Empowering all staff to engage with parents and carers of children with additional needs

Background and context

A school wanted to empower staff to support parents of SEN children and for them to understand behaviours, traits, strategies & referrals to support their conversations with parents.

What did they do

To enable this they created a SEND support team in school including the SENDCo, teachers from different phases and staff from the office. They held a parent workshop on what SEN support looks like at Mount Carmel, shared staff details explained processes and helped parents to understand terminology. The SENDCo delivered a staff inset on how to write an effective support plan. Parent meetings were held with class teachers and the SENCO to offer full support around the child and their family. This gave a full view of the child at home, in class, around school.

The SENDCo created a traits and strategies visual to support staff in their planning and offers support every other week to all staff to plan for their lowest 20% and SEND. The staff also received Colourful Semantics training tailored to each year group delivered by the speech and language team. Finally, they created a section of Reception transition passports for parents to explain traits, additional support, referrals, and SEND reporting in school.

What was the impact? What changed?

• Over the year staff confidence has grown with working with children with SEND. This is evident in learning walks, in their planning and confidence in asking for referrals before leading conversations with parents about potential barriers.
• Teachers are now having parent meetings without the SENCO showing that they feel equipped and confident enough to have potentially difficult conversations.
• More parents feel heard by staff and more are opening up about homelife which provides the bigger picture, which in turn enables the school to understand how to help that family more.

Baseline data

The school or nursery tries to understand the needs of my family without judgement or assumptions increased by 20%

I receive regular reports on my child’s progress towards set targets increased by 20%

I can engage in regular conversations about my child’s targets and progress increased by 18%