Joy Richardson
- Mar 17, 2023
- 2 min read

School - Ensuring your child's additional needs are met

More and more children are struggling in school. Post Covid, anxiety levels have increased, communication and socialisation skills are undeveloped, and all children are finding it hard. For children who already have additional needs, it makes it doubly hard. Staffing and resourcing issues in schools, add to a perfect storm of your child’s additional needs not being met in school.

Top Tips

· Establish who your main and secondary points of contact are for communications with school. Gain email addresses.

· Arrange a face-to-face meeting with your child’s teacher(s) and or the SENDCO (Special Education Needs & Disabilities Coordinator).

· Talk to the teacher(s) about your child, give them some background information/life history and how your child finds school, and how they are at home. Talk about your child’s likes/dislikes, what they struggle with, do well in, etc.

· Talk to the teacher/SENDCO about last year, what support strategies worked well, where were the gaps. Don’t assume that the previous teacher has passed on this information. Even if details have been passed on, it is good if parents can reinforce details with the new teacher face to face.

· If you know your child is struggling in school and have ideas on how staff can help them, discuss this with the teacher and teaching assistant. Make a list.

· Start a paper or digital notebooks for all dealings with school. Use it to prepare notes, questions for meetings, etc.

· If you have no idea what will help your child in school, be honest, explain this and say, I know my child needs extra support, but I am not sure what that might look like. Explain to staff how your child presents at home, so they understand that school is difficult for them, creates anxiety, etc.

· Make notes in any meeting and follow up with an email of what has been agreed. Check in with school a few weeks later to hold them accountable, find out how agreed strategies and actions are going.

· After an appropriate time, if things aren’t working, arrange another meeting to tweak the original plan.

· Show staff your appreciation. Give them some chocolates, biscuits or flowers as a thank you for all the extras they do for your child each term.