SENCO and SEN Staff
Our SENCO is Mrs Emma Woodhouse.
More details of the SENCO’s role can be found in the SEN Policy which you can find in the School Policies section of our website.
Other staff with specialist expertise:
Listening Matters Listeners are Mrs Rachel Kerton and Miss Gemma Threadkell.
Nurture Group – Mrs Barbara Weightman, Miss Gemma Threadkell, Mrs Helen Burke
Behaviour Support – Getting Along – all support staff
Bereavement Support Leader is Miss Sonia Cook
School Counsellor is Mrs Jackie Dobson
Pastoral Manager – Annie Docherty
External Specialists and Other Bodies
The school enjoys good working relationships with a wide range of people who provide services to children with SEND and their families.
The external specialists may:
- Act in an advisory capacity
- Extend expertise of school staff
- Provide additional assessment
- Support a child directly
- Suggest statutory assessment is advisable
- Consult with all parties involved with the child
These include:
- Durham County Council Local Offer
- Durham SEND Information, Advice and Support Service
- School Nurse
- Speech and Language Therapy
- Behaviour Support
- CAMHS
- One Point
- Educational Psychology Service
- Learning Difficulties and Disabilities Support Service
- Occupational Therapy
- EWEL
- Crisis Response
- Cognition and Learning
- Autism & Social Communication Team
How We Secure Specialist Expertise
Our Additional Needs Budget is used to support children and young people with SEN. We also contribute towards our Community of Learning budget to increase the capacity to support our most vulnerable children.
This is used to support children and young people with SEND by:
Our notional budget for SEND has been allocated to provide adults who can undertake specific 1:1 and small group support in areas such as intensive interventions (reading; phonics), improving social and communication skills (Getting Along; LM), and other additional academic or pastoral support.
This support always takes place with the full involvement of both children and parents.
Elements of this funding is also used for the provision of appropriate resources which children with additional learning needs may find beneficial, and training which supports individual or all staff.
Staff have recently taken part in Talk of the Primary School (supporting Speech, Language and Communication needs) and Attachment training to support vulnerable children with specific difficulties.
If a child has complex special educational needs, we could also receive additional funding from the Local Authority to meet the agreed outcomes