What does Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) mean?
Children with special educational needs and disabilities have learning difficulties or impairments that may make it harder for them to learn than most children of the same age. They might need additional help or adaptations to help them access the learning.
Children with SEND might need additional help with a range of needs, such as:
- thinking and understanding
- physical or sensory difficulties
- emotional and behavioural difficulties
- difficulties with speech and language
- how they relate to and behave with other people
Many children have additional or special educational needs of some kind at different times during their education. Schools and other organisations can help most children overcome these difficulties easily and quickly, but a few children will need extra help for most or all of their time at school.
This is a link to the Government website with support for families with SEN children.
What is the Local Offer?
All families need extra support from time to time. Whether that support is from family and friends, community groups, services that everybody can use such as schools, children’s centres, leisure centres and doctor’s surgeries, or more specialist services, all can make a valuable contribution and difference to people’s lives. Knowing what is out there gives you more choice and more control over what support is right for your child.
The Local Offer aims to bring together information that is intended to be helpful to children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their families. The Local Offer has two main purposes:
- To provide clear, comprehensive information, in one place, on the support and opportunities available locally to children, young people and their families and what can be expected from a range of local agencies including education, health and social care
- To make services more responsive to local needs and shaped by you
The Local Offer will provide you with all the information you need to help you identify the right support to enable your child to participate fully in and enjoy learning and achieve their goals.
The Isle of Wight Council is committed to giving all children and young people high quality education that enables them to make progress and achieve well. For children and young people aged 0 to 25 with special educational needs or a disability, additional or specialist support may be needed to enable this. To support the process of identifying the range of provision and advice that is available, the Isle of Wight Local Authority have published a local offer. For more information about the Local Offer please use the following link: https://iwc.iow.gov.uk/localoffer
To view Brighstone Primary School SEND (Special Educational Needs & Disability) Policy & Local Offer, please visit our Policies page.
For more information, support and advice, please contact our Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Co-ordinator (SENCo) Mrs Susan Boyd on s.boyd@brighstoneprimary.org.uk or see our Family Support page by clicking here.
If you have further queries, please contact us.