Management Information Sheet

The SEND Advisory Team is part of the Education Inclusion Service. It includes a Senior SEND Adviser, two SEND Advisers, an Early Years Inclusion Lead and ten Early Years Inclusion Advisers.

The purpose of the SEND Advisers is to be the champion for children and young people with SEND initially in maintained schools and academies. We are responsible for providing SEND advice, support and challenge to education providers in accordance with the Equality Act 2010, the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND Code of Practice 2015.

Support will be offered through the cluster model with each SEND Adviser taking responsibility for a caseload of clusters.

Mainstream maintained schools and academies must:

• Use their best endeavours.
• Ensure that Children and Young People (CYP) with SEND engage in the activities of the school alongside their peers.
• Designate a teacher to be the SENCO.
• Inform parents when they are making special education provision for their child.
• Prepare and publish a SEN information report, including access arrangements for disabled children.
• Cooperate with the local authority in reviewing the provision that is available.
• Cooperate with the local authority in developing the Local Offer.
• Make reasonable adjustments, including the provision of auxiliary aids and services for disabled children. These duties are anticipatory.
• consider applications from parents of children who have SEN but do not have an EHC plan and must not refuse to admit a child who has SEN because they do not feel able to cater for those needs.

Details of the support we can offer is set out below:

To CYP and Families:

• Consult with CYP and their families, to ensure that our SEND strategy is informed by their views, wishes and feelings.
• Provide information and signposting to parent/carers of CYP with SEND (and young people themselves where appropriate).

To Clusters:

• Termly SEND Cluster Coordinators Meetings.
• Monitor and challenge the effective use of Cluster high needs top up funding.

To Schools:

• Provide a designated SEND Adviser phone and/or email service.
• Promote the Inclusion Self-Evaluation Framework.
• Provide information, guidance and signposting for schools in relation to their statutory obligations, funding, support services and the Local Offer.
• Undertake time limited intervention work with specific schools, in partnership with colleagues in the School Intervention and Inspection Service

To Other Professionals:

• Work in partnership with other professionals to ensure that the needs of CYP with SEND are being met.

Next Steps:

We would like to ensure that the work we do to support schools is informed by SENDCos and other school staff. We are therefore asking that you complete the attached questionnaire regarding SEND Provision by Monday 17th October. You will note that some questions are in relation to training needs and the type of support that you would find most useful from the SEND Advisory Team.

Contacts

• Jenny Mitchell - Senior SEND Adviser - City and South Cluster Groups
• Steph Askew - SEND Adviser - North, East and Broadland Cluster Groups
• Andrew Severn - SEND Adviser - West and Breckland Cluster Groups
• The above advisors are based at: Norwich Professional Development Centre, 144 Woodside Rd., Norwich, NR7 9QA

We can be contacted by telephone 01603 303343 or by email.

Karen Leggett - Early Years Inclusion Lead, who manages a team of ten Early Years Inclusion Advisors can be contacted at: Early Years and Child Care, Woodside Centre, Whitard Road, Norwich NR7 9XD or on 01603 222900 or 01603 222300 Option 3.