Bon O’Hara
(they/them)
Bon is a proudly neurodivergent home-educating parent, trained primary teacher, experienced Youth Worker, Community Building trainer and facilitator, and Level 3 Forest School Practitioner.
Bon has been working with children and young people since they qualified as a swimming teacher aged 16. After completing a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing in 2005 they trained as a primary school teacher in East Sussex. However, after completing the training, they realised that mainstream whole-class teaching wasn’t how they wanted to work with young people.
From 2007 to 2009 they worked in a Pupil Referral Unit using a therapeutic approach to working with children with complex emotional and behavioural needs. After having their eldest child in 2009 they worked between a mainstream and special school supporting children on dual placements specialising in autism, hearing loss and speech differences.
After having their second child in 2011 they trained as a level 3 Forest School Practitioner. For 4 years they were the Education Ranger at Brokerswood Country Park in Wiltshire. They ran bespoke experiences for groups of up to 200 school children based on the National Curriculum; worked with children’s centres to provide parenting classes for vulnerable families and ran the Brokerswood Fox Walkers - a regular group and camp for home educating families.
Bon returned to a mainstream primary setting to support children with extremely complex needs, including ADHD, Autism, PDA, developmental differences and physical support needs. They qualified as a Thrive practitioner and specialised in trauma recovery and healing.
From 2018 to 2020, Bon worked as the Lead Youth Worker for Gendered Intelligence’s Bristol youth group, supporting transgender and gender non-conforming young people. This involved regular youth groups, in person and online support and leading trips, overnight visits and week-long camps. During this time they were also a mentor at a non-hierarchical community for children, focusing on consent and needs based communication. They also became a facilitator for the founding group of Transcend festival, creating a bespoke program to support them to build their community and devise their policies and create their own processes for conflict resolution and safeguarding.
Bon offers group events for children and young people, workshops and discussions groups for adults and individual parent/carer consultations.