Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)

Children with SEND will be provided with SEND support. SEN support replaces School Action/School Action Plus (in schools) and Early Years Action/Early Years Action Plus (in early years settings).

SEND support can take many forms. This could include:

  • a special learning programme for your child
  • extra help from a teacher or a learning support assistant
  • working with your child in a small group 
  • supporting your child with physical or personal care difficulties, such as eating, getting around school safely, toileting or dressing 

There are four stages of SEND support:

Assess

Your child’s difficulties must be assessed so that the right support can be provided. This should include, for example, asking you what you think, talking to professionals who work with your child (such as their teacher), and looking at records and other information. That might mean getting advice and further assessment from someone like an educational psychologist, a specialist teacher or a health professional.

Plan

Your school or other setting needs to agree, with your involvement, the outcomes that the SEND support is intended to achieve – in other words, how your child will benefit from any support they get. All those involved will need to have a say in deciding what kind of support will be provided, and decide a date by which they will review this so that they can check to see how well the support is working and whether the outcomes have been or are being achieved.

Do

The school or setting will put the planned support into place. The teacher remains responsible for working with your child on a daily basis, but the SENCO and any support staff or specialist teaching staff involved in providing support should work closely to track your child’s progress and check that the support is being effective.

Review

The support your child receives should be reviewed at the time agreed in the plan. You can then decide together if the support is having a positive impact, whether the outcomes have been, or are being, achieved and if or how any changes should be made. Your child’s school must provide you with an annual report on your child’s progress. They should talk to you regularly about your child’s progress, (at least three times a year), set clear outcomes and produce a report of these as well as the action taken and support agreed.

Children and young people with more complex needs might instead need an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. EHC plans replace statements of SEN and Learning Disability Assessments (LDAs).

Quick Links

  1. Education, Health and Care Plans/Assessments (EHCP)

Related advice and information

  1. A Quick Guide to Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans

Page last reviewed: 23/08/2023

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