SEN Specialist Expertise

SENCO and SEN Staff 

Our SENCO is Mrs L.Henson and she can be contacted via the school office. Mrs Henson holds the Statutory National Award for SEN Coordination qualification required of all SENCOs from Wolverhampton University. She was awarded this qualification in July 2019. 

She regularly attends Local Authority SEN network meetings and training courses to ensure that her knowledge is up to date with legislative changes and requirements and best practice can be shared and advice sought from Local Authority specialists.  

Other Staff with Specialist Expertise:

Our School Counsellors are Mrs H. Cossar  

Attendance and Safeguarding Officer -  Mrs C.Collins 

External Specialists and Other Bodies

The school enjoys good and productive working relationships with a wide range of people who provide services to children with SEN and their families. 

The external specialist may:

• Act in an advisory capacity
•  Extend expertise of school staff
• Support the child directly
•  Provide additional assessment 
•  Consult all parties involved with the child 

These include:

•  Durham SEND information, Advice and Support Service 
• Autism Social Communications Team
• One Point
• CAMHS
• Crisis Response
• Educational Psychology Service
• Movement Difficulties Service
• Occupational Therapy
• School Counsellor
• School Nursing Team
• Social Care and Health Team
• Speech and Language Therapy

 We encourage these professionals to visit school as often as possible to work with our staff and share their expertise. Wherever possible, staff implement programmes of work linked to these professionals e.g. speech and language programmes, exercises recommended by physical therapies etc.

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:

• Providing staff training
• Buying resources to support children
• Enabling staff to run intervention programs
• Paying for assessment and advice from outside agencies e.g. Cognition and Learning Team.

If a child has complex special educational needs, we could also receive additional funding from the Local Authority to meet the agreed outcomes.This additional funding has to be applied for.