Our Local Offer
1. Who is our named Special Educational Needs and Disability contact?
We have various staff members who understand about the SEND reforms including Sam Ward and Caroline Haworth. We have a SEND Champion who can provide information and guidance about EHC and transitions to statements.
2. Our ethos/mission statement for including children and young people with Special Educational Need and Disability (SEND). How do we meet the unique needs of the child?
BAPP’s ethos is very much inclusive and whilst we advocate for fully inclusive provision for children and young people of all ages and abilities, we recognise that for some people, a specialist group or service aimed at those with particular needs, can be more appropriate.
BAPP work hard to include all children and young people into their services. This can include Home Visits, answering questions either on the phone or face to face, establishing how best we can support the child or young person. This can result in good matches for the best service and so we have staff with the right skills.
BAPP have a range of services some of which are inclusive and some of which are targeted but all aimed at reaching and providing a relevant service for different children and young people including disabled children and young people.
- Targeted Holiday Playscheme is specifically for disabled children aged 5 – 19 years and their siblings. Runs in most school holidays from 9am to 3pm
- Inclusive Holiday Playscheme is an inclusive playscheme for disabled and non-disabled children aged 5 – 12 years. Runs in most school holidays from 10am – 3pm
- Family Play Support is a service tailored to individual children where access to play is reduced and children are socially excluded. We work with the whole family to ensure that any support is modelled and can be sustained after exit.
- SOFA is an inclusive activity programme which runs during 4 weeks of the summer holidays for young people aged 12 – 19 years
- The Hut Pre-school providing a playful approach to early learning for children aged from 9 months to 4.5 years, term time only, Monday to Friday
All of these services strive to meet the unique needs of the children and young people who use these services. We can come to the family home before you start using the service or meet with you so can find out more about what we can do to support and enable the service to be used. We are a flexible and open organisation with approachable, friendly staff who work hard to ensure that children are included and enjoying themselves.
3. How do we identify that a child is not meeting appropriate age related milestones and what do we do in this case? How do we find out what matters to the child and their family?
We are a child-led organisation and focus our work on supporting children’s play. We work closely with parents/carers to ensure that where there are any concerns relating to age related milestones we can discuss these together and support the family or signpost them where needed. Staff working on most services have completed the CAF/Early help training and so are able to work with families to complete the assessment where other services could be helpful. We work with children and families in supporting developmental milestones through provision of appropriate play opportunities and activities that meet their needs whether linked to the EYFS at the Pre-school.
Local Offer Contents
- Who is our named Special Educational Needs and Disability contact?
- Our ethos/mission statement for including children and young people with Special Educational Need and Disability (SEND). How do we meet the unique needs of the child?
- How do we identify that a child is not meeting appropriate age related milestones and what do we do in this case? How do we find out what matters to the child and their family?
- How do we promote positive relationships and ensure good, ongoing communication with families? How will families know what progress their children are making, how to access additional support and what they can do at home to help?
- How will we communicate with other providers who care for a child, or with providers who will be caring for the child? How do we support children to experience a smooth transition to school or a different situation?
- How do we provide an enabling environment for all the children in your care? Are there quiet areas and fully accessible spaces? What other adjustments can we make? What about the physical environment in and outside our setting?
- What qualities, skills and experience do our staff have to support a child's unique needs?
4. How do we promote positive relationships and ensure good, ongoing communication with families? How will families know what progress their children are making, how to access additional support and what they can do at home to help?
Staff communicate with parents directly where they are using a service. Staff provide feedback to parents at the end of sessions and share any concerns. Equally where parents ask for support with a particular area they are working on, we are happy to do this too. We provide information about the service including registration forms which can be sent electronically, in the post or downloaded from the BAPP website.
BAPP request the One Page Profile from school where parents give permission as this means that we can all support and help children in the same way, the way that they have asked. This ensures a consistent approach.
We let parents/carers know in advance about services and dates when they are running and encourage parents to speak to staff at any time whether before or after the service is running or at a time that is convenient to them. We encourage parents to Like BAPP on Facebook as we share success and highlight good work here which helps to promote positive relationships.
We build honest and open relationships with parents/carers and advocate for the child/young person where perhaps the adult agenda is dominating that of the child’s. We strive to ensure that the child/young person is at the centre of the service that we provide, through child-centred approaches and children being in control of their play.
We support improved relationships between parents and carers through explanation of behaviour and giving them the opportunity to see for themselves how children deal with certain situations enabling them to develop independence and resilience. We feedback to parents the positives about the child’s time in the session, continually communicating and celebrating success ad change as well as areas they can further support at home.
Staff are CAF trained and where other support is required we can signpost or support the
family to complete or refer them to other services. We liaise with Social Care and provide information about respite and other short breaks where this will be of assistance.
5. How will we communicate with other providers who care for a child, or with providers who will be caring for the child? How do we support children to experience a smooth transition to school or a different situation?
Where parents/carers have consented for information to be shared, we will either meet with
or chat over the phone to other providers, sharing tips and information that will enable them to best meet their child’s needs.
Where children in the Pre-school are moving into another early years setting or into School, we support the child through school visits and transition support including passing on Learning Journals
and Progress summaries as needed.
Where a child has used a service and moves to a different area, we are more than happy to
talk with the setting about how we have supported the child in our setting to enable a smooth transition to a new setting, sharing what has worked well. We ask parents/carers consent to share
information between commissioned providers.
6. How do we provide an enabling environment for all the children in your care? Are there quiet areas and fully accessible spaces? What other adjustments can we make? What about the physical environment in and outside our setting?
All services will endeavor to provide a range of environments which best meet the needs of
the children attending. Restrictions are sometimes in place which are out of our control e.g. in a public park however we use temporary structures to provide different environments which can then be
used for different play types.
All services have free flow play where children are free to move between spaces for different play types. There are exceptions to this in some targeted services where levels of supervision have to be
maintained to keep children safe from harm. However there is always freedom of choice within all play services.
All services take place in accessible environments where facilities may be available for us to support needs. Where we provide services in buildings, these will be accessible and have staff trained or experienced in working with disabled children or children with additional needs.
We will endeavor to provide a quiet area or space to ensure that where children are affected by noise levels, these can be reduced. However the nature of play sessions can mean that these cannot always be guaranteed throughout the session.
We will endeavor to make any adjustments to environment or buildings, even if only
temporary, to ensure an enabling environment.
7. What qualities, skills and experience do our staff have to support a child’s unique needs?
Our staff teams have a range of skills and expertise relevant to working with children and young people in a play environment including early years / playwork / youthwork qualifications, Paediatric First Aid training, Equalities training and Health and safety awareness training.
Staff will have some communication training including Makaton, BSL, PECs; Autism Awareness training and Sexual Health training.
We believe that experience is vital to quality of support which together with the appropriate training can enable staff to meet every child’s needs.
Where we are unable to support or help, we will signpost parents to services that can support them, for example the Parent Partnership Service.
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