Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support

The school should keep you informed and include you in all discussions and decisions, taking your and your child’s feelings and wishes into consideration. If your child does not make enough progress, the teacher or the SENCO should then talk to you about asking for advice from outside professionals. The Code says that a school can ask for this advice at any point but should always involve a specialist where a pupil continues to work at levels substantially below others in their class or make little or no progress despite receiving appropriate support delivered by appropriately trained staff. It also says that when your child is identified has having SEN, the school should take action to remove barriers to learning and put effective SEP in place. Outside professionals may include but are not limited to the following;

An Educational Psychologist (EP)
They work within LAs, in partnership with families, and other professionals, to help children and young people achieve their full potential. EPs support schools and the LA to improve all children’s experiences of learning. They use their training in psychology and knowledge of child development to assess difficulties children may be having with their learning. They provide advice and training on how schools might help children to learn and develop. They recommend methods, or develop strategies in partnership with schools, to help a child learn more effectively. Strategies may include teaching approaches, improvements to learning environments, advice on curriculum materials and behaviour support.

A Specialist Teacher (Outreach)
They are teachers from special schools who provide an outreach service to mainstream primary/secondary schools to support areas of inclusion for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Specialist teachers will provide an understanding of SEND, demonstrate effective strategies for staff to observe and learn, provide support and challenge in relation to improvement and outcomes for children with SEND, with a view to ensure early intervention, making an impact on pupil progress, and increase the school’s capacity for; inclusive practice for pupils with SEND, securing and demonstrating the progress of pupils with SEND through rigorous assessment, target setting and tracking.

A Speech and Language Therapist (SALT)
In this context, their role is to provide assessment, support and care for children who, for physical or psychological reasons, have difficulties with communication, or with eating, drinking and swallowing. The SALT will make recommendations to help your child to communicate with others. Your child’s difficulties in this area may include: mild, moderate or severe learning difficulties, physical disabilities, language delay, specific difficulties in producing sounds, hearing impairment, cleft lip and palate, stammering, autism/social interaction difficulties, dyslexia, voice disorders, selective mutism, mental health, developmental language disorder.

An Occupational Therapist (OT)
In this context, their role is to use assessment and intervention to develop, recover, or maintain a child’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities who, due to a disability, illness, trauma, or a long term condition, has difficulty with completing these. The OT will help you/school find ways to best support your child to continue with activities that are important to them, and to improve their care and quality of life. The OT may advise on: how to support your child to learn new ways to do things and approaches to take towards this, possibly the use of equipment or assistive technology, adapting the living or school environment, other strategies to meet your child’s needs.