help needed for sen review meeting

[tawny222]

Hi All,

I am new to the role of SENCo and I have been asked to lead a termly review meeting for the first time. Has anyone got any agenda tips as well as helpful advice as I am very nervous.

Many thanks

[blondie]

Review On the agreed date, the practitioner and SENCO working with the child’s parents, and taking into account the child’s views, should: •

Review the effectiveness of the support

• Review the impact of the support on the child’s progress

• Evaluate the impact and quality of support In the light of child’s progress, they agree:

• Any changes to the outcomes

• Any changes to the support and

• Next steps

 

SEN support: what next? At each cycle the key person and SENCO consider, with the parents, and informed by the child’s views, whether the child is making expected progress, and whether:

• Special educational provision and SEN support continue to be required

• To revisit the cycle in more detail or with increased frequency

• More specialist assessment may be called for

• Staff require more specialist advice or the child requires more specialist support

• More specialist expertise is needed to inform reasonable adjustments and access arrangements for a disabled child

• The child requires an EHC needs assessment

 

Hope that helps?

[tawny222]

Many thanks for your reply much appreciated

[Upsy Daisy]

Before considering what support should be in place, you need to consider the barriers to learning you are trying to overcome. What is preventing this child from making progress? There is no point in implementing support without fully understanding the need it is supposed to be meeting.

Once you have agreed what the barriers to the child's learning are, you can then evaluate the support that has been in place and its effectiveness in enabling the child to overcome those barriers. You can then decide what should continue and what needs to change.

 

When planning changes to support, listen carefully to the parents. They have a wealth of information about their child on tap for you. There may be strategies you would like to use that have been tried before and failed. Work out with them why they may have failed in the past and whether it would be useful to try them again, tweak them to make them more likely to work or just not bother with them because they are unlikely to work or likely to be counter-productive.

 

Make sure you use the parents' names instead of calling them Mum and Dad and address them as equal partners in the process of supporting their child, not a passive audience.

Tell them it is your first meeting and ask for their feedback

Good luck x

[tawny222]

Thank you very good advice

[playgroup1]

All of the above and set a start and finish time and try to keep to it! These review meetings are prone to drag on with information that while it might be interesting is not always pertinent to the review.

I try to keep our reviews to an hour, mainly because they take me away from being in ratio, and because other professionals who might be contributing are working to a schedule too

. I also offer a cup of tea or coffee to make the atmosphere welcoming. Something that doesn't happen any more in council held meetings "because of the cuts", though I'm sure a hot drink can't cost that much!

[tawny222]

That's a good tip, a good cup of tea works wonders.

Thank you