SEND

Inclusion/send: supporting children with additional needs

Useful send information for parents and carers

At Oak Gardens, we work together to ensure that all children, including those with SEND, can make progress and achieve their full potential. We aim to identify any barrier to learning early on, so that staff can provide a robust offer to enable the child to make progress. This will be firstly through high-quality teaching in the classroom, with additional and targeted interventions being used when needed.

Identified needs may include:

• Speech, Language and Communication Difficulties
• Physical or sensory needs
• Social, Emotional, Behavioural and Mental Health needs
• Specific Learning difficulties

Inclusion operates on a holistic basis. We aim to support all children who experience a barrier to learning, not only those who have an identified need or diagnosis. For example, we aim to support children and their families when circumstances, outside of school, are causing a barrier to pupil’s engagement in learning, e.g. a crisis at home, new arrivals, casual inductions and transition.

At Oak Gardens, our team are friendly, welcoming and dedicated to the support they provide for all children. Support is coordinated by our SENCo, who is also a member of the Senior Leadership Team. We liaise with a range of agencies such as:

• ​​Speech and language therapy service
• Occupational therapy
• Community paediatric team
• CAMHs
• Lewisham Inclusion Outreach team
• Educational Psychologist team
• Drumbeat outreach team
• Play Therapy

Tracking children’s progress

We provide learning which meets the needs of each and every child. If the school has concerns about the progress a child is making, steps will be taken to provide a support plan within school for that child and we will monitor closely what progress is made with this extra support. The governor who has responsibility for special educational needs is Chasey Crawford.

When, despite targeted intervention and input from external agencies, a pupil is not making the expected rate of progress and is working significantly behind their peers, the school may submit a detailed report to the Local Authority requesting that the child undergo a statutory assessment of his/her additional educational needs. The aim of this assessment is to decide if the child should be given further additional individual support through the provision of an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP). This will only be submitted with full consent of the pupil’s parent(s) and/or carer(s).

If you require any help or advice, or are concerned that your child may have additional educational needs, please do not hesitate to contact Lydia Twyford, our SENDCo, via the school office.