Amanda Davis is Corporate Director for Education and Learning at Dorset County Council and is using Valuing SEND as part of her committed approach to improving the experience of early years transitions for children with complex needs into reception.

For Amanda, the original Valuing SEND project that was underway in Dorset, provided an opportunity to support children with additional needs differently as they embark on their school journey. Liz Curtis-Jones, Principle Lead for Best Start in Life has lead the transformation on how Dorset County Council is engaging with families in the earliest years, and was aware that families with children who have very complex needs were anticipating the need to have a special school place for their child. Dorset County Council wanted to ensure families could access the additional support needed to be confident in joining mainstream school with their friends.

The Valuing SEND approach is therefore being used to trial a joint needs mapping exercise between nursery settings and local mainstream schools, to see how the schools could get ‘ready’ to receive these children and meet their needs to the best of
their ability when they arrive in September.

This takes the traditional concept of ‘school readiness’ and turns it on its head; shifting the expectation onto schools to come together to meet the child’s unique needs with planned support from the local authority to do so, rather than expecting the child to be ‘school ready’.

Valuing SEND is an approach that maps the unique needs of a child or young person with SEND alongside the support a setting is planning to provide for them, making it clear where needs can be met, and where further training or support might be required.

“The theory behind this trial project is good, and there is potential for it to be great if it translates into a timely, and well planned approach for the next academic year. Completing the setting readiness was a nice process, we were pleased with our scores, demonstrating how inclusive we are as a team is something to celebrate. I have loved the outreach support provided as a result of the project. We got useful feedback on our provision from the visit and a speedy referral process.

For this to be meaningful to schools in the long term it is essential that it is built into the appropriate time lines and processes that schools adhere to throughout the academic year. Staffing plans are made by May, so any additional staff or hours the child needs should be agreed by then. Really this should be a whole year long process for everyone involved.

I had already met with the preschools of the children I was due to work with in the September, so this was an enhancement more than anything for me, but for schools who don’t have those inclusive processes embedded into their transition approach, this will lead to a different way of working.

The needs of children coming into reception from early years settings are more complex than they have ever been before and the work doesn’t stop here, needs present differently once children are settled into their new school and so for me, there is value in what happens from here on in to continue to support these families.”

Kirsty Rogers, Wyke Regis Primary Federation