From Carrie White, Early Years Lead SEND Teacher
This bulletin has been started and nearly ready to go so many times this month but with all the changes and new guidance being issued, the bulletin has had to be corrected a fair few times so apologies for it nearly being June. I now have my work mobile phone, the number is 07773187596.
Return to Settings
As I am sure you are aware the government have asked Childcare settings to prepare for children to return from 1st June. This is obviously great news as I know you have all been missing the children but at the same time throws up many issues about how to do this safely for both staff and children. Each setting needs to do this individually, thinking about what is best for that setting - there is no one size fits all approach. The Early Years Sufficiency Team Programme Lead Debbie Allcorn have been working with myself and Medway Early Years Ltd to look at what how this can be achieved and some guiding principles for settings. If you are keen to be part of the continuing discussion, please contact Debbie as there are ongoing meetings for the Early Years Recovery Team.
There are going to be a number of transition points this year - as children return to settings after lockdown, then as children leave to join reception class at school, and as new starters join your settings. In partnership with Medway Early Years Ltd, we have produced a number of transition documents to support these times. All are available on https://www.e-learningatlast.org.uk/, but you do need a login to access them. If you do not have a login, please email Tina Newman and she will arrange that for you. The documents which we’ve attached with this bulletin consist of a booklet for all children, an SEN child booklet and a ‘more about me’ page which is for parents to complete following lockdown - if they have noticed changes since the children were at home, if children had appointments with therapists cancelled or if routines have changed etc. The change to the SEN booklet is there is a space for you to include the name of your SEN practitioner and their phone number. This is to enable schools to contact members of the Early Years SEN team directly if they need to. Please could we ask you send a copy of any SEN child’s booklet to your SEN practitioner as well as the receiving school? This just allows us to know what settings have written about the children in case schools do contact the team. For some settings who don’t have an allocated SEN Practitioner, please feel free to put my name and number and email the documents to me.
You are able to continue to apply for SENIF funding via the normal route. The panel is still meeting and making decisions in principle. When it comes to payment, please invoice to Julia Hanks as usual only if the child is currently attending setting. If they are being kept at home or are shielding, we will not be paying this additional funding until the child is accessing the additional support. Funding previously agreed before lockdown will be paid as normal but funding applications from April 2020 onwards will only be paid if the child is currently attending.
We are all still working and are available to do SENCO surgeries. We can do these over the phone, video call or using Microsoft Teams if you have that software. We are taking the lead from you about when you would like us to do setting visits. We know the importance of protecting the bubbles you are creating so when you are ready for us to return please let us know. Please remember some of the team are term time only so if you do not get a response straight away, they will get back to you as soon as possible.
If you would like us to proofread EHCP applications, or SENIF applications and provision maps, we are very keen to support with this so please do send them to us via email and we can help. I recently met with Laura France from SENDIAS who has said some settings have asked her team to support with EHCP applications - please ensure you have asked the Early Years SEND team first as Laura will be sending them straight over to us as they have a large amount of parents to support.
Training
We are not offering any face to face training for obvious reasons at the moment. I have been part of a few webinars recently which have been very informative, and I am exploring the option of running some of our training in this way. This obviously would have an impact on staffing levels for settings and currently where some settings have staff shielding, self- isolating and still on furlough. I do not want to further impact staff levels so I will not be running training until the new academic year. We are here to give you advice should you need it and will set up our training package ready to launch from September depending on what the ‘new normal’ is.
Stay safe and please ask if there is anything we can help with. Thank you for all you are doing for our little learners.