special educational needs & disability (send)

Academic SEND Provisions

We have a large provision to offer all students who attend Darrick Wood School, as part of our universal, targeted, and specialist support. Our teachers are trained on a regular basis on all areas of SEND. Our Learning Support Assistants work across all year groups, subjects, and settings, alongside attending regular training, to ensure the highest quality of support. Some of our Learning Support Assistants, under guidance from the SENCo and the SEN Leadership Team, deliver academic interventions in addition to time spent in lessons.

Communication and Language / Sensory Provision

The NHS commission a Speech and Language Therapist to Darrick Wood School for our children with EHCPs, and some support assisted by our SALT Higher Level Teaching Assistant for non-EHCP children. With the NHS, we run a variety of interventions across speech development, receptive and expressive identification and therapeutic work, and literacy and language interventions. Some of our ELSAs, HLTAs, and LSAs, have had training and development in this area as well. This means we are able to provide social stories and scenarios to all our children with a social communication need. The SENCO supports in providing training for the wider school community, ensuring strategies are used within classrooms to meet sensory and language needs.

Social, Emotional, Mental Health / Sensory Provision

Darrick Wood School is delighted to have well trained, passionate, and dedicated staff, who can support in meeting your child’s emotional and social needs. Our team of ELSAs provide support that aids with reflection, intervention, and positivity, to enable your child to learn in school in the most successful way possible; they provide transitional group work and follow up 1:1 sessional work with children who need guidance on stress-triggering elements in school, such as friendships, emotional wellbeing, and managing anxiety. We have a sensory area, where children can have space to process their thoughts and emotions in a peaceful space.

Access to the ELSAs and the sensory space is only granted by the SENCo or a Deputy SENCo. Those with EHCPs are prioritised. There is a robust tier system that assesses if your child needs intervention in this area and a staggered approach offered to ensure the right support is provided at the right time. Parents and carers are not able to make direct requests for access to the ELSA and sensory spaces; all children are assessed first.

We also have a dedicated Children Looked After mentor, who works closely with the Year 7 Team and the SENCo, as part of the extended transition that our most vulnerable children need to settle into life at secondary school.

We also meet termly as a multi-disciplinary team, with the SEN Leadership Team, Year Teams, Safeguarding Teams, etc. meeting to discuss and highlight children and offer open discussions about their needs and how to meet and manage them effectively. These meetings help to coordinate the level of support given to each year group across the School.