SEN support
What is SEN Support
Every child with special educational needs should have SEN support.
This means help that is additional to or different from the support generally given to most other children and young people of the same age.
Most children and young people with SEND make progress with the extra help early years settings, schools and colleges can give from the resources they already have. This is SEN Support.
The purpose of SEN Support is to help children and young people achieve the outcomes or learning objectives set for them by their education provider in conjunction with parents, carers and the child or young person themselves.
How the law defines special educational needs
Section 20 Children and Families Act 2014 says that a child or young person has Special Educational Needs (SEN) if they have ‘a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special education provision to be made for him or her’.
These definitions will help to explain what this means:
A child or young person is considered to have a learning difficulty if they:
- have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age or
- have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post 16 institutions
In the Equality Act 2010 a person is classed as disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
- Normal day-to-day means things that people do on a regular basis, for example, washing, dressing, getting to school, and having a conversation.
- Long-term usually means the impairment should have lasted or be expected to last at least a year.
- Substantial means not minor or trivial.
- Physical impairment includes sensory difficulties such as problems with vision or hearing.
- Mental impairment includes learning difficulties, autism, speech and language difficulties, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
- Some specified medical conditions, such as HIV, multiple sclerosis and cancer are also considered as disabilities, regardless of their effect.
How support is decided
When a child or young person is identified as having SEN, the education provider should use a graduated approach.
This is a cycle of four steps:
- Assess
- Plan
- Do
- Review
These steps are repeated to make sure support remains appropriate and effective.