Co-creating a sensory audit tool with primary schools to review and tailor the physical environment to children’s sensory needs: reflections on the co-production process

Ensuring children’s optimal social and emotional development is essential to building the foundations of learning (1). Whether the school environment provides sensory stimulation that matches children’s needs in terms of intensity, frequency, and predictability is important to their mental health (2). This is particularly true for children identified as having special needs and/or specific diagnoses such as autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (3,4). Creating an optimal physical environment in UK schools is a complex task, which includes dimensions pertaining to air quality, lighting, acoustic and thermal comfort (5). In research, there is a need for more individualised evidence-based interventions tailored to children’s sensory needs, guided by measures collecting children’s voices (6) and evaluating their effectiveness (7–9). Building on the good practices and expertise already existing in schools, our project aims to co-create a sensory audit tool with primary schools to facilitate the collection of children’s views on their sensory needs and the physical environment. We will detail the first steps of organising a consultation with schools to co-design the most suitable methods to work towards the research aims. We illustrate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of such a transdisciplinary project (10). Two key Strengths are the potential to increase the impact of findings by understanding social and educational contexts early on inform psychological theories using pedagogical methods and concepts. Despite increased time and ethical commitments (Weaknesses), the project offers the opportunity for professional development, which is called in the clinical literature ‘Patient and Public Involvement’ (Opportunities). However, we will need to regularly check that we are aligned on our definition of success (Threat) in order to create outputs and spend our resources in the most strategic way possible.