If you have any questions or queries regarding Special Educational Needs, please see link below to the Staffordshire Local Offer which contains  details of help and answers to your questions.

Meet the SEND Team

Mrs Gemma Simpson is River View's Assistant Headteacher Responsible for Inclusion.

Mrs Melanie Hutchinson is the school's Family Support Manager and together, they offer a very holistic approach towards meeting the individual needs of children and their families.

SEND Documentation

 Please follow this link to our SEN Information report: 

School SEN details- Staffordshire County Council.

At River View Primary and Nursery School both Staff and Governors place Special Needs at the centre of its whole philosophy.

• We aim to work with parents, children and support agencies to make a positive difference to all.
• We provide our children with a challenging education which meets their academic, physical, social, emotional and moral needs.
• We aim to raise the aspirations and expectations for all pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

The staff in school work closely with parents and other agencies to ensure that the needs of all our children are met within school.

At River View we define special educational needs as:

"A child or young person has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. A learning difficulty or disability is a significantly greater difficulty with learning than the majority of others of the same age. Special educational provision means educational or training provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally for others of the same age in a mainstream setting in England..... Health care provision and social care provision which educates or trains a child or young person is to be treated as special educational provision." SEND Code of Practice 2014

The SEND Code of Practice (2014) identifies four broad areas of Special Educational Need:

• Communication and Interaction
• Cognition and Learning
• Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties
• Sensory and/or Physical Needs.

All children have access to a differentiated curriculum, and our primary focus is on all children receiving high-quality teaching within their classes. The SEND team offers support and advice to class teachers in regard to strategies, prompts and scaffolds to support children within the classroom.

Early identification of Special Educational Needs and prompt intervention is a focus of the SEND team, while also taking into account and following the "Assess-Plan-Do-Review" cycle promoted within the SEND Code of Practice (2014). There is a clear process and procedure in place within school to facilitate this and all children's academic progress is closely monitored and tracked.

We work with a range of professionals in order to support all children in our care. These professionals include: Educational Psychologists, Hearing Impaired Service, Physical Disability Support Services, Behaviour Support, Specialist Educational Support Services, Local Assessment Team, Single Point of Access, School Nurses, Diabetic Nurses, Community Paediatricians, Midland Psychology, Community Speech and Language Therapists, Autism Outreach, CAMHS, Local Support Team, Social Services and others.

SEND Termly Learning Conferences

For the past two years, we have offered the parents/carers of children with additional needs the opportunity to attend an extended Termly Learning Conference. We have found this a fantastic opportunity to discuss the personalised paperwork that supports each child's needs. 

SEND Interventions

Interventions are selected following careful assessment of individual strengths and needs and form part of the Assess–Plan–Do–Review (APDR) process. Interventions are regularly monitored and reviewed to ensure they remain appropriate, effective and responsive to pupil progress.

Our intervention offer supports pupils across the four broad areas of need identified within the SEND Code of Practice:

Communication and Interaction

Supporting speech, language, communication and social interaction skills.

Cognition and Learning

Supporting literacy, numeracy, memory, processing and learning skills.

Social, Emotional and Mental Health

Supporting emotional wellbeing, resilience, self-regulation and social development.

Sensory and/or Physical Needs

Supporting sensory processing, regulation, motor development and physical access to learning.

Our Approach

All interventions are delivered by trained staff and adapted to meet individual pupil needs. Interventions may be delivered individually, in small groups or within whole-class provision depending on the intended outcomes and needs of the child.

The interventions aim to:

• Remove barriers to learning.
• Develop independence and confidence.
• Improve communication and interaction skills.
• Promote emotional wellbeing and self-regulation.
• Support access to the curriculum.
• Accelerate progress towards individual and academic outcomes.
• Prepare children for the next stage of education and life beyond school.

Assess-Plan-Do-Review (APDR) Individual Educational Plans (IEP)

All children on the school's SEND record have a termly APDR IEP with specific targets. These documents will be shared with you termly, and the children's progress also discussed with parents. There will be an expectation within the APDR IEP that parents and carers will support children by helping them at home as appropriate. All children on the school's record at SEND 2 will either have weekly small group or an individual session focusing on their targets. All children on the school's record at SEND 3 or above, or with a speech and language target, will receive 3 weekly sessions with a member of staff to work on their APDR IEP targets.

Parents of children with SEND can receive free and impartial advice and support from Staffordshire SEND Family Partnership. Please use the following website address to access their site: https://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/education/welfareservice/SpecialEducationalNeeds/spps/home.aspx

To help support your child with the correct pronunciation of sounds, please watch this video where 5 year old Sylvie will demonstrate how to say each sound.