Making Residentials Truly Inclusive: Supporting Children with SEND in Outdoor Learning with Nicholas Hands

Too many children with SEND are missing out on school residential trips every year - and it needs to change.
Nicholas Hands, CEO of Boundless Outdoors, joins Dale to discuss how we can make residentials and outdoor learning truly inclusive for every child.
Together, they explore why so many children with SEND are excluded from residential trips - often not through deliberate decision, but through assumptions, poor planning, and a culture of saying no without even asking the question. Nicholas is refreshingly clear: the activity adaptation is almost always the easy part. It's the funding, the staffing ratios, and the paperwork that create the real barriers.
They also discuss the transformative power of the outdoor environment itself - why it acts as a leveller, why children who struggle in the classroom often thrive outside it, and why the child nobody notices suddenly gets to shine when everyone is facing the same challenge together.
"You can remember the school trip you went on. You can't remember second period French."
Nicholas Hands

About Nicholas Hands Nick Hands is the CEO of Boundless Outdoors, an outdoor education centre in Malvern dedicated to making the great outdoors accessible to all. With a background in adventure and expeditions — including kayaking some of the hardest whitewater rivers in the world and climbing 20,000ft peaks in Nepal — Nick is a firm believer that anything is possible outdoors.
In 2013, Nick fronted a bid to take on the Malvern Outdoor Centre and turn it around. Over the years, he and his team have transformed it from a loss-making operation into a thriving centre turning over £1.6m, accommodating more than 10,000 children a year. A central focus has been modernising provision to make it as inclusive as possible — most recently through a new £1m purpose-built dining and catering facility.
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The SENDcast is powered by B Squared We have been involved with Special Educational Needs for over 25 years, helping show the small steps of progress pupils with SEND make. B Squared has worked with thousands of schools, we understand the challenges professionals working in SEND face. We wanted a way to support these hardworking professionals - which is why we launched The SENDcast! Find out more about how B Squared can help improve assessment for pupils with SEND in your school.