2022 in review

This was the biggest year yet for the LEANS project, as many strands of work we began in 2020 and 2021 came to fruition. Our biggest news is that we finished and released the free LEANS resources in June, on this new dedicated website!

• 2,600 unique resource downloads from 51 countries in our first 6 months!
• 550+ views of our public launch event recording
• ~490 mailing list subscribers
• 25 talks and events to audiences including the NHS and the Department for Education—with 18 of these since September 1^st! (It’s been quite a semester)
• 6 online or magazine articles about LEANS
• 1 TV appearance on Channel 5 news!

Find our recorded talks and articles on our Media page

We were also very pleased to be featured as a suggested resource in The General Teaching Council for Scotland’s National Framework for Inclusion 3rd edition (NFI), which provides guidance for teachers on inclusion and inclusive practice.

National Framework for Inclusion - The General Teaching Council for Scotland (gtcs.org.uk)

This year’s other big piece of news is that we launched the LEANS Community (LEANS-C) impact project with our partner the Salvesen Mindroom Centre. This project is funded by the University of Edinburgh’s ESRC Impact Accelerator Grant scheme.

We’ve reached two big LEANS-C milestones in 2022:

1. Our free parent-carer introductory resources (a companion to LEANS) were released in November. In addition to info booklets for families and schools, there is a template letter to help you propose the LEANS programme. Get them here! https://www.mindroom.org/resources/leans-c/
2. We recruited and trained our first group of prospective LEANS Champions, who will form a new team of volunteer educator-experts able to help advise and support colleagues with LEANS. Stay tuned for this programme to officially launch early in 2023!

In 2022, we’ve made a huge push to spread the word about LEANS with talks, articles, and events. We want people to use LEANS—and they can’t do that if they don’t know about it. In 2023, we’ll be supporting a wider range of goals, including getting more LEANS reporting out there!  

There’s lots of exciting stuff already on the books for 2023, including….

Our LEANS Champions programme!

Conferences: Hear the latest about LEANS and our LEANS Community impact work at the National Autistic Society professionals conference, and the ITAKOM neurodiversity conference. We have a conferences page on the website, and add new events as they are confirmed.

LEANS and LEANS-C at conferences 2023

Translation: Our non-English translation policy and licensing agreement paperwork will be released in the first half of the year, for teams wishing to propose licensed translations of LEANS and work with us to produce them.

A huge thank you to all who have engaged with the resources so far, attended virtual and physical events, and read our articles. We would especially like to thank the early adopters who are already delivering LEANS in their schools now, or are preparing to do so in the spring.

At every stage, we have been amazed and humbled by the amount of interest in LEANS, and the amount of support and encouragement we’ve received. Together, we are all raising the profile of teaching and learning about neurodiversity in schools, and that’s really important.

We’re excited for the next steps, as we seek to build on everything accomplished so far. Thank you for sticking with us!