A reflective, educational space exploring neurodiversity across health, special education, psychology, and SEN law frameworks
Café Brainwaves is a reflective educational space exploring neurodiversity across disciplines. It offers a place to pause, reflect, and make sense of complex experiences without pressure to have everything resolved or clearly defined.
The work presented here is shaped by my background as a medical doctor and special education practitioner, as well as my academic interests in neurodiversity and Preparing for Adulthood (PfA). It brings together clinical, psychosocial, educational, and legal perspectives, grounded in academic research and professional experience. This interdisciplinary approach enables Café Brainwaves to consider development not in isolation but within the wider contexts that shape children’s lives throughout childhood and into adulthood.
A central focus within my work is Preparing for Adulthood, particularly how young people’s genuine strengths, wishes, and aspirations can be thoughtfully recognised and aligned with meaningful learning experiences and future pathways. I am especially interested in how curriculum design, coordinated support, and coherent transitions can help connect education with community participation, wellbeing, and adult life. This includes supporting early, informed decision-making, ensuring learning is relevant to the real world, and creating pathways that reflect individual identity and long-term development. I value strong collaboration, working alongside families, practitioners, and organisations to support continuity and possibility across young people’s journey into adulthood.
Language plays a central role in this work. Café Brainwaves is committed to neuro-affirming and respectful communication, recognising that the words used across professional and everyday settings shape understanding, self-efficacy, and opportunity. Posts invite reflection on how behaviour is interpreted, how relationships are built, and how support can be offered with greater clarity and compassion, particularly during moments of uncertainty, fatigue, or doubt.
Café Brainwaves does not aim to provide definitive answers or position itself within debate or opposition. Instead, it offers considered reflections, evidence-informed insights, and carefully framed questions that explore individual, relational, and systemic dimensions of development, supporting understanding, coherence, and meaningful engagement.
Café Brainwaves 