SEN0548
Written evidence submitted by Ms Natalie Brees
This evidence details the process I have undertaken to create and sustain an Outreach service from my Special School to the surrounding mainstream schools in West Sussex.
Natalie Brees – Lead Outreach Teacher at Oak Grove College – Large Generic Special Needs school in Worthing 11-19.
276 on roll, all with Moderate, Severe and Profound and Multiple learning disabilities.
How the idea of Outreach started
I went for the job of SENDCO at my children’s primary school. They asked me in for an informal chat, to see if my skills were transferable to mainstream. Whilst waiting in reception, I witnessed a six-year-old boy and his mother, both in extreme dysregulation. The five staff attending were trying their best to calm and distract but were seemingly unaware of the many methods and strategies that could be deployed in this situation. They were totally reliant on the usual hierarchical approach that has a high rate of success within the mainstream environment. It did not work. The boy and his mother were asked to go home and try again the following day.
During my ‘informal chat’ the executive head teacher, whilst talking about my suitability for the role, said “you work in special education, what do you know about behaviour?” I asked if she would like feedback about how I felt the situation of the dysregulated family from this morning could be scaffolded to potentially provide all involved with some clear direction and security. She said yes, so I proceeded to talk for 10 minutes on different proactive and responsive strategies that I have known to work well in my seventeen years as an SEN teacher. This information came from an internal lexicon of experience that I hadn’t realised I had. I was as surprised as she was that I had so much knowledge. When I had finished both the Head and Executive head looked at me, bewildered and stated that they both agreed with everything I had just said.
I didn’t get the job because the executive headteacher felt that SEND children in mainstream “need a few ‘tweaks’” rather than the level of support that I was proposing. I thanked them for the opportunity and told them that I would be more than happy to advise them of strategies that could support the more complex of their cohort. The headteacher was very keen for me to do this but when we investigated arranging insurance, the situation was complicated.
I asked my headteacher if I could set up an Outreach service on my days off, (I was part time) where schools that needed help could ‘rent’ me as a SEND specialist – he agreed and that’s what we set out to do.
Establishing the Outreach formulae.
Our first idea was to advertise as a specialist advisory service that could be called upon to assist with all SEND matters at a rate of £50 an hour (my wage, plus cost). To build the service, we offered an initial consultation of information gathering and discussion of work needed to be done free of charge. I was invited into a school to advise about a four-year-old ASC student who screamed for 20 mins a day, so loudly that the whole school (424 on roll) could hear him. And a year 2 boy, with suicide ideation, ADHD and Autism, who kept trying to leave the school by scaling the fence. I sent the information that I had about these students to the relevant teachers and teaching assistants in Oak Grove who I felt were experts by experience in these fields. From their responses, I compiled a report, detailing many ideas for resources, strategies and suggestions for the training needed. These were rich documents with vast quantities of useable information. However, they were never seen. The school did not release any funds to continue the work.
Establishing the Outreach offer
We soon realised that with budgets as tight as they were and still suffering from the perception that all Special Schools were “all bobble hats and school trips” (“not all bobble hats and school trips was an actual tag line for a local SEN school”), we decided that it was a priority to get known for what we could offer and not need to charge for it. I bid for a school improvement grant and was awarded £5995.
With that money I scheduled six Outreach sessions titled “SEND @ OGC”. The premise of these sessions was to spend the day exploring the main strategies and resources that staff at OGC relied upon the most to help us with the day to day many and varied needs of the students in our care. The segments of the session were thus;
Who I am and my seventeen years SEND experience,
A disclaimer (we have a bag of tricks – they may not work for you),
The family view (led by our chair of governors, a parent),
Environment - predictability, organisation, sensory input, communication aids
Teaching – language, Flexibility, Trust, Positive relationships policy - (led by A Head)
Students – Self Esteem, Sensory Adaptions, Regulation
Behaviour – Plan, Act, Learn.
These days were attended by 45 staff from 23 schools, we were also invited to go to talk to groups of TA’s and LSA’s in other schools, as their leaders had felt that their staff would benefit from hearing some specific strategies onsite.
Some feedback from one of these visits...
“Natalie visited my school last year to provide training to TA’s about SEN behaviour management techniques, I have since used the PACE and WIN strategies with great success. Since then, I am often asked to come and help with children who aren’t cooperating with other adults “because they listen to you” and I have been described as “working my magic” with them. This ‘magic’ is PACE and WIN and the invaluable experience, support, and knowledge that Natalie and her amazing colleagues are providing. "
We were able to fund all of this from the school improvement grant, with money left over.
Feedback from first year of Outreach
Positive
100% of attendees said they were likely or somewhat likely to recommend the service.
93% were very satisfied with the knowledge gained.
7 schools sent staff to multiple sessions.
“Thank you – the support sessions have been exceptional” - SENDCO
“Thank you for talking sense and strategies we can easily put into practice” - LSA
“Really useful day, exceeded my expectations” - Assistant Head
Constructive
“It would be great to spend some time in classrooms.”
“Can you please come into classrooms to meet some of our high needs students?”
“I would love to be able to keep links and tap into support if available”
“This kind of Outreach is brilliant when it is well organised and targeted.”
What we learned in our first year
Labelling sessions as ‘training’ was unhelpful in engagement, collaboration and honesty – it implied that we were more knowledgeable that they, when in fact, we wanted the emphasis on the vast range of experience we had and thus the support we could provide – renamed as “Outreach Sessions”
Relationships, empathy and honest communication were the keys to engagement. Focusing on our own journey of discovery as a school – largely through failure and re-evaluation.
You can’t assume that people know or don’t know things.
People don’t know what they don’t know - introducing strategies that might be helpful, that colleagues may not have had any awareness of, was key.
Collaboration was always mutually beneficial – our staff have all commented on how much they have enjoyed sharing their expertise and how it adds to their feeling of wellbeing and job satisfaction.
The main foci for support requests were communication and behaviour focused.
Opportunities to work alongside LSAs was crucial as they also needed an avenue for support.
Regular opportunities to discuss tricky case studies within a network of SEND professionals were useful and made staff feel less overwhelmed.
The parent/carer, family ‘voice’ needs to be heard, understood, informed and included.
Developing the Outreach Offer
As luck would have it, whilst I was establishing what Outreach could/should look like in practice, a colleague of mine, Charlotte, from our feeder school (Palatine Primary School, Worthing) was completing a master's on how outreach from specialist settings could support mainstream schools. We met and decided to work together, creating HOP ON – Hosted by OakGrove and Palatine Outreach Network. Together we were able to draw on expertise from two specialist settings, with experience of working with students from 4-19. I had expertise in how to deliver the support practically and Charlotte knew the theory about why it was a good idea.
We decided to take on board the feedback and tailor the outreach days to be more specific. The requests for support had been largely focused on Communication and Behavior so we ran sessions on Sensory diet (a huge proactive behavioural strategy), Pre-Verbal Communication, Sensory stories, Regulation and General Communication.
So far (5 months in) - these sessions have been attended by 70 delegates from 17 different schools. Those delegates reported that they felt on average 40 % more confident in both their knowledge and own confidence in delivery of strategies, after their attendance to one of our focused open days. 100% of attendees said they were likely to recommend the HOP ON Outreach service and 8 schools have engaged with the service 3 or more times (this academic year). 17 delegates said they had made changes to their practice based on what they had learnt.
At the beginning of the year, we also sent out a request for Outreach form, whereby schools could request specific support. Here Palatine and Oak Grove divided and worked as two separate schools, able to coordinate support more effectively within our own staff teams.
I had several requests for help and settled on this process to assist; I would visit with a member of my senior/middle leadership team. We would work together to ask questions and gather information on the child’s SEND, the classroom routines, the support they were receiving, the home situation and the child’s presentation. The senior/middle leader and I would write notes on what we had seen and heard and I would collate these notes and write a report, detailing the information. It would then be sent via email to a team that the middle/senior leader and I had identified would add the most value, asking them for what they would do if this were a child in their care. Their responses were compiled into a list of suggested strategies, resources and training that could be helpful.
The feedback for this was also wonderful ...
"The outreach that you did for our school coming in to meet with me and the child was really useful. It really felt like you listened to what we had said - there is not additional support and she hates coming out of the classroom. All the suggestions you gave had this in mind so have been easy to implement And Nat and Carrie-Anne were just so relaxed, friendly and understanding it made the whole thing really positive." - Assistant Head and SENCO
January 2025
Costs so far this year
Total to date this academic year Sept – Feb - £11,760