A Hull-based charity is fighting to make schools more inclusive for children with Tourette’s.
TIC Yorkshire (Tourette’s-Syndrome Inclusion in the Community) supports people in Hull and Yorkshire who are affected by the commonly misunderstood condition.
Yasmin Bartle, 25, is a full-time volunteer at the charity and, as somebody with Tourette’s, she has first-hand experience of discrimination and feeling unwelcome in public spaces.
TIC is running an awareness campaign for Tourette’s Awareness Month from May 15 to June 15 and have been visiting schools in Hull, East Yorkshire, and even as far afield as Doncaster.
She said: “It brings a lot of anxiety if you are sat in a classroom ticcing and no-one understands it. We are seeing a lot of bullying, which is leading to high levels of anxiety and children being taken out of school. We saw that and thought, ‘We need to do something about it.'”
Yasmin says the charity’s aim is to make classrooms a safe place to “tic away in freely” without fear of judgement or bullying. The cause is close to her heart, having been misunderstood throughout much of her life.
She said: “I live with Tourette’s Syndrome and I was diagnosed as an adult, but I had tics my whole life. For a period of time when I was younger, I was having involuntary movements and didn’t know what they were.
“There are not many days that go by where you don’t get some sort of discrimination. Maybe not verbal or physical forms, but even the looks. It doesn’t have to be a bad tic day to have a lot of people looking at you in a way that makes you feel as if you’re not meant to be somewhere.”
Yasmin added: “I didn’t want any other child to feel like that. I accessed the charity for support, and then it quickly turned into volunteering and now I’m essentially a full-time volunteer and have written a book about Tourette’s which is part of our assembly.”
She added: “The whole part of our campaign is educating young people – we do a lot of school training and we often find that lots of teachers don’t have the training to talk about Tourette’s so we are bridging that gap.
“We go into neurodiversity a little bit too. We plan to train 5,000 young people and are set to surpass that. We also have other schools wanting to book in, so it could be even more than that.”
Yasmin said it is an uphill battle, but one the charity will not stop fighting. She said: “There is very minimal understanding of Tourette’s. We are in the position now where people have heard of Tourette’s, but they still don’t quite understand the complexities of it
“They may have a perception that it is one thing – which typically involves swearing. They don’t realise it is a spectrum and there are so many different aspects to Tourette’s syndrome and tics.
“We are struggling and battling quite a bit at the minute with children missing education. Whether it is low attendance or part-time timetables, or being pulled out of school altogether, because there is not enough understanding.”
There is a Just Giving page for TIC if people want to support their work in schools.
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