My name is Hester Richardson and I’m the programme lead for the Post-Graduate Diploma Mandatory Qualification/MA course in teaching children with multi-sensory impairment delivered by the University of Birmingham. Before that, I worked as a Senior Specialist teacher leading a peripatetic team of QTVIs and QTMSIs in Wales, supporting children with vision impairment and with multi-sensory impairments in mainstream and specialist settings as well as working with them and their families in the pre-school years. I’m passionate about the unique and amazing ways in which children with multi-sensory impairments can make sense of their world, and overcome some of the barriers that sensory loss presents for them – and even more passionate about sharing my knowledge about some of the ways that we as practitioners can help them to overcome these barriers. My particular interest is in supporting communication, and especially in promoting the kind of environments which support the early communication attempts of children who are deafblind from birth, but I’m also at the very beginning of a PhD in finding out how we can identify the unique needs of children with MSI early on in their journey through education, health and care provision. I’d be really happy to contribute to the SEND network. Are there particular topics or areas of interest in the field of multi-sensory impairment that practitioners would like to know more about? If it’s something I can contribute to, I’d be very happy to share my practice expertise, or the knowledge I’ve gained from wider reading, and through teaching others. Hester Richardson If you'd like to get in touch privately, please do email me: h.richardson.1@bham.ac.uk