Area Senco's

[Guest]

How is everyone finding their area senco's, every authority is working very differently - just wondered what experiences settings have had, im and area senco and would find it interesting to get feed back from others

[AnonyMouse_1027]

Hi Lesley

 

to be honest havnt had much to do with ours at all as never really needed any help.

This term i think will be very different as we have a child with hearing problems joining us and a child with mild cerebral pausey.

so i will let you know.

[Helen]

Hi,

I've just finished the Stage 3 SENCO course, which was put together by our 3 area SENCOs. It was well-structured and tailored to our needs.

East Sussex has a Learning Support Service in addition to these SENCOs, and a visiting Special Needs teacher makes appointments to see certain children either here, or in the child's home (or both). Extra funding is available to help towards 1-1 support, and we access this funding for 2 of our children, one with autism and the other with Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome.

Is there anything else you'd like to know?

[Guest]

We have not really had area sencos here in Stockport until now. We have just found out that ours is going to be our teacher advisor. Not too sure how I feel about that. I was lead to believe that they would be different people so I feel that this might be doing it on the cheap!! Could be wrong! We haven't had a great deal of training here either for our setting sencos. The last one was a couple of weeks ago which was working with parents but before that it was a year before there was any! East Sussex seems to be fairly on the ball though!

Helen, what is Pathalogical Demand Avoidance Syndrome??? (You knew somebody would ask that!!!) I have never heard of it before!!

Linda

[Guest]

i was just going to ask the same question linda!

 

thanks everyone for your replies, its good to get a feel of whats happening in other places.

 

We opted not to have teacher advisors doing the SENCO role as well, and because we have - there is a much more defined role.

 

We have 15+ days training planned for this year,

3 days SENCO training (June and repeated in Nov)

Day 1 code of practice and paperwork, policies and procedures

Day 2 IEPs and P levels

and day 3 observation and assessment - taking into account things learned on the previous 3 days

 

signalong - 3 day course

autism - 2 day course

medical needs - half day

working with parents/child development 1 day possibly developing into 3 days

 

 

we also offer 'in house' training for the

 

Disability Discriminaton Act

and positive behaviour approach

 

I feel this is a good all round service and settings are regularly asked what thier training needs are as this infomrs our planning.

[AnonyMouse_1999]

Helen is this the syndrome that includes what is sometimes referred to as the camouflage effect. The child does not want any attention and tries to blend into the background - unable to cope with the every day demands of life. When approached they may become extremely defensive and uncooperative. Often they are socially very able but use their skills to manipulate and control -use eye contact in an attempt to be in control,verbally use distraction techniques to avoid the issue in question.React to adults interaction by shouting loudly so as not to hear - In some way related to austistic spectrum disorders but the main difference being in the area of social skills.

 

Mmm now I have type that I am probably thinking of something else all together??!!!!