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Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

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Worried your child has Special Educational Needs? The SEN team have put together some advice and information sheet together for parents and carers.

Most children/young people grow up without having any major difficulties at school. Some children/young people find it a little harder and need extra help. This could mean that they have special educational needs (SEN).

A child/ young person might have special educational needs because of difficulties with:

  • communication and interaction (autism, speech, language and communication needs) 
  • cognition and learning (dyslexia; dyspraxia; moderate, severe and profound learning difficulty) 
  • social, emotional or mental health needs 
  • sensory and/or physical needs (visual, hearing or both impairments, a physical difficulty) 

Children/young people have a special educational need if they have:

  • significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age, or
  • a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.

Many children/young people have special educational needs at some time during their education. These might already be known when a child is very young, or they might be identified at any time after a child/young person has started school.

The great majority of children/young people will have their special educational needs met in their local mainstream school, sometimes with extra help. For a small number of children Salford City Council may carry out an Education Health and Care needs assessment.

For initial advice and information about provision for children/young people with special educational needs, you should contact your child's school directly and ask them for their SEND information report.

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