A parent's guide to supporting children with special educational needs
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Children with SEN require extra help in particular areas, such as in communication and interaction, cognition and learning, mental or emotional health and physical skills. As a result, SEN support is extremely varied, from the small, day to day support of being there for your child, to larger considerations, such as buying technology that can help their mobility around school. Also, your child might only need support for a short amount or time, or they might need it for many years, even beyond their education. The key areas of support that are often considered include:
- Keeping records and observing your child in class or at break
- Supporting the child to take part in the classroom activities
- Specific help from a teacher or teaching assistant
- Increasing the child's use of communication, and their understanding of the tasks being asked of them
- A unique learning programme
- Helping other children to work with and play with the child at break times
- Helping the child with physical or personal difficulties, such as eating, toileting, getting around school safely and dressing
- Creating or altering resources and equipment
- Working in a small group
- All, and any, of the support provided by the school should be meeting your son or daughter's needs, right the way from using specific equipment like scissors with flat handles, to teaching lessons in different ways that will suit the child best.
- All, and any, of the support provided by the school should be meeting your son or daughter's needs, right the way from using specific equipment like scissors with flat handles, to teaching lessons in different ways that will suit the child best.
How can I help my child with SEN?
As a parent, you are the main person who will help your child the most. If you are starting to think that your child has SEN, or are worried about the progress they are making, both academically and personally, you should talk to the class teacher and the school's SENCO. These are the people who can begin to make observations and keep records, about your child's behaviours and academic achievement at school. They can often provide lots of evidence, or talk through their initial understanding of the child with you. You can also talk to your doctor or health visitor. They must tell you if they think your child has SEN, and if so will discuss with you what kind of support your child might need.
Another key way to help a child with SEN is to keep an open and honest relationship with their teachers. In the SEND Code of Practice it says that “Parents should be involved in planning support and, where appropriate, in reinforcing the provision or contributing to progress at home.” Accordingly, when meetings come around to discuss your child's progress or targets, make sure that you are available, and importantly, listen carefully, as well as adding your own thoughts and opinions to your child's next steps. If that positive relationship is not there, communication can become unstable and the child's progress may be affected negatively, both at home and school. Try to build on open lines of communication so that new concerns or situations can be addressed quickly. Remember however, that the teaching staff and SENCO are there for you too. So if you ever feel vulnerable or disheartened, talk to them about your own personal worries. They will have had lots of experience and can support you along your child's educational journey.
Out of your meetings and discussion comes another really important way that you can aid a child with SEN. Resources. The school will have, or will make, lots of resources that will support your child both academically and personally, depending on their needs. Do not just think that it is only at school where the child needs to meet their targets. If you are not given resources to take home, ask for them. Borrowing toys and games from the classroom, and playing them at home together, is an excellent way of supporting their learning. Also it is worth bearing in mind that you can discuss with the staff what other games or strategies you can use at home, and together, with your child, you can take ownership over how the home environment can develop these skills.
One tried and tested strategy that often starts at school and is then applied at home, is a visual timetable. This resource is a great way for a child to get used to the routines of a school day, and to feel comfortable and up to speed with what is going on at home. Before creating any of these timetables it is very important to ask your child what they would prefer, and it is often more successful when they make it with you.
Popular examples include:
- A ‘Now and Next' board, using two pictures to show what will be happening now and what the child will be doing next.
- A visual timetable, using more pictures to plan the day. Separate timetables could be made for the morning and the afternoon if there is a lot going on.
- A weekly timetable, showing key things to look forward to on different days. Pictures are easier for many children to understand than written words, and sometimes using photos you have taken works better.
Another, perhaps less well-known way that you can support your child, is to request a Personal Budget. A Personal Budget is an amount of money your local authority has identified to help with your child's EHC plan, and can be released to you if you want to be involved in choosing and arranging some of the provision required. You must decide this with the local authority, and to find out more, you can contact their Information, advice and support service. You can also find out more from Chapter 9 of the 0-25 SEND Code of Practice.
Finally, as your child grows up and reaches young adulthood, it is key that they have the chance to take more control over their lives, and help to decide what their future looks like. This means that you need to help them be aware of their different options including higher education, independent living, being involved in the community and being as healthy as possible in adult life. It is recommended that you start these conversations with them before, or by the time, they reach the age of 14. You want to create a smooth transition for them regardless of the severity of their needs, and if your child wants to reach their long-term goals, or is beginning to think about what those might be, it is imperative that you work together and give them the chance to voice their opinions.
Formulating a SEN support plan
If a child has SEN it is not always essential for their development to have a plan, and after discussing this issue with the teaching staff at the school, and with the local authority, you can help to make the best decision. If however the child has been assessed, and a plan is drawn up, then helping to formulate the plan's targets and next steps is partly your responsibility.
The Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice 0 to 25 years [2014], demands that there is an assess, plan, do, review cycle. This includes:
Assess: Your child's strengths and weaknesses will be assessed so that the correct support can be provided. This should include the opinions of yourself, other professionals who work with your child (such as their teacher), and evidence from health and educational records.
Plan: With your involvement, the school must agree with the outcomes that the SEN support is intended to achieve, and how much the child will benefit from it. Most often, 3 main targets are decided on a half termly basis, and everyone must work together to help your child achieve these.
Do: The school will then put the planned support into place. The teacher will ultimately remain responsible for working with your child every day, but the SENCO and other support staff who are involved in providing support, will also work closely to record your child's progress.
Review: The plan should state the next dates that you will come to the school for a progress meeting. These meetings will review whether the strategies and resources put in place have had a positive impact. This will also be the time to look at what achievements have occurred, and how targets can be altered, renewed or changed to help the child progress further.
If at any point you want to discuss the plan or query it, then do not hesitate to speak to the class teacher and SENCO.
What should you not say to a child with special needs?
As the parent, you know more than anyone what you should, or should not, say to your child. Of course this will vary depending on the mood, need and situation. However, here are some key tips for communication that could help create a home life which is as positive as it can be:
- Get them happy or comfortable to talk. Children with SEND can often find expressing themselves, and talking about how they feel, difficult. It is recommended that you make talking, in any type of form, as familiar as possible at home. From an early age listening to, retell and sing nursery rhymes together. You could even turn a familiar story into a little play, or memory game, extending the story, or making it silly or strange! As the child gets older, safely support them by having Zoom chats with a group of friends. Regardless of age, it can also be very helpful to start chats about wider issues or anxieties they may have about the world, such as Covid-19, or school.
- Don't nag about or pressurise the child to complete EHC targets at home. When outcomes are set for home try not to make them feel laboured or a chore. If possible talk about your child's strengths and interests, either as a prize for completing the activities, or as an interesting way you could frame them.
- Use Makaton or sign language. If your child is feeling particularly stressed, and you feel that talking to them will just exasperate them further, then teaching, and applying, sign language from an early age may become a less invasive way of speaking to them. This may even calm them down, and put your view across in a simpler way that is easier to understand.
- Wording. Depending on the needs of your child, think about how you word your language. Try to make it as simple as possible. This strategy will make sure that nothing is lost in translation. Also as some children with autism can take things very literally, it is worth checking that they have really understood what you have spoken about.
- Tone. As well as the wording you use, also think about the tone you take with the child. It's quite natural to adopt a tone that reflects your emotions, but sometimes one might be harder for the child to understand, and another may trigger their audio sensitivities and cause distress. Therefore it is important that you really understand your child, and are conscious of how the tone you use will affect the type of message you want to get across.
All children can be very demanding, and this is never more so than when a child has special needs. Children's abilities can vary during the day, and so what they can do first thing in the morning may not be the same as when they are tired. It can be helpful to see your child as trying to do their best, even though sometimes they need more support than others. Treating your child as if they are trying to do what they are asked, and finding out how to support them, will help both of you keep calm. We hope that the discussion above was a useful guide.
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Useful links:
https://www.noweducation.co.uk/news/send-children-parents-tips/29207/