From Carrie White, Early Years Lead SEND Teacher

Wow what a difference a few weeks makes, the world is a far different place than it was when I wrote March’s briefing.

Firstly, the Educational Psychology Service have an update to their services for Early Years which is below:

The Educational Psychology Service are here to support our schools in Medway and have always offered support to schools following trauma including the death of a pupil or member of the school community. We are prepared to work with you to support your children, families and your staff should you have to face the sad event of a death from coronavirus.  This service has not previously been offered to Early Years providers but given the current situation we do feel that it is vital for us to offer the service to you should you need it.

In the first instance please contact Ian Sutherland on 01634 331011

And also email Julie Taylor, Principal Educational Psychologist and Sophie Curra, Senior Educational Psychologist and leave a contact phone number.

Julie.taylor@medway.gov.uk  and Sophie.curra@medway.gov.uk

We usually work in pairs to do this work and where possible we will contact you by telephone or video call. We are all working from home and most of us are working over the Easter holidays. Responding to settings in these situations is always a priority so please contact us as soon as possible.

We will work in partnership with you to support you through the process of managing a death in your community. We will work with you on the practicalities keeping the emotional wellbeing of everyone at the heart of what we do from the first response through to how to manage the return to school.

Effective communication is vital so now is the time to think about the systems you have in place and how these could be used to communicate difficult news.

A useful resource is:   https://www.winstonswish.org and this has information for talking to children about death by coronavirus.

It is easy to be swamped by the mass of information but you know your community and the resources and strengths you already have in your staff team, your children and young people, families, parents, governors etc. You also know those who are most vulnerable. Give some thought now to the possible impact of a death in your community – to those who will need to be supported and to those who will be supporters.

We are working on guidelines for you and will make these available shortly.

 

Secondly: An update from Genny Cherriman

SEN arrangements during Covid-19 arrangements

Dear Colleagues

The recent government Covid-19 Bill has relaxed the statutory duties on Local Authorities to meet timescales for education, health and care assessments and annual reviews. However, Local Authorities are expected to make reasonable endeavours to meet timescales where possible.

The Medway SEN team will continue to receive and log requests for education, health and care assessments and consider whether to initiate assessment and the issue of Education, Health and Care Plans. To this end, Medway SEN are holding weekly virtual panels.

When an education, health and care assessment is agreed, where possible educational psychologists will provide advice based on information already known about the child or young person (from previous EP involvement) where they are able, and where the advice is considered to be of good quality.

The Medway SEN team, Educational Psychology Team, Sensory Support Service and Early Years Team  are currently looking at technology solutions for both assessments, annual reviews, way forward, and co-production meetings to enable us to continue to work in partnership with families and education settings. If we are able to offer virtual meetings, we will contact you beforehand to let you know what will happen.

Medway SEN will continue to request advice from health professionals and other agencies, such as social care.

However, we will need to be guided by the agency from whom advice is requested, as to whether an assessment can be offered or good quality advice provided without an assessment.  As such, it is very possible that advice requested for an assessment may be delayed.

Genny Cherriman | SEN Manager

Thirdly: Debbie Allcorn has asked for you all to continue to read the daily bulletins they are sending from the DfE and Ofsted as there is really useful guidance in there.

Finally:

The Early Years SEN team are all still available, we are currently working from home but are available by email and phone.  We are currently investigating the possibility of online meetings and support sessions for settings and families using Zoom but this is in its infancy for us at the moment.  For settings who do require support please contact your SEN practitioner in the first instance.  I was hoping to share my mobile phone number with you all in this bulletin but it has not yet been delivered to the council, as soon as it is here I will share with you all.

Thank you all for supporting our children and being there on the front line.  You are doing an amazing job and I know how difficult it must be during this uncertain times.  If you need someone to talk to then please contact me via email carrie.white@medway.gov.uk and I will give you a call and do my best to help you out.

 

Stay safe everyone.