Including everyone – SEN inclusion in church children’s and youth groups
A free training video to use with your children's or youth team to explore inclusion in church groups.
Within any church children’s or youth group, there will be at least one young person – and probably several – with additional needs. Whether severe or moderate, diagnosed or not, whether the needs affect their learning, behaviour or both, we want our groups to be a safe and welcoming space for every child to connect with the God who made them and loves them.
This is a 10-minute training video that you can use with your team to help them think through how to plan, prepare and deliver a session for their children or teenagers, which includes everyone. Presented by Becky Sedgwick, it is accompanied by handouts to help you and your volunteers as you discuss this issue.
There are many ways you could use this video:
- organise an in-person training event (perhaps over Sunday lunch after church, or one evening with pizza), show this video and use the questions on the handout to initiate discussion
- gather your team over Zoom, show the video and discuss
- send the video link to your team via WhatsApp or similar, ask for their thoughts
- send the video link out, then meet up (either in person or over Zoom) to hear people’s thoughts
Watch here:
Download handouts:
- Leader’s guide – to help you as you prepare your training event based on this video
- Handout for team – to print off for your team members
- Overview for leaders – some additional information and links which may be useful, especially if this topic is new to you
You might also be interested in:
- Inclusion in practice: not always what you think!
- Three truths you need to know if you have kids with additional needs
We have also produced the following additional needs FAQs for each of the Parenting for Faith Key Tools: