'It wasn't too bad - not as difficult as I thought it was going to be!' says Val James, a special educational needs co-ordinator, about helping to plan the special needs policy for the private nursery where she works. The new SEN Code of Practice to be implemented in January 2002, postponed from this month, will include early years settings for the first time.
Val reflects, 'Planning the policy helped us all to focus on how we intend to include children with special educational needs. We asked the parents for their input and that gave them confidence that we are taking our responsibilities seriously, as well as helping us as practitioners to see a viewpoint we're not always aware of.'
This approach by Val's nursery to writing the SEN policy follows the suggestions in the new Code of Practice, which strongly emphasise both teamwork and the empowerment of parents. These should lead to greater commitment to the policy by all.
If your setting needs to plan an SEN policy, work out a timetable giving plenty of opportunity for thought.
* Arrange a meeting involving everybody, including parents and any relevant outside agents such as social services, health services, educational welfare services and so on.
* Before the meeting, circulate any documentation that is relevant to planning SEN policies.
* At the meeting, discuss each part of the policy carefully. You may need more meetings to complete the draft document since it is unlikely the whole policy will be planned in one session.
* Write up the draft document, with everything that was agreed at the meetings. Before the next meeting, circulate it to everyone, as questions often arise from a 'fresh' reading.
* At the next meetings, finalise and approve the policy document and fix a date for its implementation. Book a meeting for its first review.
* Distribute it to the parents and other interested parties.
* At the policy review meeting, be prepared to make changes. Putting your policy into practice will highlight any gaps and problems. Agree changes and issue the revised policy to staff and parents as soon as possible.
What to include
You should include in your policy the objectives of and arrangements for provision for children with SEN, the admission arrangements for the children, and any specialism your setting may have to offer, such as a member of staff with a specialist qualification, or access to a specialist facility.
So, you will need to consider:
* who will carry out the identifying and assessing of a child, where and when
* your allocation of resources - what, how much, when, where and who
* where, when, how, and who will be involved in reviewing a child's special educational needs
* how you will make sure that a child has the opportunities and experiences of the full early years curriculum
* when and how you will review your policy and decide its strengths and weaknesses, how you will address problems and sort them out
* the arrangements for dealing with complaints about your SEN provision, making sure that a complaint will be fairly and thoroughly addressed (this is particularly important for parents).
As well as meeting the needs of the children, your policy must address the needs of the adults involved, including staff, parents and outside agents.
So you should also consider:
* your arrangements for staff training in the area of SEN
* how you make use of outside agencies and support services
* your partnership with parents - how you make them aware of the parent partnership services and/or independent parental support, how you inform them of their rights and their child's rights and how they can contact any parental support agencies
* your links with schools, childminding networks and other early years settings.
'Following a structure like this and taking our time helped us all to thrash out what we needed in our policy,' says Val. 'No doubt we'll be changing and improving it as we go along, but we've got the basic format in place and we feel able now to implement the code, come January.'
Copies of the new SEN Code of Practice will go to all schools and early education settings and copies will be available on request from PROLOG, telephone 0845 60 222 60.
Collette Drifte is a former deputy head specialising in working with children with special needs. She is now an author and trainer
