About Mark Arnold:

Mark Arnold is the Additional Needs Ministry Director at leading national Christian children’s and youth organisation Urban Saints and is Co-Founder of the Additional Needs Alliance, a vibrant and fast-growing online community. He is an enthusiastic national and international advocate for children and young people with additional (special) needs or disabilities and is passionate about enabling everyone engaging with them to be inspired, trained and well resourced.

Mark is a Churches for All and a Living Fully Network partner, a member of the Council for Disabled Children and the European Disability Network, and writes a monthly additional needs column for Premier Youth and Children’s Work (YCW) magazine. He blogs as the national award winning ‘The Additional Needs Blogfather’, and is father to James who is Autistic and has associated Learning Difficulties and Epilepsy.

To find out more about how Mark and his work can help you, contact him at: marnold@urbansaints.org or @Mark_J_Arnold

Testimonials regarding the 'All Inclusive?' programme:

“You’ve done some amazing work… You do some brilliant training, I’ve been to it, I highly recommend other people to look that up.” Martin Saunders, Director of Innovation and Deputy CEO, Youthscape

“Thank you for the training session this evening. I think it worked really well and was definitely a good substitute for us not being able to be together properly. It was actually really good to see some lovely faces during this lockdown period too. So thank you :)"

"It was really good to receive the online videos and workbook information well in advance of the Zoom meeting. I found that really helpful as it can be tricky fitting everything in at the moment with children being home too. The breakout session during the meeting was a good idea as it gave us the opportunity to chat a bit more freely, so thank you.” Re: ‘All Inclusive?’

“This is a huge thank you for last Saturday's zoom training and all the materials you sent prior to it. As a mainstream large infant school SENCO, I've been finding it surprisingly tricky to adapt what happens in school to our kids church...mostly because I've not thought about implementing as much of the strategy as I should/could have. For example, I use the exact same one page profiles you showed us at school, but embarrassed to say I've never used them in church. So I found it so useful to think practically about the tools I know I'm already fortunate enough to know something about and using them in a church context.

Lots of food for thought for me to share with our team, especially around interest groups vs age groups. Once we can eventually get back in our building for kids church that is! Thanks again. Your passion for and knowledge about inclusion around additional needs shines through and is truly inspirational. You've inspired me!”

“Thank you so much for this morning, that was so incredibly valuable. I really appreciated the way you referred to siblings who are so often forgotten. The meerkat/lions analogy is brilliant, I’ve got a feeling I’m never going to forget that. Also, the focus on the people who are not yet part of our community but need somewhere they can belong. Annnd finally, the need to make sure that we include God - oh yeah! I feel convicted 😄! Thank you so very much for your work.”

'All Inclusive?' - Supporting Children & Young People With Additional Needs