Our SENCO is Mrs Dunn (HT) who has extensive experience as SENCO in this school. Mrs Dunn has completed the National Award for SEN Coordinators.
More details of the SENCO’s role can be found in the SEN Policy which you can find in the School Policies section of our website.
Other staff with specialist expertise:
Mrs Fletcher – HLTA – various Level 2/3 and beyond Safeguarding; Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing training. HeartMath; Listening Matters; Mental Health First Aider
Mrs Gillespie – HLTA – Connecting with Children; Therapeutic Stories; Story Links; Getting Along; Level 3 Counselling Skills; Mental Health First Aider
External Specialists and Other Bodies
The school enjoys good working relationships with a wide range of people who provide services to children with SEND and their families.
The external specialists may:
- Act in an advisory capacity
- Extend expertise of school staff
- Provide additional assessment
- Support a child directly
- Suggest statutory assessment is advisable
- Consult with all parties involved with the child
These include:
- Durham SEND Information, Advice and Support Service
- Speech & Language Therapists (through Health provision and through Community of Learning SLA)
- Education Psychology / Emotional Wellbeing and Effective Learning Team
- School Counsellor and Parent Support Advisor – both through the CoL
- Other Local Authority specialists through traded services (i.e. Cognition and Learning; Autism & Social Communication teams)
How We Secure Specialist Expertise
Our Additional Needs Budget is used to support children and young people with SEN. We also contribute towards our Community of Learning budget to increase the capacity to support our most vulnerable children.
This is used to support children and young people with SEND by:
Our notional budget for SEND has been allocated to provide adults who can undertake specific 1:1 and small group support in areas such as intensive interventions (reading; phonics), improving social and communication skills (Getting Along; CwC), and other additional academic or pastoral support.
This support always takes place with the full involvement of both children and parents.
Elements of this funding is also used for the provision of appropriate resources which children with additional learning needs may find beneficial, and training which supports individual or all staff.
Staff have recently taken part in Talk of the Primary School (supporting Speech, Language and Communication needs) and Attachment training to support vulnerable children with specific difficulties.
If a child has complex special educational needs, we could also receive additional funding from the Local Authority to meet the agreed outcomes.
Piece of Mind Team
We are also working with the Piece of Mind Team which supports mental health in schools. Sarah Liddell is our support worker. She has led ‘Friendship’ sessions in KS1 and will continue to build on this with problem solving sessions in KS2.
The team also engages with 1:1 work, including parent-based support. Contact can be made through the school.