Description
Understanding and Supporting Capacity
A practical guide for adults supporting children and young people
Understanding and Supporting Capacity is a 129-page neuroaffirming resource for parents, therapists and educators supporting children and young people.
When a child can no longer manage things they could manage before, capacity is where I nearly always begin.
They might be struggling to attend school, leave the house, eat, sleep, communicate or take part in things they usually enjoy. They might need far more help, become overwhelmed more easily or seem to have lost access to skills they previously used.
Before focusing on each difficulty separately, this resource helps adults zoom out and explore what the child’s body, brain and nervous system are already managing, what has changed and whether everyday expectations still match the capacity they have available.
This guide explores:
- Why a child can manage something one day and be unable to manage it the next
- The difference between capacity and ability
- Baseline capacity and the capacity available right now
- Sensory experiences, executive functioning, communication and masking
- How reduced capacity can affect school, eating, sleep, toileting, speech and personal care
- Anxiety, intrusive thoughts, withdrawal and other changes adults might notice
- Practical ways to make activities more accessible
- Reducing how much a child is managing across their day or week
- Genuine opt-outs and exit plans
- Capacity, autonomy and PDA
- Overload, burnout and recovery
- School distress, participation and returning to education
- Parent, carer and wider family capacity
- Practical tools for adults and child-facing Capacity Bubble worksheets
This resource can help you:
- Make sense of why what a child can manage changes from day to day
- Recognise earlier signs that their capacity is reducing
- Look beyond the most visible difficulty and consider what might be contributing to it
- Work out which parts of an activity are using the most capacity
- Identify practical changes that could make school, relationships and everyday activities more accessible
- Support autonomy without leaving the child to manage everything alone
- Understand when rest might help and when the activity, expectation or environment needs to change
- Create support and exit plans that respond to the child before they become completely overwhelmed
Format: Digital PDF, 129 pages
Price: €26
Use and sharing
This resource is for the purchaser’s own personal or professional use. You may print and use individual pages with children and young people you directly support. Please don’t share, forward or upload the complete resource for others to use.
Schools, organisations and services wishing to use it across a wider team can contact me about an organisational licence.
