Kirstie Kerr is the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) at Fiveways School in Somerset, a special school for children with Severe, Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (SPMLD). Here we explore how she is using Valuing SEND to better understand the needs of individual children and how, in one case, she worked in partnership with a brave parent, Danielle, to make a life changing decision for a pupil in her care.

Elliott is 11 and has complex needs. He has Autism Spectrum Disorder and was non-verbal for a lot of his life. He attended Fiveways since nursery and made incredible progress in his time there, making huge leaps in his learning. Kirstie and the senior leadership team at Fiveways used Valuing SEND to map their capability to meet individuals’ needs, and in doing so, challenged themselves to think about the potential of their high achieving pupils. Valuing SEND helped Kirstie make the case for Elliott to transition to a secondary school for children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD), an environment with less intensive support and a curriculum that would stretch him academically.

We had to challenge ourselves to think ‘what’s the future for this child?’ and while we really didn’t want to ‘lose him’, we came to the conclusion that his best chances to thrive and achieve would be realised by moving on from our school. The visual aspect of the tool just made it so clear and gave us the evidence we needed to act on our instincts.

The visual element of the tool is just so powerful, it shows you whether a child is placed accurately and makes it easier to demonstrate that in a simple, clear way.

Kirstie Kerr, SENCo at Fiveways School, Somerset

Danielle describes her son Elliott’s time at Fiveways as being the single most important factor in his life outside his family. Danielle had been Elliott’s voice for six years until he had unlocked his ability to communicate with the meticulous and loving support he received from this brilliant school.

“I am sure that if he had attended a different school he wouldn’t be the child he is today. He learned how to be happy, calm, how to speak and he made important relationships; he learned how to trust.”

When Kirstie first shared her Valuing SEND work with Danielle and explained that she felt Elliott could thrive in a different school, Danielle was shell shocked. She valued Elliott’s happiness and the stability of his schooling so much and it felt the rug was being pulled from beneath her.

“My first thought was no, no, no, no, no. This is not happening. It took me a long time to shift from seeing this as a negative to something good. Over time through talking to family, friends and the staff at Fiveways I began to see that this was, in fact, something to be proud of. He had outgrown the curriculum at Fiveways and they knew him well enough to identify that he could achieve more elsewhere.”

Kirstie and Danielle worked together to help Elliott understand the reasons for his change of school; they wrote a social story for him and Danielle organised a visit to the school in addition to the planned transition day. Throughout the process Danielle says Kirstie was patient, comforting and encouraging.