Care and support

Special Educational Needs (SEN) Code Of Practice

An Extract from the "Special Educational Needs Code of Practice":

The Revised Code of Practice for the identification and assessment of SEN (DFES 2001) recommends a graduated response to meeting children's needs.

The graduated approach should be firmly based within the setting and is a three stage plan of action.

1. Early Years Action.

When an early education practitioner who works day to day with the child, or the SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co Ordinator), identifies a child with special educational needs, they should devise interventions that are additional to or different from those provided as part of the setting's usual curriculum offer and strategies.

The triggers for intervention through Early Years Action could be the practitioner's or parent's concern about a child who despite receiving appropriate early education experiences:

• Makes little or no progress even when teaching approaches are particularly targeted to improve the child's identified area of weakness.
• Continues working at levels significantly below those expected for children of similar age in certain areas.
• Presents persistent emotional and/or behavioural diffculties, which are not ameliorated by the behaviour management techniques usually employed by the setting.
• Has sensory or physical problems, and continues to make little or no progess despite the provision of personal aids and equipment.
• Has communication and/or interaction diffculties, and requires specific individual interventions in order to access learning.

If practitioners in consultation with parents conclude that a child may need further support to help them progress, staff should seek the help of the SENCO.

As an important part of the Early Years Action the SENCO and colleagues should collect all known information about the child and seek additional new information from the parents. In some cases outside professionals from Health or CSF may already be involved with the child. The SENCO should build on existing knowledge of the child; multi-agency input is often very significant for young children. The educational psychologist can have a key role in assessment and intervention and in providing support and advice to parents. Educational psychologists can help teachers and parents notice children's individual needs and help them to adjust their response accordingly. In such cases it is good practice for these professionals to liaise with the early education settings and keep them informed of the work in progress. Where these professionals have not already been working with practitioners, the SENCO should contact them if the parent agrees.

Parents are the prime source of information in many cases. The information collected can be maintained as part of the child's individual record that will also include previous observations on the child made as part of the regular assessment and recording systems within the early education setting. Settings should make sure that parents are as fully involved as possible with their child's education and should always be kept fully informed about how the setting is seeking to meet their child's needs.

Children with a learning difficulty or development delay, and whose parents do not have English as their first language, do not have fluent English, or are disabled are likely to be particularly disadvantged if any special educational needs are not identified at the earliest possible stage.

The SENCO and the child's teacher, in consultation with parents, should decide on the action needed to help the child to progress in the light of their earlier assessment. The action should enable the very young child with SEN to learn and progress to the maximum possible. The resources might be extra adult time in devising the nature of the planned intervention and monitoring its effectiveness; the provision of different learning materials or special equipment; some individual or group support or staff development and training to produce more effective strategies.

Strategies employed to enable the child to progress should be recorded within an Individual Education Plan (IEP); this should include information about the short term targets set for the child, the teaching strategies and the provision to be put in place, when the plan is to be reviewed, and the outcome of the action taken.
IEPs should be discussed with the parents and the child.

Stage 2 Early Years Action Plus

Early Years Action Plus is characterised by the involvement of external support services who can help early education settings with advice on new IEPs and targets, provide more specialist assessments, give advise on the use of new or specialist strategies or materials, and in some cases provide support for particular activities.

A request for help from external services is likely to follow a decision taken by the SENCO and colleagues, in consultation with parents, at a meeting to review the child's IEP. The review should consider:

Has progress been made ?
What are the parents views ?
Is there a need for more information or advice about the child ?

The triggers for referral for help from outside agencies could be that, despite receiving an individualised programme and/or concentrated support, the child:

Continues to make little or no progress in specific areas over a long period.

Continues working at an early years curriculum substantially below that expected of children of similar age.

Has emotional or behavioural difficulties which substantially and regularly interfere with the child's own learning or that of the group, despite having an individualised behaviour management programme.

Stage 3 Requests for Statutory Assessment

For a very few children the help given by the early education setting through Action Plus will not be sufficently effective to enable the child to progress satisfactorily. It will then be necessary for the setting, in consultation with parents and any external agencies already involved, to consider whether a statutory multi-disciplinary assessment may be appropriate.