SEN - Local Offer

At St James’ all children regardless of ability will be given equal encouragement and respect appropriate to their needs to ensure they reach their full potential. We have a team of experienced SEN practitioner's who are led by the settings SENCO (Debbie Gillibrand) whose role and responsibilities are to work alongside the Early Years Practitioners to:

  • Ensure liaison with parents and other professionals in respect of children’s special educational needs
  • Advise and support other practitioners in the setting as appropriate
  • Ensure that appropriate individual education plans are in place
  • Ensure that relevant background information about individual children with special educational needs is collected, recorded and updated.

Special educational needs – what does it mean?

The term ‘special educational needs’ has a legal definition. Children with special educational needs all have learning difficulties or disabilities that make it harder for them to learn than most children of the same age. These children may need extra or different help from that given to other children of the same age.

The law says that children do not have learning difficulties just because their first language is not English. Of course some of these children may have learning difficulties as well.

Children with special educational needs may need extra help because of a range of needs, such as in thinking and understanding, physical or sensory difficulties, emotional and behavioural difficulties, or difficulties with speech and language or how they relate to and behave with other people.

If we feel that your child would benifit from extra support, of course, the parent / Guardian will be the first person we discuss our concerns with. Following this, our first step would be to requst for support and advise from our area SENCO, Sara Dell.

Local Offer

Please view our Local Offer document. This contains information about what St James’provides for children and their families with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND)

Download our Local Offer Here