Woodpeckers Preschool

How does Woodpeckers Pre-School know if children need extra help and what should I do if I think my child may have special education needs and/or disabilities? 

• At Woodpeckers Pre-School every child is treated as a unique individual and each child has a key person. The key person’s role is to develop a trusting, sensitive relationship with parents and children to enable respectful sharing of information.
• Before your child joins Woodpeckers, you will be offered a home visit and trial session. This offers us the opportunity to talk to you about your child’s development to date and plan a smooth transition for them into our pre-school.
• If your child already has an identified special educational need and/or disability and/or an Educational Healthcare Plan, you will be encouraged to share reports and contact details of other healthcare professionals with us so we can work in partnership with these agencies to support your child in our setting.
• Once your child has settled at Pre-school, observations and formative assessments will take place to ensure that he/she is making expected progress for their age and stage of development
• These observations will be tracked against the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework using the Birth to 5 non statutory guidance. This information helps us to produce summative assessments which shows progress in the prime areas, between 24 and 36 months and prime and specific areas between 36 and 60 months. If your child shows a delay in development in the prime areas, a main focus will stay in these areas until they are securely working in these areas.
• If your child is under 36 months when they join Woodpeckers, a progress check at 2 years will be completed with you as soon as possible.
• If we have concerns about your child’s progress then the Key person and/or possibly the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) will raise this with you.
• If you have any concerns about your child’s development, you can discuss these with your key person at any time or alternatively, you can discuss your concerns in private with the SENCO if you wish.

• Your key person will be keen to talk to you when you drop off and pick up your child at Woodpeckers. These informal conversations between yourself and key person offer a lovely opportunity for parents/carers and key person’s to discuss children’s progress and current interests as well as offer advice on how to promote and support your child’s learning and development at home.  It also offers the opportunity to ensure that we are both working together, making sure we are sharing routines and strategies so children receive consistency both at home and in the setting.
• When your child starts at Woodpeckers, we will set up a Tapestry Online Learning Journal for your child. This will include photographs and videos and a written assessment about Learning and Development and how your child is being supported in the setting as well as ways you can support them at home.
• If your child appears to be behind expected levels, or where your child’s progress gives cause for concern, your key person and/or SENCO will discuss these with you.
• Your key person and/or SENCO will share with you what strategies they have already put in place to support your child and talk to you about the impact of this on their progress.
• These initial discussions form part of the ‘graduated approach system’ we use for identifying, assessing and responding to children with SEND. This means using a step by step response through the various levels of intervention which are:

                      Discussion of concern;

                      Targeted support – Individual Learning Plans

                      Educational Health and Care Plan (EHC)

• This is a continuous cycle of assess, plan, do and review to ensure children with SEND are progressing – you will be part of the planning and review process at all times.

• Your key person will observe your child’s interests, where they like to play (indoors or outside) and how they like to play (Characteristics of Learning) to plan how they can support your child’s learning and development to promote the Prime and Specific areas of the EYFS. This individual planning approach, together with flexible daily routines offering long periods of child initiated play (both indoors and outdoors) make it possible for the EYFS Framework to be adapted to meet your child’s needs.
• We may invite a member of the local authority, Kent County Council’s Equality & Inclusion (E&I) Team to visit the setting to ensure we are doing our very best to meet the needs of your child and that the learning environment is suitably adapted to meet the needs of all children.
• The Equality & Inclusion adviser is able to suggest possible referral routes including Early Years Local Inclusion Forum Team meeting (LIFT). The referral will be made by the SENCO at the pre-school who will share this with you and ask for your signed consent to share the information with the local authority (KCC) Specialist Teaching & Learning Service (STLS). They may also ask for permission to share any other relevant reports, e.g. from a Paediatrician or Speech Therapist.
• All members of the Early Years LIFT group have to sign a confidentiality agreement to say that any discussions that are held in the meeting must not be shared with anyone outside the room.
• The needs of your child cannot be discussed at the Early Years LIFT meeting unless you have signed a Parental Consent Form and had the opportunity to share your thoughts and concerns on the form.
• At the Early Years LIFT meeting, the SENCO will share the needs of your child and explain what has been tried to date to enable progress. Other settings may suggest further strategies that can be tried, these could be:             

• Support for you as a family.
• Access to children centre groups offered.
• A further visit from the E&I Team.
• The nursery/pre-school may be offered training pertinent to your child’s needs.
• Or it may be decided that an Early Years Specialist Teacher should arrange to visit the nursery/pre-school and meet with you after observing your child and considering their next steps.

• The outcomes of the Early Years LIFT meeting will be shared with you by the SENCO. This will then enable targets to be set for your child and a plan will be prepared with you. This is called the Individual Educational Plan. It is reviewed regularly and the next steps in your child’s learning journey planned together.

• Woodpeckers uses a variety of different teaching strategies to support children with additional needs and learning difficulties including visual prompts, the use of Makaton sign language and individual and small group activities.
• In addition to your child’s learning journal, your child will have targeted support, in the form of an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) written by your key person, SENCO and yourselves (the parents/carers) or by an outside agency, such as Speech and Language therapists or the Early Years Specialist Teacher. These IEPs are written using SMART targets (Specific, Measurable, Accessible, Realistic/Relevant and Time-bound).
• We endeavour to involve your child as much as possible, enabling them to make choices and engage in activities/experiences that are of interest to them. Through ongoing observations and knowing your child, we will have a clear understanding of what your child likes and the level of involvement.

The term ‘additional needs’ is used to indicate that a child requires extra support or services so that they can fully participate – this could be a result of a temporary change in circumstances or it could be an on-going issue, eg a medical need which does not affect children’s ability to learn.  Children with ‘additional’ needs may or may not have special educational needs but probably do need extra support to make the effective progress.  A child with additional needs may :

• have health care needs
• have delayed development
• a particular gift
• a disability
• problems arising from abuse, trauma, loss or grief
• belong to a group that may be disadvantaged, eg EAL, gypsy/Roma traveller

If your child had an additional need(s), we would adapt our practice to ensure their needs (like all children) were met.  This may mean changing or extending our care routines, deployment and number of staff, the environment or helping families to access support from other agencies as well as adapting our teaching strategies.

• We aim to create a calm, yet stimulating environment for all children supported by visual prompts, visual timetables, sensory play as well as quiet, comfortable areas.
• Wherever possible, adaptions to the environment will be made to ensure the setting is accessible to all children and families.
• To help us audit our environment and put the right support and interventions in place, we use an Audit Tool called Best Practice Guidance for the Early Years to ensure we are offering the best support to your child.
• Partnership working is at the core of our work at Woodpeckers, and we are here not only to support your child, but also to offer you and your family support as well. Our open-door policy, ensures your key person and the SENCO are available to talk to you at any time to offer support and guidance for your family as well as your child.  This may be in the form of training courses, services offered by the Children’s Centre and support through Early Help.

• Your key person will aim to talk to you every day and share information on your child’s progress, celebrating wow moments and explaining how they have been supporting your child during the day. If you are not able to drop your child off in the mornings or pick them up, we are happy to agree an alternative method of communicating with you.
• We offer private parent consultations to parents/carers once a year, both in the evenings and during the day. However, we have an ‘open door’ policy and are happy to talk to you at any time if you have a concern about your child’s progress.

• Key person’s update children’s online learning journals (Tapestry) every term to assess children’s progress and plan ‘next steps’ for their learning and development following their characteristics of learning (the way in which they like to learn) and their interests/preferred learning environments (indoors/outdoors).
• Online Learning Journals ensures that you are regularly up to date with your child’s progress and you are also able to upload your own photographs and observations to share with key persons. This is true partnership working, sharing information about children’s interests and ‘wow’ moments at pre-school as well as at home!
• If your child has an additional IEP, these will be reviewed regularly with you.
• At the end of each term, the Supervisor carries out Summative Assessments across the whole EYFS framework with the SENCO to review all children’s progress and development in the setting. This information is shared with parent/carers at Parent Consultations.
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• When activities and outings are planned, differentiation is used to ensure activities/outings are accessible across all ages and stages of development. It is always extremely important to us that we are inclusive for everyone and all children are able to access activities and outings.  If we are unable to find a solution to ensure activities/outings are accessible to everyone, we will look to change the activity, venue or outing to ensure everyone is included.

• Our main building is a single-story building with ramps and disabled toilet area.

Transitions to new settings or Primary Schools are extremely important for children with SEND and we are happy to support children and families in the following ways:

• Transition meetings
• Inviting new key person’s/teacher’s/SENCO’s into Woodpeckers to visit children.
• Written summary of children learning and development, including other important information, such as other agencies involved in your child’s care.
• Key Person to support visits to settings/Primary School

Monitoring our effectiveness of our SEND provision is extremely important to us.  We aim to collect information from a wide range of sources, target plan reviews, staff and management meetings, parental and external agencies views, inspections and complaints.  This information is collated, evaluated and reviewed at least yearly.

• If you are considering registering your child at Woodpeckers Pre-School, please email Mandy Swift or Sarah Bartholomew or call us  to make an appointment to visit our setting.

• Parents/carers are welcome to contact us at any time via email  or verbally if they have any compliments or complaints.
• Our Complaints Policy clearly states the procedure to be followed in the event of a complaint.
• Each year, we ask parents/carers to complete our annual questionnaire. The results from this questionnaire are shared with parents/carers.