture, often online. I would say, and I guess people might disagree with me, But I would say that bullying is probably secondary. I would say that kids feel like they don't necessarily belong. But I think that they really struggle with the system.

And I think it's more about the whole school environment than bullying. simply being bullied by other kids i mean that that's sort of that's my feeling i think it's a whole system thing and a sense of of not belonging in that system and not being able to find a place within it particularly you know spaces where they can feel safe i suppose you know they're very intense environments

Well, I mean, I suppose at the moment, mainly what we're doing is we're providing support for teachers because it's a difficult job for them. You know, they're now having to deal with a lot of children who are struggling and They're sort of trying to provide mental health support when actually what they want to be doing is they want to be teaching. They want to be educating.

And, you know, they're seeing a lot of stuff. They're hearing a lot of stuff. So they need support. And actually what we're often doing is we're often supporting them to think about children and to think about what the needs of that child might be, but also to support them so they can go back to class and support that child. Because it's a difficult job.

You've got 30 kids in a class, and you've got five, six kids in that class who are struggling in some way or another. It's a difficult job.

Yeah. Okay. I think that's really tricky. I think that it's, again, we have these conversations. We talk about these things. I think it depends on the motivation of the child or the young person. And I think if they really want to be in school, then you can help them. You can give them strategies if they're highly motivated. You know, to help them sort of manage their anxiety, for example.

You know, we can do that. We can sort of go through relaxation techniques. We can go through grounding techniques. We can help them think about situations that arise and how they might frame those situations and think about them in different ways. But I think it really depends on the motivation of the child. And I think that we also need to be careful.

And I suppose the conversation that we were having the other day is something around, as therapists, we have to be really careful that what we're not doing is we're not just saying to kids that are autistic or ADHD, you know, this is how to mask better. Or if we are, we need to be really clear. That's what we're saying.

We're saying to them, if this is what you want to do, you know, you can try this. But we need to be really careful that we're not suggesting that their way of being in the world is wrong.

Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And, you know, that masking and we hear this so often, you know, we hear of kids that sort of managing in school. And actually, when we talk to the schools, they say, no, we're not having a problem here. And the kids are going home at the end of the day, and they're just going into complete meltdown.

And, you know, because it's been so difficult all day that they've been masking. And so I think, yeah, absolutely. You know, if they're doing that and then they're getting burned out and their mental health is suffering, we do need to be careful. And I think it's something we need to think about as therapists, really, and how we manage that.

Oh, yeah, that's our Bounce magazine. Have you come across that? Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's our inaugural magazine. Yeah, the Bounce magazine. So, yeah, Bounce Brighter Future is a charity.

I would say in terms of my LinkedIn, if you like, my social media presence is very much for me about sharing lived experience and hoping that that might help people by hearing about my experiences. They might feel less alone, more understood. So I think very much my social media presence, largely speaking for me, is about that.

So I started out my career as a pharmacist. So I graduated from university as a pharmacist. It was back, I guess, in, would have been about 2005, something like that. I have two sons and my youngest at that time would have been seven. And he was really struggling. He was really struggling with school. We could not get him to go. He was very unhappy.

You know, he would be hanging onto the door frames in the morning and we would be sort of peeling his fingers on the door frames and carrying him, you know, to the car, putting him in the car and then sort of taking him to school and trying to get him out the other side. I mean, it was, it was, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. And we had absolutely no idea what was going on.

You know, I looked. I looked for help. I tried to get help. I sort of went to the GP and, you know, see if I could sort of get a referral to CAMHS, which is, you know... statutory service over here CAMHS and you know they were interested to be perfectly honest and you know I was looking for private help and I couldn't I just couldn't find any help and we couldn't make any sense of it.

Ah, it's my pleasure. Yeah, I feel really honored.

Ultimately, we decided to withdraw him from school because I could see, I mean, anybody could have seen it. I mean, my son became very anxious, very withdrawn, quite low, I would say. And we took him out of school. There was just no, nothing else to do. I mean, there was no other answer. And I gave up work to home educate him.

And it was at that point, really, I thought, OK, I just need to try and make sense of this. So I started doing a relatively local psychotherapy training, but that was an adult training. And that was over a period of four years. And then I did that. And at the end of it, then I decided to go on and do a child training.

And that was driven entirely by my need, my desire to sort of make sense of things and also to help ourselves as a family.

I'm a therapist, so I trained first as an adult psychotherapist, and then I went on to train as a child psychotherapist. In 2019, January 2019, I founded a mental health charity for children here in Devon. Also, I write books. I post stuff on LinkedIn about autism and consider myself sort of to some extent on a very sort of low level to be sort of an advocate for autistic people.

So, I mean, we just sort of carried on the best we could. My son then, as an adult, he's now 27, decided that he would put himself forward for an ADHD diagnosis, which he has now. I think he would self-identify as autistic too. And I think that was, you know, that's been the change for us really, I guess.

And particularly, you know, the change for me is looking back at all those years and all my life really for myself personally and how much sense that has made our life together as a family. And I guess is the reason why I put these things out there because I know how much difference that made to me to have that understanding and has made to us as a family to have that understanding.

Yeah, so I did my first training, as I said, quite locally. And then I did another four-year training, sort of going up and down to London and did a child psychotherapy training in that. I suppose I had a desire to do something to help.

I think when I hadn't been able to get any help when my son was young, I'd sort of made that decision then that one day I wanted to try and set up a charity that would provide support for those parents that were struggling to find help.

And even though there's more understanding out there now, help is still very hard to come by because thresholds for statutory services are very high and, you know, private therapy is very expensive. So there's a huge number of people that just don't know where to go. Their children are struggling and they don't know where to go for help.

I hope so. Yeah. I mean, I feel that we were making up as we went along for so long. And I suppose in my experience, the things that work for autistic kids works for a lot of kids. So, you know, it's I think that we have to, I guess, help parents be more confident. I think the parents are worried they're not doing the right thing.