What can early years settings, schools and colleges do to help?

Early years settings, schools and colleges place great importance on identifying special educational needs (SEN) early so that they can help children and young people as quickly as possible. Once it has been decided that your child has SEN, staff working with your child should take account of the guidance in the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Code of Practice (2015). The Code describes how help for children and young people with special educational needs in early years settings, schools and colleges should be made through a step-by-step or graduated approach.

The graduated approach recognises that children and young people learn in different ways and can have different kinds or levels of SEN. So increasingly, step-by-step, specialist expertise can be brought in to help the early years setting, school or college with the difficulties that a child or young person may have.

The approach may include:

-an individually-designed learning programme
-extra help from a teacher/tutor or learning support assistant
-being taught individually or in a small group for regular short periods
-drawing up a personal plan, including setting targets for improvement, regular review of progress before setting new targets.

The early years setting, school or college must tell you when they first start giving extra or different help because your child has special educational needs. This is called SEN Support.

If your child does not make enough progress, the teacher/tutor or the Special Educational Needs Co-ordeinador (SENCo)  should then talk to you about asking for advice from other people outside the early years setting, school or college, for example, a specialist teacher adviser, an educational psychologist, a speech and language therapist or other health professionals.

Within this framework your child’s progress will be carefully recorded, monitored and reviewed.

The early years setting, school or college should try to include you in any discussions, and should consider your views in making any decisions about how best to help your child. They should keep you informed about your child’s progress.

After this step-by-step approach there should be a clear written record about what the early years setting, school or college has done to assess and provide for your child's needs. The content of this record will be discussed with you. There will be a personal plan for your child with clearly recorded reviews and outcomes, and reference to the involvement of other professionals, where relevant. In this way the level of help will be carefully matched to your child's needs.

Valoration: early identification is so important to do an early intervention. Teachers have to identify those students with special educational needs as soon as possible to intervene.

Source: http://www3.hants.gov.uk/childrens-services/specialneeds/sen-home/sen-education.htm