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Strategy for special educational needs and/or disability (SEND)

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Local area SEND strategy 2019 - 2022

"The best start in life."

Darlington’s local area SEND Strategy 2019-2022 for improving outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) giving them the ‘best start in life’ outlines the vision and the main objectives for supporting Darlington’s children and young people with SEND and their families.

  1. We are committed to giving all our children and young people with SEND the right support that they need at the right time and in the right place. We want to identify needs at a very early stage so that the right support can be identified. This will ensure that children and young people with SEND can have as many opportunities as every child and young person to achieve, develop and enjoy a fulfilling life.
  2. Children and young people with SEND need to have good quality support in their mainstream and local settings so that they can achieve their academic potential and maintain their self-esteem and confidence.
  3. We believe that children and young people should be educated in their local community. This will help children and young people to make local friends, socialise, go to local leisure activities and have opportunities to develop their independence. This will support young people to prepare for independent living and to go on to training and work and socialise locally.
  4. Not all our children and young people with SEND develop as they should particularly in Key Stage 4 (secondary age). It will be important that we improve this by ensuring that there is the right support identified, that the teaching they receive is meeting their needs and that this is kept regularly under review.
  5. In order for all this to happen successfully, we all must communicate and talk with each other. We need to ensure that we work closely together with parents/carers, children and young people and education settings in all that we do. It will be important for us to produce documents, policies and ways of working together. This is called co-production.
  6. It is important that any monies are used wisely. This means making the best use of staff, buildings and resources. We must ensure that with the increase in the numbers of children and young people with SEND, that all our resources are used effectively.

These are our six main objectives.

The Darlington Local Area SEND Strategy will steer the work of the SEND partnership in Darlington through to 2022 to provide the best possible outcomes for children and young people with SEND and their families.

The Darlington Local Area SEND Strategy [pdf document].

The SEND Strategy was approved by cabinet in March 2019

SEND Funding

Darlington Borough Council is committed to providing additional resources for children and young people with special educational needs and disability (SEND) to supplement schools’ own resources (not instead of them).

We will allocate funding alongside the SEND Ranges. The SEND Ranges have been introduced to ensure that there is a ‘graduated response’ to identifying and planning to meet each child and young person’s individual needs across the SEND Code of Practice 4 areas.

This means that funding is directly related to the needs of the child/young person. Schools will have to demonstrate how they are spending the notional £6,000 spend on those children and young people who are on Ranges 1-3 before they receive any additional financial support.

Additional funding will be allocated if appropriate to those children and young people who are on Ranges 4-7. This will lead to a greater accountability and consistency of funds.

SEND Travel Assistance policy

The introduction of a SEND Travel Assistance Policy was recommended following the outcome of a public consultation exercise with service users, stakeholders and the wider public;

  • the proposed changes would help to ensure that travel assistance support could continue to be provided to all eligible children and young people in line with increasing demand and budgetary pressures.
  • the policy provided the opportunity to offer a more flexible range of options to families and improve the quality of the service provision.
  • and that the policy would ensure that children and young people with SEND did not miss out on the opportunity to develop independent travel skills.

SEND Travel Assistance Policy [pdf document]

Related documents

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