Education services are developing behaviour and anti-bullying policies, more joined-up practice around special needs, and improved citizenship curricula but these have yet to make disfigurement a familiar issue that teachers and schools know how to deal with. Changing Faces regularly receives reports from parents and teachers indicating that the education system is not alert or trained to deal problems arising from appearance differences, often preferring to ignore or make light of them.

We currently employ a School Specialist who works one-to-one with children and young people with disfigurements who are experiencing difficulties at school. We now want to fund a Training Adviser who will take forward the lessons learned from this work, developing resources and providing training to tackle whole-school issues. We also seek to appoint a Policy Adviser who will advocate, at local, regional and national level for inclusive curricula and policies that foster ‘face equality’.