Sensory processing needs (SPN) are recognised as significant barriers to children and young people’s (CYP) learning. Working together across various departments within our local area, the NHS and Derbyshire County Council (DCC) continue to address the challenges SPN present to children, young people and their families.
Working alongside a SPN steering group DCC Local area can now offer a ‘bundle’ of resources which are available to download to support the SPN of children & young people. These resources will be of especial interest to schools, colleges and early years’ settings.
The SPN toolkit is a robust resource intended to meet the needs of most children with SPN in schools, colleges and early years’ settings. In itself requires no additional training but the Steering Group anticipate that workers will have undertaken training on SPN and be familiar with the needs of children falling in this category.
SPN Champions - There may be some professionals who need further guidance when using the SPN toolkit. Occasionally a child may fail to show progress even in response to quality first teaching and implementation of the assess, plan, do, review model. In these instances the workforce can call upon the expertise of sensory champions. Champions are primarily situated within Children’s Services support services. The role of Sensory Champions is to support the use of the tool kit once the school or setting have completed appropriate cycles of the assess, plan, do, review model. Although support services do not have promoted positions for sensory champions, they do have expertise over and above that which may be usually available from within the school or early years setting.
To be clear, the role of the sensory champions is not to provide support and guidance for individual children. It is to provide additional advice on implementation of strategies and resources within the toolkit.
All the resources are free to download in related documents of this page.