SENCO and SEN Staff
Our SENCO is Mrs Natalie Dryden.
More details of the SENCO’s role can be found in the SEN Policy which you can find in the School Policies section of our website. The team also includes staff trained in Supporting Children on the Autistic Spectrum and the Restorative Approach.
External Specialists and Other Bodies
The school enjoys good working relationships with a wide range of people who provide services to children with SEND and their families.
The external specialists may:
- Act in an advisory capacity
- Extend expertise of school staff
- Provide additional assessment
- Support a child directly
- Suggest statutory assessment is advisable
- Consult with all parties involved with the child
These include:
- Durham County Council Local Offer
- Durham SEND Information, Advice and Support Service
- Educational Psychology Consultants
- Speech and Language Therapy Consultants
- Behaviour Intervention team Support
How We Secure Specialist Expertise
We allocate funds from our budget, or through our Community of Learning to secure this specialist advice.
Sometimes this funding is used to train staff in specialist skills eg using PECs cards, supporting children with social and communication difficulties, developing speech and language skills, delivering language programme.
Our Additional Needs Budget is used to support children and young people with SEN.
This is used to support children and young people with SEND by:
- Offering training for staff
- Specialist in school support
- Liaising with external agencies to advise and support children and staff
- Purchasing SEN resources
If a child has complex special educational needs, we could also receive additional funding from the Local Authority to meet the agreed outcomes.