Breaking Boundaries
Our wider initiative works on the environments around neurodivergent people, so taking part is not limited to specialist settings.
Most of a neurodivergent person's life happens outside a therapy room. It happens at the gym, in the barber's chair, at a birthday party, at a reception desk, in a staff meeting. If those places are not set up for them, the progress made in sessions runs into a wall the moment they leave.
Breaking Boundaries is our answer to that. It works in two directions.
Training for the businesses and services people use every week: gyms, sports clubs, hairdressers and barbers, activity centres, clinics and cafes.
We cover what neurodivergence actually looks like at the counter, how to adjust an environment without rebuilding it, how to communicate clearly, and what to do when someone becomes distressed.
Workshops and training for organisations that want to understand neurodiversity and build workplaces people can actually work in.
We cover neurodiversity in hiring and management, inclusive communication, supporting neurodivergent employees, accessible environments, and inclusive customer service.
Most neurodiversity training fails for the same reason: it explains what a diagnosis is and stops there. Staff leave able to define autism and still with no idea what to do when a customer is overwhelmed at their till. We work the other way round, starting from the situations your people already meet and do not know how to handle.
A child lying on the floor of a shop is not necessarily having a tantrum. An adult who will not make eye contact is not being rude. A person who repeats a question is not being difficult. Staff who can read these moments correctly respond better, and they stop taking them personally.
Most of what makes an environment hard is cheap to change. Where the queue forms. Whether the music has to be that loud. Whether there is one chair away from the crowd. Whether the strip light above the counter flickers. We walk your space with you and work from what is actually there rather than handing over a generic checklist.
Shorter sentences. One instruction at a time. Saying what will happen before it happens. Allowing silence while someone processes rather than filling it with another question. These cost nothing and change how the interaction goes for everyone, not only for neurodivergent customers.
What to do, what not to do, when to give space and when to step in, and how to speak to the family with them. This is the part staff worry about most and the part they are least often taught.
Any place people go without an appointment. In practice we are usually asked by:
Inclusion is not just being in the room. It is being able to take part in what happens there.
Working only with the individual puts the entire burden of adapting on the person with the least power to change the situation. A child can be taught, patiently and over months, to tolerate a place that was never set up for them. Or the place can change a few things in an afternoon. Doing only the first is asking the person with the least room to manoeuvre to do all the work.
There is a straightforward business case as well, and we make it plainly. Families are loyal to the few places that get it right, because there are so few of them. Staff who know what to do are far less likely to freeze, escalate a situation, or dread the shift. And a person who has one good experience somewhere comes back, which is the entire point of the work our therapy teams do the rest of the week.
No, and most organisations who ask us do not know either way. Neurodivergence is not always disclosed and often is not visible, so the safer assumption is that you already serve neurodivergent people and have not been told.
Disability awareness usually concentrates on physical access: ramps, doorways, accessible bathrooms. Those matter and they are largely solved by the building. Neurodivergence is about what happens in the interaction itself, which is decided by your staff rather than by your architecture.
Small teams are often where this lands best, because everyone who deals with the public is in the room at once and the whole place changes together.
Yes. Seeing the actual space is most of the value, because the adjustments worth making are specific to your room, your queue and your lighting rather than to a slide.
No. Neurodivergent adults are the group most often missed, particularly in workplaces and in everyday services where nobody thinks to ask.
Start here
Tell us about your school, business or team and we will put together something that fits what you actually do, rather than a generic session.