About Yasmin Darling
I am
Yasmin Darling, Neurodivergence Consultant & Changemaker
- Enable, inform and empower the process of positive change for the greater good of neurodivergent and disabled people – be it personally, professionally or systemically
- Bridge the gap and create connection between people of different neurotypes
- Open the door for authentic and meaningful communication and enable the necessary paradigm shift to bring about mutual understanding, creating powerful, long-term benefits for all
- Enable support needs to be met in a way where everyone feels better and more empowered for the greater good
- Achieve powerful change through advocacy, speech, writing, consultancy, art, design, legal action, public speaking, media, storytelling, and creative and innovative endeavour
I have over 28 years’ successful experience working with children, families, young people, communities, and organisations to bring about positive and dynamic change for the greater good.
I am professionally, personally, and parentally neurodivergent. Triple threat! This complete immersion in neurodivergence and all that it brings is my daily life.
I grew up as an educationally undiagnosed neurodivergent child with an eclectic and, at times, traumatic experience of the school system. While at university, I was clinically diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia and then, much later, autism. I am currently on the ADHD diagnostic pathway. I have a deep understanding, compassion, passion, and knowledge base that I bring to my work.
I am a single mum to my wonderful neurodivergent child and, as a mother as well as a professional, I have years of direct experience navigating the Autism/ADHD NHS and private diagnostic pathway, sensory integration conditions, Tourette’s, speech and language assessment pathways, EHCP, SEND tribunals, school tribunals, the educational ombudsman and EOTAS process, the PDA (pathological demand avoidance profile of autism) pathway, co-occurring conditions (both mental and physical) and setting up and running home education.
I live and breathe the convoluted, difficult, often lonely and acutely stressful task of translating needs and curating a highly considered environment that is also fluid and responsive for my home educated child that is underpinned by my experiences as a registered ‘Ofsted outstanding’ and national award-winning childminder and educator.
I have created systemic change in national organisations, spoken publicly at parliamentary level and for member organisations, and delivered talks, training and workshops for national charities, schools and more. I have worked at management, director, and trustee level for many years for national and local organisations in the charity, private and public sectors.
My experiences are wide ranging, with a fundamental theme of observing, respecting, and advocating for rights. Some examples of my work are below:
- Worked in therapeutic children’s homes with young offenders
- Set up England’s first children’s rights service for ‘action for children’, creating the founding ideas for positive legislative change around gun and knife crime
- Set up a conference that enabled asylum-seeking children to address key leaders in the local authority through art, spoken word and song to create connection and unlock professional inertia that was negatively impacting their lives
- Worked with children and adults with disabilities
- Worked with people experiencing poverty, displacement and marginalisation
- Worked as a qualified children’s rights trainer, training local authorities
- Been an ambassador for Centrepoint, the youth homelessness charity
- Been featured in documentaries and short films
Key qualifications & achievements
- PGDIPMerit: Working with Children, Young People & Families: A Psychoanalytic Observational Approach, Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust.
- Founding and successful running for eight years of Maisie Poppins home childcare, nursery and preschool, resulting in several national and local awards and trail blazing children’s learning outside, apprenticeship schemes, nutrition, and a holistic whole-setting approach and, ultimately, the creation of ‘The early Years Ecosystem’ model and running the settings diligently through the Covid pandemic.
- BA Honours: English & Theatre Studies, London Metropolitan University.
- Qualified Educator – Level 3 Diploma in Early Years Education & Care.
- Accredited Forest School Leader – Level 3 Diploma in Forest School leadership.
- Qualified Baby Massage Instructor – Level 3 Diploma.
- Trained ‘Solihull Approach’ Parenting course facilitator.
- Brought together asylum-seeking children with previously unseen decision makers in the same space in the town hall to hear their experiences through poetry and spoken word.
- Created the first youth-led national strategy to understand and reduce gun, knife, and gang crime in the UK leading to statutory legislation change.
- First home childcare/childminding provision to launch a successful apprenticeship scheme and co-write the guidance with the local authority.
- Consultancy and training commissioned by London Borough of Hackney Education Trust and Outstanding Contribution Award.
- Training on PDA autism for schools in order to improve experiences for autistic children with PDA symptomology.
- Director of a large children’s charity where I was able to raise thousands of pounds and utilise it to oversee an adventure playground and graffiti project and intergenerational gangs resolution project in Central London.
- Ladder for London Award Winner.
- Speaker at Parliamentary Review.
- Hackney Apprentice Employer Quality Award.
- First early years provider in the UK to achieve ‘Food for Life’ Soil Association Award and quality mark. Soil Association baby food judge.
- First Early Years ‘Sugar Smart’ Ambassador Award (Hackney).
- National Newcomer Award (Early Years, nursery world).
- Set up and successfully managed England’s first children’s rights & participation service.
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