Nicola has been qualified as a Social Worker for 20 years. Starting her career in Child Protection and then moving to adult Mental Health and then onto the Emergency duty team where she has remained for the past 13 years. Nicola also works for Swansea University and is the Co-director of the Approved Mental Health Professional Course. Nicola has recently completed ‘Understanding and Assessing the Protective Carer in the context of child sexual abuse’ training with Lucy Faithful.

Corrina has a background in family support specialising in neurodivergence and has worked with families for over 20 years. She is a qualified trainer and has been delivering and writing workshops and training for the past 15 years. She delivers the Cygnet Course locally and has been trained in various evidence-based parenting programmes. Corrina has also completed training in ADOS-2 administration and coding.

We started working together in 2019 when we combined our knowledge to complete a holistic parenting assessment which was in the court arena. Since then, we have worked together to produce reports for families who are either neurodivergent themselves or have neurodivergent children (or both) to ensure their views are heard.  We have both completed ParentAssess training to inform parenting assessments where appropriate.

Our first case in 2020 made Case Law https://www.bailii.org/cgibin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2020/B18.html

Our Aim is to:

• Make a difference for neurodivergent families by working with professionals to raise awareness of difference.
• To reduce the need for parents to have to go through legal proceedings by raising awareness and understanding of Neurodivergence within individuals and their families.
• Raise awareness of neurodivergence through training and consultancy to professionals, Local Authorities and solicitors and law firms and ultimately judges.

Our mission is to reduce the emotional costs to individuals and their families by ensuring professionals have a better understanding of difference and the need for assessments to be open and transparent and communication to be the same.