What should educational settings do?

Take immediate action when a child or young person is identified as having SEN.

Inform the child or young person's family as soon as the pupil's SEN is identified.

Work in partnership with the child or young person, their parents and carers, including them in decision making and in reviews of the support put in place.

Remove all barriers to learning by putting effective support for the child or young person in line with the Trafford Graduated Approach.

Working with the family to review the support put in place for children and young people with SEN at least termly.

Gain advice from specialist professionals if necessary.

Use Assess, Plan, Do, Review (APDR) cycles to inform changes to a child or young person’s SEN support.

Trafford provide a Model SEN Support Plan based on 5 key elements for education/settings to compare their own record keeping against, this includes a useful One-page profile to help all staff understand a child’s needs at a glance and an example APDR record.

Find out more about Trafford's Graduated Approach or Early Years Graduated Approach.

What is the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle?

Staff in early years settings, schools and colleges must use a graduated approach based on a four step cycle. This is called the Assess, Plan, Do, Review (APDR) cycle.

Assess analyse the child or young person’s special educational needs.

Plan identify the additional and different support needed.

Do put the support in place

Review regularly check how well it is working so that they can change the amount or kind of support if needed.

Some children and young people will make progress and no longer require SEN Support. If the child or young person has not made the expected progress then the cycle starts again; this will be reviewed termly.

The length of each Assess, Plan, Do Review cycle will vary according to the needs of each child.

Some children and young people with more long-term, complex needs will need several assess, plan, do, review cycles to make good progress.

When do other Professionals get involved?

If the child or young person continues to make less progress than expected despite receiving additional support matched to their needs, then other professionals may be asked for their help and advice.

Other professionals could include a specialist teacher, an educational psychologist, speech and language therapist or other health professional.

The early years setting, school or college will talk to the child or young person and their parent carer before seeking other professional advice.

When an external professional gets involved Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycles continue.

The child or young person's SEN support should be adapted to take into account the other professionals’ advice.

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Next: What if no progress is made at SEN Support? (EHC Needs Assessment)