This resource has been developed with our partners in Health and Social Care, to accompany Sefton’s Graduated Approach Toolkit. This aims to support practitioners across Sefton’s Schools and Educational Settings in meeting the needs and achieving the best possible outcomes for our children and young people. It will support mainstream schools in their excellent practice by sharing expectations and will help settings identify additional avenues for support when a child or young person needs it. This document embodies the statutory expectations of the Children and Families Act 2014 including the implementation of both the Graduated Approach and the Graduated Response to support our children and young people with SEND.
Sefton is a fully inclusive authority and expects all school settings to promote a positive ethos of inclusion which is supported and driven through Senior Leadership Teams. Schools are expected to welcome all pupils with diverse needs with care and understanding, and to fully support all pupils and their families, during their time in the setting.
According to The SEND Code of Practice: 0-25 years (January 2015), the Graduated Approach is explained in the following terms:
“Where a pupil is identified as having SEN, schools should take action to remove barriers to learning and put effective special educational provision in place. This SEN support should take the form of a four-part cycle through which earlier decisions and actions are revisited, refined, and revised with a growing understanding of the pupil’s needs and of what supports the pupil in making good progress and securing good outcomes. This is known as the graduated approach.”
The four-part cycle is referred to as the ‘Assess, Plan, Do, Review’ cycle. To support best practice and implementation of the Graduated Approach across Sefton, we have developed a Graduated Approach Toolkit. This consists of detailed provision maps, supportive documents, links to learning and is further underpinned by a detailed training offer to Sefton schools. We encourage practitioners to adopt the provision maps as part of their school offer, so that we can support consistency of approach and expectation for SEND pupils and share best practice and known evidence-based interventions to all professionals working in Sefton settings and schools. The Toolkit, together with this document, is intended to support school practitioners in the implementation of the Graduated Response in Sefton and in meeting the statutory expectations placed upon schools. This document provides practical guidance and information for schools and other professionals about the Graduated Approach and Graduated Response in Sefton, together with the range of services that are available to support our children and young people within our locality.
The aspiration behind this document is that pupils, families, and schools feel confident that needs can be met in all our local schools, at all levels of needs. Information for parents can be found on the SEND Support page on the on Sefton’s Local Offer.