On January 4^th the Government requested that schools close for the majority of pupils, apart from for vulnerable pupils and children of key workers.  Schools across West Sussex responded with the same professionalism and commitment as in the first lockdown back in March 2020.

Many pupils and staff may be experiencing anxiety and/or low mood as a result of loss or the ongoing uncertainty. Although it is not yet clear when the majority of pupils will be returning to school, you might find it useful to access many of the resources developed by WSCC to support pupil emotional wellbeing as you continue to offer support to families remotely and begin planning for the return to school.

The WSCC Educational Psychology Team developed guidance with links to useful resources which is available on West Sussex Services for Schools

You can hear how one school used a range of WSCC resources to plan their emotional wellbeing support for pupils returning to school in our Tools for Schools Celebration of Inclusion

There are two further resources that will also be of help at this challenging time:

The West Sussex Education for Safeguarding (E4S) curriculum has been developed in partnership between WSCC School Effectiveness, Contextual Safeguarding team and Public Health to support schools and settings to meet the Department for Education’s statutory requirement to develop and embed a universal needs-based Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum.  The E4S curriculum is designed to enable schools to develop a needs based curriculum for all its pupils and the online toolkit contains a wealth of free to access resources including emotional health and wellbeing resource cards.

Tools for Schools is a website that has been developed with schools, settings, parent carers and professionals. The website provides schools and settings with information and advice on how the additional needs of children and young people can be met. The social, emotional and mental health section and the wellbeing in West Sussex section include links to relevant information and advice.

There are also several teams within WSCC for schools to contact for additional advice and support including:

The Educational Psychology Team

The SEND and Inclusion Link Advisory Team: (North) Claire Prince, (Mid) Gemma Humphrey, (West) Louise Burgess, (South) Rachel Mcdonald-Taylor

The Autism and Social Communication Team 

The Learning and Behaviour Advisory Team

The Sensory Support Team

The School Effectiveness Team: General enquiries:, South: Victoria Ludlow, Mid: Ian Rogers, West: Claire Conley-Harper, North: Rebecca Vaughan-Barrett

Below are links to recent blog posts:

The latest newsletter from EMTAS, the Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service, is now available. 

This term’s newsletter is an expanded edition, incorporating extra advice and guidance around supporting home learning for EAL children:

-      Tips & resources for EAL children who are learning at home 
-      The “Covid Diary” of an EAL Co-ordinator 
-      How to support parents & carers of EAL children at home

Plus more, including:

-      Upcoming CPD and network events 
-      Raising aspirations for Traveller children 
-      Celebrating inclusive practice at Bilingshurst Primary School 
-      NALDIC Conference 2020 & the importance of first language 

West Sussex County Council - Coronavirus advice and key information. Translated documents are at the bottom of the page.

Crawley Borough Council - Public health leaflets and videos translated into a range of common languages in the Crawley area.

Doctors of the World - Useful website with Covid-19 guidance available in over 60 languages.  Continually being reviewed and updated.

Walsall For All - Translated guidance and accessible formats.  Includes separate documents on a range of topics related to Covid-19.

To support the use of the inclusion framework, peer support sessions are being held to provide colleagues with an opportunity to support each other on their inclusion development journey.

Peer support sessions are free to attend and groups are kept small to allow focused discussion on the area / aspect of the inclusion framework most relevant to each school.

"It’s exactly what you want: present your ‘sticking’ point and then use the groups experience and knowledge to build a plan."

"We all learn from each other. Great to hear that others have similar issues."

School feedback after attending a peer support session

During each peer support session attendees are invited to share their school context, what is working well and to raise an aspect of inclusion that they would like support with.  The Inclusion Framework is used as a reference tool to identify their strengths and areas for development.

The dates of the upcoming peer support sessions are below.  Please book up early as they are filling up fast - email toolsforschools@westsussex.gov.uk with your preferred date.

• Monday 22^nd 3 – 5pm
• Tuesday 23^rd 9 – 11am
• Thursday 22^nd 11 – 1pm
• Monday 24^th 10am – 12pm
• Tuesday 29^th 12 – 2pm

West Sussex Parent Carer Forum is a charity led by parents of children/young people with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) age 0-25. 

Our aim is to make sure that West Sussex services meet the needs of SEND children/young people and their parents.

We accomplish this by working in partnership with local authorities, education settings, the NHS and other providers to highlight where local services, processes and commissioners are working well, or challenge when changes or improvements need to be made.  

We achieve this by gathering the views of parent carers (via forum groups, surveys, social media feedback and more).  

We also help parent carers to navigate the world of SEND by providing information, signposting and training. This is generalized via our Facebook page and can also be tailored to the needs of the individual by one of our four Participation Officers – who represent the North, South, East and West of the county. 

A child/young person does not need to have a formal diagnosis for a parent carer to access our community.

We encourage parent carers to follow us on Facebook  @WestSussexParentCarerForum, which provides the opportunity for parent carers to participate with interactive posts. It also provides regular updates on events, surveys, training, important SEND news and signposting.  

You can contact us via Facebook messenger or via: office@wspcf.org.uk. Our website address is: www.wspcf.org.uk.    

At the beginning of October 2020, we started work on the SEND Joint Commissioning Strategy. The strategy will support priority issues to be addressed in service provision across health and social care. It will build on, and work alongside, the existing SEND and Inclusion Strategy which mainly has an education focus.

The Strategy, and its implementation, will enable us to:

• deliver the best possible SEND provision for the children and families of West Sussex.
• assure our compliance with Joint Commissioning arrangements as set out in legislation.
• ensure we continue to move towards meeting the identified needs in the improvement plan.

A key priority for the work is working in collaboration across not only health, social care and education but also with children and young people and parent carers so that we have their voices truly embedded in the strategy.

For our first workshop we worked with Inclusive Solutions to develop a PATH for the strategy work. For those of you not familiar with the PATH concept this is regularly used in Person Centred Planning to focus on the future aspirations and not on what has been before. As the strategy develops we will continually check back to the PATH to make sure we are making progress to the “positive” and “possible” state identified one year from now.

Jacqui Parfitt, SEND Service and Market Development Manager

West Sussex Early Help Service has carried out a review of its support for children with SEND under the age of five.

The aims of the strategy are to:

• ensure that processes are child centred
• enable all children with SEND, and their families, to get the support they need in a timely manner
• improve the quality and consistency of support for children with SEND in the early years and
• reduce the waiting for formal assessments.

The key changes to be made are:

• developing a multi-agency group who can plan the support needed for a child with SEND from the point of identification until they start in school, including evidence gathering for formal assessment if needed
• Changes to inclusion funding from an hourly rate to a lump sum payment and changing the process for accessing funding from an application form to an action plan outlining the additional support that the setting will put in place to meet the child’s needs
• Introduction of an Ordinarily Available Inclusive Practice document aimed at early years settings to provide guidance and support to early years providers in order to improve the quality and consistency of support offered to children with SEND, or developmental delay, across all West Sussex settings. This document supplements the Ordinarily Available Inclusive Practice document developed for schools

Work has been underway to design and implement a single telephone number and email address for use by professionals and the public for all concerns relating to children, regardless of risk and complexity.

This will simplify the process for the public and professionals and has been designed to ensure that children’s needs are reviewed quickly by a joined up Early Help and Social Care team. This is a positive change in how we ensure that children come first and that we improve the journey of the child in everything we do.

The new contact details which go live on 29 January 2021 are as follows:

Telephone number: 01403 229900

Email address: WSChildrenservices@westsussex.gov.uk

The current telephone numbers we have for our different access points are still in place and from 29 January 2021 these will all be redirected to the telephone number listed above.

West Sussex is committed to a therapeutic understanding of children and young people. There are currently a range of different therapeutic approaches being used in our schools and settings.  We will be co-developing a West Sussex Wellbeing Charter to support a common understanding of practices and language.

In order to produce a West Sussex Wellbeing Charter with schools, settings and stakeholders we will initially be:

• Mapping the therapeutic landscape to identify what approaches are being used in our schools and settings.
• Building on existing strengths by sharing information on these approaches with schools not currently working in a therapeutically informed way.

In March, schools will be asked to complete a short survey so that we can identify which approaches are being used.  We will then be able to share information on these approaches on the well-being area of Tools for Schools.

One of the therapeutically informed approaches adopted within West Sussex is the Therapeutic Thinking approach advocated by Angela Wadham.  The Therapeutic Thinking approach is a whole school ethos that is characterised by an inclusive culture, underpinned by best practice, policy and plans.  Therapeutic Thinking uses a range of resources to analyse an individual’s behaviour in order to better understand the child / young person’s needs.  This analysis then assists in better planning for the child, their class and the wider school or setting, to prevent difficult or dangerous situations from occurring.

Currently staff from 19 schools have undertaken the three-day training. The three-day training sessions enables these staff to deliver in-school training so that therapeutic thinking approaches can be developed and embedded in their setting. The feedback from the three-day sessions has been very positive. For more information regarding the training please see the Therapeutic Thinking pages on the ‘tools for schools’ website https://schools.local-offer.org/inclusion/wellbeing-in-west-sussex/wellbeing-charter/therapeutic-thinking-approach/training-on-offer/

The dates for the next three-day training sessions are:

• 3rd to 5th March 2021
• 18th to 20th May 2021
• 15th to 17th June 2021

For further information please contact:

Kate Southgate:  Learning and Behaviour Advisory Teacher

Maryanne Woodland:  Acting Senior Educational Psychologist

Thank you to those of you who have completed the Have Your Say surveys on the OAIP, the Inclusion Framework and Tools for Schools.  A couple of you have contacted us to ask if you could have more time to respond and we have therefore extended them to 26 February.  Please do take a few minutes to complete the surveys if you can - we will use the feedback to inform the ongoing development of these resources.  

To complete the survey on the OAIP, please follow this link: www.westsussex.gov.uk/oaip

To complete the survey on the Inclusion Framework, please follow this link: www.westsussex.gov.uk/inclusion

To complete the survey on Tools for Schools, please follow this link: www.westsussex.gov.uk/tools

The surveys will be repeated later this academic year.  More information about the Inclusion Framework and the OAIP can be found on the Tools for Schools website. These resources are being developed as part of the SEND and Inclusion Strategy 2019-2024.