How does our Clinical Team operate?
Our integrated therapy teams have structured their work across 3 different support strands, which enable them to have the biggest impact within the school communities:
Strand 1: Timely support.
We know that the needs of the children that we support can sometimes change quickly and may require support plans to be set up in a timely manner to resolve challenges that arise. Therapists can quickly be responsive to children’s changing needs to ensure that they can attend Team around The Child meetings, review existing support plans and contribute to building new support plans for children, which may be designed to increase their wellbeing.
Strand 2: Enhanced and Specialist Support.
Therapy sessions are often delivered in ‘blocks’ over a longer period of time and are scheduled for times when they will have the most impact. These sessions can be delivered in the classroom or in a range of other settings around the school, wherever the pupil feels most comfortable, including outdoors. Therapists offer a combination of individual and small group interventions and work closely with staff so that support strategies can be successfully used by all members of a child’s team across their day.
Strand 3: Universal Support.
Our Therapy team is committed to working with the class teams to embed the use of specialist practices across the all three sites. The team do this in a number of ways, from running specific projects, shadowing staff in the classroom, delivering training sessions and coaching staff to supporting children in ways that support their engagement in everyday activities.
Class teams regularly liaise with members of the therapy team to ensure that support is delivered across each of the 3 support strands so the needs of each child is met.
Therapeutic Support
We integrate the support offered by our Clinical Team into children’s classrooms to enable their communication and learning across every setting.
Communication is fundamental to learning both in and out of the classroom, and we place a high priority on developing the young people’s communication skills.
The Speech and Language therapists work alongside teaching staff, selecting activities that engage, motivate and focus the young person’s attention; a necessary skill for learning. They work in partnership with the teacher and support teams to develop programmes that are embedded in everything the young person does and to monitor progress, refining the programmes as the young person progresses.
Occupational therapy supports young people by helping them to develop the skills they need to function in their everyday life activities e.g. self-care, schoolwork, play, social interaction and independence. Our Occupational Therapists assess each young person’s ability to carry out age-appropriate life tasks and identify challenges in their motor and sensory abilities that get in the way of their ability to function within these tasks.
Parents and carers also have access to support and advice from our occupational therapists and speech and language therapists who can help parents to understand the programmes that have been developed for their children so that they can be continued at home.