‘Special Educational Needs and Disabilities’ (SEND) at Woodrush High School works from an area of the school known as ‘Student Support’. Student Support is made up of a base of classrooms and offices where specialist staff are based and where and from which pupils access varying forms of support at all hours of the school day.

As a mainstream high school, the basic premise is that all pupils access all lessons. We offer many degrees of support though, and work in partnership with all school staff, as well as many stakeholders and outside agencies.

At the forefront of this are the relationships we build with our pupils and their families and carers.

You can find the details of how we work in our ‘School SEN Information Report’ but here is a summary:

What we do

· Coordinate support for pupils, proactively and reactively. We monitor pupils’ progress and wellbeing in many different ways. We are available to pupils and their parents and carers at all hours of the school day, and beyond where necessary. We also liaise with school staff, families and outside agencies to determine how best to support our pupils, disseminate information and strategies to teachers and support staff, and analyse learning regularly to identify where and how we can better support our pupils. ·

We review Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). We also meet parents to discuss the provision for and progress of pupils at the ‘SEN Support’ stage of the SEN register. This process includes identifying objectives and the support required to fulfil these, based on staff, parent/carer and pupil feedback.

· Transition between key stages is of enormous importance to pupils and our focus is on supporting them through transition with the least anxiety. Our involvement ranges from the Open Evening in the autumn of Year 6 and visits even prior to that, to supporting pupils’ applications to post Key Stage 5 providers and several stages in between.

· Parents’ Evenings happen throughout the year and the school SENCo is available by appointment and on a drop-in basis if available on these evenings to talk through any concerns you may have. However, you are not limited to these times to make contact.

How we do it

· Support for pupils can take many different forms. From initial identification of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, through to supporting those who have been identified as requiring additional support since their earliest years, we write a ‘pupil profile’ for each of our SEND learners to outline to staff what the barriers to learning may be, and how best to support them. We invite young people and their parents/carers to contribute to this process and also disseminate and carry out outside agency recommendations as far as reasonably practicable. We regularly assess the implementation of support measure and their effectiveness.

· Outside of timetabled lessons, fixed-term academic intervention lessons with the Intervention Coordinator form a part of our provision too, the need for which is determined on a case by case basis according to the assess-plan-do-review cycle where pupils tend to require additional support such as phonics and spelling

· We have a Mental Health Adviser and a Student Counsellor trained in several aspects of emotional welfare as well as social, emotional and mental health support.

Meet the team:

· The school’s Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Coordinator (SENDCo), Mrs A. Stafford, is a qualified SENDCo (University of Birmingham, 2015) and also a French and Spanish teacher who started working at the school as a newly qualified teacher in 2004. · The school’s dedicated SEN Student Support (Key Worker) and Family Liaison officers are Mrs M. McCarthy and Mrs D. Gittins.

· Our Intervention Coordinator is Mrs J. Andrews

· Student Counsellor is Mrs S. Bromwich Lee

· We have a team of Learning Support Assistants who have a range of qualifications, experience and interests. We also have a Behavioural Support Assistant and a Physical Disability Support Assistant who are allocated on a 1:1 basis.  Between them all they support our SEND learners in various capacities in class, ranging from a 1:1 basis for our highest needs pupils, to shared access support for nominated subjects. 

· We also work closely with Heads of Year, Progress Student Engagement Leaders, the Exams Officers, Student Services/First Aid (Mrs J.Locke), and the Attendance Officer (Mrs J. Davies) within school

 And last but not least, our pupils! Some of our pupils access Student Support several times a day, needing at times to check in with us on a lesson-by-lesson basis, others just at unstructured times of the school day, whilst some do so according to their intervention timetable whereas others only do on an occasional basis or when using the ‘time out’ facility.        Contact us We would suggest that you should initially contact us by phone or email:

- SENDCo, Mrs A. Stafford astafford@woodrush.org, ext 7116

- Student Support and Family Liaison, Mrs M McCarthy ext 7115 Mrs D. Gittins ext 7117