‘’Every teacher is a teacher of every child or young person, including those with SEN.’’
Information
The named people who are responsible for managing the provision for SEN at Emmaus are Mrs Webster and Miss Smithson. Miss Smithson is the main point of contact for SEN concerns.
Mrs Webster’s working days: Monday – Thursday (Assistant Headteacher and SENCO)
Miss Smithson’s working days: Monday – Friday (Monday – Wednesday as SENCO)
They can both be contacted via the school office on 0114 2766474
The named governor for SEN is Mrs Halliwell who can be contacted via the school office on the above number. The content of the SEN policy reflects the SEND code of Practice 0-25 (2014). It has been shared with the school governing body and will be reviewed regularly.
Definition of Special Educational Needs
What does SEND mean?
SEND means Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. Children have a special need if they have a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made. This will be if the child:
has significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the same age.
OR
has a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for children of school age within the local authority
Areas of need
In Sheffield, we have the Sheffield Support Grid. This is a guidance document for school staff and professionals. It allows schools to give support to learners with additional needs.
Communication and Interaction: this includes children with speech delays, impairments, disorders, speech sound difficulties. It also includes social communication including children who are diagnosed with Autism.
Cognition and Learning: this includes children who have features of general, moderate, severe or profound learning difficulties or specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia or dyspraxia.
Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH): This includes difficulties with emotional regulation, anxiety, ADHD, anorexia. Also, it includes children who could be withdrawn and isolated or disruptive and disturbing, hyperactive or lack of concentration.
Sensory or Physical needs: This includes children with sensory, multi-sensory, physical, medical difficulties. Also, it includes children with visual impairment or hearing impairment.
Identification & referrals
Children are identified through teacher observations and assessments. Teachers speak with the SENCo about areas where a child has difficulties. Teachers are given time to observe and support the child in different ways then feedback to the SENCO. At this point, teachers arrange a meeting with the parent to discuss concerns, this could be with or without the SENCO. Teachers continue to monitor progress, at this point a meeting will be arranged to discuss next steps; whether this be referrals or a change of support. Children are placed on the SEN register when we need to give a child something additional to what is ordinarily available.
Referrals can take place to Fusion, Speech and Language, Educational Psychologists, GP referrals for ADHD or Autism or Counselling services.
Graduated Response
All children on the SEN register go through the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle every term. An SEN review is then arranged to discuss progress against targets, strengths, things we have tried and our concerns.
Assess: children are assessed in class via the Birmingham Toolkit, or academic tests in class. This initial assessment should be reviewed regularly to ensure that support is matched to need.
Plan: teachers plan the child’s next steps and targets. Plans consider the views of the child. The support and intervention provided should be selected to meet the outcomes identified for the child, based on reliable evidence of effectiveness, and provided by practitioners with relevant skills and knowledge
Do: teachers and teaching assistants support children making progress against their targets via interventions or support in class.
Review: teacher’s review the targets, set new ones or maintain current targets alongside the parent. The review is discussed at the termly SEN review and a copy sent home.
Provision in school
The Hub: The Hub forms part of Emmaus's ‘Extended Mainstream’ provision. We have seen the number of children with Special Educational Needs increase in number and complexity and we now have 29% of our school population on the Special Needs Register. The majority of our children with Special Educational Needs can effectively learn in the classroom alongside their peers with effective adaptive teaching and some Teaching Assistant support. For some children, this environment is not compatible with their level of development or Special Educational Needs. Some of our children with more complex Special Educational Needs require access to more specialised provision. The Hub has capacity for a maximum of 10 children with a class teacher and one or two teaching assistants. It is currently a specialist provision for FS1, FS2 and Year 1 pupils, with a focus on Speech and Language, Social development, Emotional development and Physical skills.
Nurture provision (Nest): The nurture provision supports children with SEMH difficulties. Activities are planned that consider children’s emotions and well-being. The afternoon is structured so the children have a balance between adult directed activities and time to regulate their emotions. They do a range of creative, scientific and gardening based activities to enhance their social and emotional skills. Children are selected by the SENCo to be part of the Nest.
Steps of support
1 – Support plan: In school, we hold SEN Reviews every term. Parents are invited to meet with the SENCO and their child’s class teacher to discuss progress and set new targets. Each child has a ‘Support Plan’ with three targets on that are written specifically to the child’s needs. Progress in tracked and discussed in the following SEN Review meeting.
2 – Extended support plan: Some children in our school who are identified as being Level 4 or 5 on the Sheffield Support Grid are on an Extended Support Plan. At this point, a meeting will be held between the parents and the SENCO. Together, we will work through the paperwork involved and long term targets.
3 – EHCP application: Some children, who have complex needs require an EHCP, Educational Health Care Plan. This is a legal document and describes a child’s educational, health and social care needs. It sets out the specialist provision needed. This is to meet the child or young person's needs and achieve agreed long-term outcomes. School can support with an application and the request will go into the local authority. Parents can send a request to assess for an EHCP themselves.
Interventions
Here at Emmaus, we offer different interventions in the afternoons to support children’s communication & interaction, cognition & learning and SEMH. See below for more information on some of these interventions.
LEAP: Language Enrichment Activity Programme: The LEAP is appropriate for children from F1 –Y1 who may have limited speaking and listening skills for a range of reasons.
VIP: Vocabulary Improvement Programme: This aims to develop children’s oral vocabulary learning. This intervention develops children’s links between vocabulary, word meaning and sentence building skills.
NIP: Narrative Improvement Programme: This aims to develop children’s oral language skills. This programme develops narrative skills and creates a small group language learning environment.
Preteaching and Post-teaching: Pre- and Post-teaching sessions are taught 1:1 or in small groups by a Teaching Assistant. Pre-teaching is used to teach the children new vocabulary that they will encounter in future lessons.
Maths, Reading and Writing boosters: Children throughout school who are working towards expected are part of weekly booster groups to help increase their Maths, Reading or Writing skills.
Handwriting
Number bonds
Number formation
IDL
Reading buddies
Local offer
Every early year setting, school and college must outline what their local offer is to children and young people with special educational needs and/or a disability (SEND).
To help you do this the local authority will publish your responses to the following questions. The responses need to be jargon free, ensure clarity of language and provide information about where to go to get further advice or guidance if needed.
For those children who are not making the expected progress, the school uses a number of outside agencies to investigate their development further:
Fusion Learning Support
Speech Therapy service
Educational Psychologist
Early Years Inclusion Team (0-5 team)
1:1 Counselling: Emmaus Primary has access to a qualified counsellor. The school must apply for additional funding for this service when deemed necessary. Children can be offered 6 counselling sessions (with two meetings to involve parents) using play and art activities to support the sessions.
The SENCO will also write supporting letters to a child’s GP following discussions with parents about ongoing concerns about a child’s development and progress. In Sheffield, there are two main referrals;
The Ryegate Children’s Hospital
The Right to Choose through the GP (See more details below)
Right to Choose
In Sheffield, we are facing long delays in waiting on Ryegate assessments for both Autism and ADHD. We recognise that this is a difficult time for families, waiting for the assessments to be processed and a diagnosis to be given. There are two different services which lead to an assessment for Autism and ADHD. One, service being Ryegate, the other is using your ‘Right to Choose.’ You have the right to choose which healthcare provider you want to have the assessment with. For this, you must go to the GP and ask them for the Right to Choose. They will give you a selection of providers that you could use. We can write you a letter to go to the GP with. Please speak with Miss Smithson for further information.
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