EPs plan their support based on the concerns for your child. EP involvement will usually start with a consultation meeting, typically including parent carers and other adults that know your child well.
The aim of the meeting is to build a shared understanding of the concerns for your child, and to agree what action will be taken to help. Often this meeting will be enough to identify some helpful actions for the school, setting, or parent carers to trial.
In some cases further involvement from the EP will be agreed, such as meeting with your child to complete activities to better understand their needs. We may also spend some time in their classroom, talking further with the adults that know them well, or reviewing their work.
We want to talk to you as part of this process to help us understand your child’s strengths, interests and difficulties. It helps us if you can share a little about what life is like in your family – what is fun and works for you all and what might be more difficult for you.
After the consultation meeting a record of involvement will made available for all involved. This is a short written document that includes a summary of the discussion and key actions agreed for your child.
Review process
The school or setting can use the agreed action plan at the earliest opportunity. We will aim to review the action plan later in the term, typically six to eight weeks after the initial meeting.
For many children, the actions agreed in the initial consultation work well to support their needs. This may mean that no further involvement from the EP is needed.
In schools and settings, working in this way is called a Graduated Approach or Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support. This approach is based on the good practice known as an assess-plan-do-review cycle.
Sometimes, for a very few children, the situation is a little more complicated. Their progress may seem to be ‘stuck’ and parents or carers and staff in school think that some more in-depth work from the EP is needed.