Chichester University SEN LIBRARY PROJECT
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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.