From Carrie White, Early Years SEND Lead Teacher

Wow what a year - it many respects it has flown by in others it feels like it has taken a long time to get here.

A few updates from me about the team, we are shortlisting the applicants for our administrator role within the next couple of weeks and are hopeful that we can appoint someone to start early in the next academic year.  This person will be taking control of the funding and invoicing for SENIF.  Once they are trained, I am sure we will be back to the situation we were in previously when we had Julia Hanks completing this role.  Funding requests and queries will be dealt with appropriately.  As you are aware this has been very difficult for me to manage over the past nearly 2 years.  I apologise to you all again for the delays you have experienced.

The Early Years SEND Team have some team members who are term time only and they will be taking their well-deserved break.  Our year-round colleagues will be available for you, their contact details are below.

I am term time only but will be working at various points throughout the summer to catch up with funding, ensure invoices are paid and start to begin the process of ensuring it is ready to be handed over to our new staff member when they start.

Thank you all for your continued hard work and effort with the children in your care.

Kind regards,

Carrie

Summer Contacts

As many of you know we have a skeleton staff over the summer due to half of us being term time only. Cindy, Amber, and Dawn work throughout the summer.  You can contact them using the numbers/emails below.  We currently do not have year-round admin support so please contact one of those team members should you require some support.  The alternative for you is to contact the main SEN team who will pass on a message to one of our year-round staff members.

• Amber Whitefield:          07740 457990 amber.whitefield@medway.gov.uk
• Cindy Hitch:                  07740 590024 cindy.hitch@medway.gov.uk
• Dawn Adams:               07825 071405 dawn.adams@medway.gov.uk

SEN team: 01634 331123

 

Training Dates

We have a great package of training for face-to-face sessions for the next academic year.

We will relaunch our cluster briefings in Term 2 (November- December term)

The full diary of training dates will be in September's bulletin.  However, in term 1 we will be delivering:

New to role of SENCO:10th October or 17th October 2022 Whole day training: including role of SENCO, Medway council teams, graduated approach, provision map training, the EHCP process day

Provision Map 14th October 2022 (Morning session)

If you would like to book onto these courses, please email tina.newman@medway.gov.uk with the name of staff attending. We will update you in September with times and venues for this training.

Graduated Approach and EHCP Requests

As part of the graduated approach to supporting children with special educational needs it is important to implement your support plans for a period of time. Our Primary and Secondary schools are asked to put in at least 4 terms’ worth of support for a child before they apply for an EHCP needs assessment.  This is to ensure that the strategies that have been suggested have been tried for a significant period of time, reviewed and rewritten. These 4 terms are approximately the equivalent of 8 months. 

This period starts when the first Individual Education Plan (IEP) is written, the plan should be in place for 4-6 weeks and reviewed alongside parents. A new plan should then be written. This of course is great for schools who all have a similar start date for all their cohort.

In the Early Years, we have children starting at various points throughout the year, some start in some settings at a very early age and other children start with us in the year before they go to school, some even the term before they go to school! This puts us as Early Years in a tricky situation as we may not have the children every day whereas schools do. For some children who may do 1 morning session a week the amount of time it takes to settle them in will be longer than your child who does 5 full days every week.  It is therefore important to know that when we are looking at the graduated approach there is no magic number of IEPs that needs to be reviewed, there is no magic formula for definitely getting a plan as this is done on a case by case basis. The SEN panel are given the information you submit, to show evidence of a graduated approach you need to go through the assess, plan, do and review process.  Part of this process is raising the child at SENCO surgery with your EY SEND Practitioner. There needs to be sufficient evidence to show you have been supporting the child for a period of time.  This may include the support you have provided in the previous academic year, if you are a year-round setting and the child attends year-round then you have the ability to include the support you put in during the holidays too. 

Once you have gathered your evidence and you feel you are ready to submit, the Early Years SEND team are very happy to check over the information and provide feedback if you feel this would be of benefit. You can then submit this information. For children who are due to be starting school in September 2023, we would aim to have the information into the SEN assessment team by December 2022. However, if a child only starts with you in September that does not give you much evidence. So, the general rule is when you feel there is enough evidence please send it to the SEN assessment team, their email is seneducationteam@medway.gov.uk.  We are working alongside the main SEN team to look at ways we can ensure that there is feedback to settings quickly in case information appears to be missing. One of the ways to avoid this is to ask your EY SEND Practitioner to read through the application first. 

MCH Referrals 

*All forms and guidance mentioned can be accessed by clinking on this link. Referral forms are found on this link.

Please check before you make the referral that you are using the correct form otherwise the form will be rejected. Please ensure you send the completed referral form to: medch.childrenscommunity@nhs.net.

Speech and Language Yellow Pathway:

Please refer to the Pathway 4 criteria for Preschool Speech and Language document before making a referral. This document is posted on Medway Community Healthcare's webpage. Speech and Language are also key when referring a child with social communication needs.

OT Yellow Pathway

The guidance on their form states:

For children up to the age of 5 years who are not yet attending school and who require support due to difficulties with; sensory processing, fine motor, visual perceptual that is not felt to be related to any other medical condition. If the child has a known condition which is the likely cause of their difficulties, please refer to the Violet pathway. If sensory processing concerns are due to possible diagnosis of social communication disorder, please refer to the Indigo pathway.

However, we know we are unable to make a referral to Indigo so if you feel this is the route for a child in your care, please refer to the health visitors using the PHN referral form.

Physiotherapy referrals

Please use this referral form for children who are presenting with difficulties only in delayed gross motor skills. Those children presenting with delays in more than one area e.g., gross motor skills and speech and language skills should be referred to the violet pathway where they can receive a multi-disciplinary approach.

Violet Pathway

Please use this referral form for:

• Children who have a known diagnosis, chromosomal, metabolic, or genetic disorder, inborn or acquired disorders resulting in long term complex needs or disability
• Pre-school children who are presenting with a developmental delay or disorder in more than one domain. ASQ results or a developmental profile should be included with the referral where possible.
• Children who are presenting with motor difficulties and/or neurological anomalies.
• Children who are showing signs of regression of development with loss of skills.
• School aged children with significant and complex learning difficulties (who have not previously undergone medical investigations) for investigation regarding the potential of an underlying medical cause for their difficulties. Evidence of learning levels and an Educational Psychology report should be provided from the school with the referral where possible.

For ASD/ADHD please refer to Indigo Pathway.

For children presenting with delay or disorder in only one area please refer to the yellow pathway

Podiatry referrals

Please use this referral form for children who are presenting with difficulties or concerns surrounding unusual gait, pain in lower limbs, foot posture.

Funding Applications

Funding applications for SENIF can only be processed the term after the child turns 3 years old. To make an application you need to complete an application form and a provision map. Please include additional evidence such as therapy reports, IEPs, observation information, notes from SENCO surgery etc this allows panel to cross reference the support and ensure you are receiving all the child actually needs.

Please remember that you can claim for up to 15 hours and this is currently costed at £7.70 an hour. This figure was set a while back and I fully appreciate with the rising cost of living etc does not fully cover the cost of minimum wage

Invoicing

Please invoice for the previous month/months. You can invoice for a month from the first of that month.

Invoice numbers are delaying the process a lot of the time. Please can you ensure you are using the child's initials, the month and the year e.g., CW07/2022.  Invoices with just a number e.g., 56 are rejected by the finance team as the system believes it has already paid that invoice. 

There is an example invoice attached to the bulletin:

September Cohorts

I would really like to be able to have an overview of the cohorts of children you have and the level of need of those children. Please can you let me know how many children you have in your setting and how many of them you feel have some level of Special Educational Need or Disability.  I would like to know a rough breakdown of all of you children in age groups for example

Age of the child                         Number of children in cohort      Number with SEND

School September 2026           

School September 2025           

School September 2024           

School September 2023           

School aged child not yet attending school                    

I would like to collect this information from you regularly to shape my discussions with other members of the council as I am often asked what the level of need is looking like for us.  I am aware that we have movement of children so I would like to collect this from you 3 times an academic year - end of terms 1, 3 and 5 so if you could get this information to me by then via email to carrie.white@medway.gov.uk.

Local Offer

I am beginning some work with Nina Minhard our Local Offer Officer to move all the Early Years information for SEND to the local offer pages. It is my aim to provide this information in a quick and simple place that is easy to find as I know how tricky the elearningatlast webpage can be. We will keep you updated with the progress for this.

I would also like Nina to have as many links to our eettings as possible on the local offer page. I will be spending some time looking at which settings are linked, and which are currently not, and I will be in touch to ask those not linked if they would like to be.

Transition project

We are relaunching the transition project towards the end of September. We are on the lookout for Early Years Settings who wish to join the working parties to help set up a transition charter between Early Years Providers and schools if you are interested in this please email me at carrie.white@medway.gov.uk.

Safeguarding training

The Early Years SEND team all completed their safeguarding training recently.  We were shown around the Medway Children's Safeguarding Partnership team's website. On the website they offer free courses on:

• Abuse Related to Beliefs in Witchcraft
• Autism Awareness
• Bullying and Cyberbullying
• Child Sexual Exploitation - Level 1
• Child Sexual Exploitation - Level 2
• Domestic Abuse
• Domestic Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence
• Eating Disorders
• Emotional Abuse
• Equality and Diversity
• Framework for the Assessment of Children and their Families
• Gangs and Youth Violence
• GDPR - Core - For Staff
• Hate Crime
• Hidden Harm: Parental Substance Misuse, Parental Mental Ill-Health and Domestic Abuse
• Honour-Based Violence and Forced Marriage
• Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery
• Information Sharing and Consent - for People Working with Children
• Keeping Good Records
• Loss and Bereavement
• Medication Awareness and Safe Handling of Medicines
• Mental Capacity Act
• Neglect
• Online Safety - Risks to Children
• Online Safety for Parents and Carers
• Physical Abuse
• Private Fostering
• Safeguarding (Awareness) - for Higher Education
• Safeguarding Against Radicalisation - The Prevent Duty
• Safeguarding Children - for Education - Level 1
• Safeguarding Children - Level 1
• Safeguarding Children - Level 2
• Safeguarding Children in Sport
• Safeguarding Children with Disabilities
• Safer Recruitment
• Self-Harm
• Sexual Abuse and Recognising Grooming
• Substance Misuse
• Suicide Prevention - Risks and Awareness
• Teenage Pregnancy
• Understanding Behaviour of Children and Young People
• Understanding Child Development

To set up an account to enable you to access this free training you need to email kscmptraining@kent.gov.uk. All courses are certificated, and you have a 4-week window to complete the course, if you do not complete it in the 4-week window you will be charged £40. These courses are for parents or carers as well as professionals.