During my first year of teaching back in 1998, I very quickly realised that my passion was to work with those children who needed a ‘little extra something’, some additional support along the way. By my second year of teaching, I was fortunate enough to be promoted to the SENCO role and have never looked back.
After 8 years working as a SENCO, I gained a job within the Local Authority Specialist Teaching Team where I remained for 13 years. I trained initially as a teacher of dyslexia, then a dyslexia assessor and went on to complete my Masters degree in Autism.
I finally reached a point in my career where I no longer wanted to be told what to do or how to do it. I needed to be free of a system which didn’t allow me to do things ‘my way’! This has led me to setting up my own independent consultancy – ACE SEN.

Children with special needs have a beauty within them that has never ceased to amaze me, the small steps they take and the sense of satisfaction of working with these children is incredible.
The reason I chose ACE was simple. After many failed attempts at designing my own logo, a dear friend suggested I really dig deep and think about what my passion truly was in terms of special children. I brainstormed ‘words’ connected to my beliefs and picked the 3 most significant – hence the concept of ‘ACE’ was born.
Acceptance (of everyone)
Celebrate (celebration of difference)
Embrace (embracing difference – we can’t fix it, why would we want to?)
My logo is a representation of one of my favourite sayings ‘square peg in a round hole’. An expression which neatly describes the individuals who do not fit into our ‘neuro-typical’ ways of doing things.
So many children I work with are not suited to our education system. Our curriculum in this country is so restrictive, narrowly focused, and does not meet the needs of so many. It can be heart breaking when these individuals are so massively talented but yet fail to thrive and flourish.
