Building on strengths and supporting needs
In Derbyshire, we want every child and young person to be able to follow their dreams, be valued for who they are, be safe and know that they belong.
Every child and young person is different. Inclusive education means helping everyone feel included and take part. It starts with what your child does well and what matters to them and your family. An important part of this is schools working with families to find and remove things that make learning, joining in, making friends or enjoying school harder.
To support this, Derbyshire has developed two resources that work together:
- Derbyshire Stepping Stones
- Derbyshire Graduated Response Guidance
These resources help schools, families and professionals work in the same way to include every child. They explain how to understand your child's needs, choose support and change it as their needs change.
Explore Derbyshire Stepping Stones
Practical ideas to help your child feel included, join in, develop skills and become more independent.
To access the Derbyshire Stepping Stones document, please visit the 'Related Documents' section of this page.
Access the Derbyshire Graduated Response Guidance
Find out about Derbyshire's five levels of support, how support is planned and how schools check whether it is helping.
To access the Derbyshire Graduated Response documents, please visit the 'Related Documents' section of this page.
Derbyshire Stepping Stones
Derbyshire Stepping Stones builds on the good work Derbyshire schools already do to include children. It helps schools understand and remove things that make learning, joining in or feeling well harder. It offers practical ideas for everyday support.
Derbyshire Stepping Stones first explains how a whole-school approach helps children feel included. It then gives practical ideas across eight areas:
- Communication and interaction – understanding others and communicating with them
- Social understanding and relationships – understanding social situations and getting along with others
- Sensory needs – how your child responds to things such as sounds, light and touch
- Emotional understanding – recognising and understanding feelings
- Learning and engagement – learning and taking part in activities
- Independence and community – doing more for yourself and taking part in community life
- Coping with change
- Healthy living
Building from strengths
Derbyshire Stepping Stones starts with what your child can already do. It encourages adults to celebrate their strengths, understand what they find difficult and choose support to help them develop.
The resource gives ideas for changing the surroundings, activities to build skills and helpful words adults can use.
Schools, parents, carers and professionals can use it to agree what may help your child.
Derbyshire Stepping Stones also shows how everyday support can help your child prepare for adult life, including:
- education, training and employment
- independent living
- taking part in community life
- health and wellbeing.
This keeps your child's strengths, hopes and future opportunities at the centre of support from an early age.
The Derbyshire Graduated Response
The Derbyshire Graduated Response Guidance works alongside Derbyshire Stepping Stones. A graduated response means changing support to match your child's needs. The guidance explains how support can become more tailored to your child and how those helping them can work together.
There are five levels within Derbyshire's Graduated Response:
- Universal Inclusive
- Targeted
- Targeted Plus
- Specialist
- Highly Specialist
Universal Inclusive support is the starting point and continues at all five levels.
Your child can receive support at the level that matches their needs, without going through every level in order. Support can increase, reduce or change as their strengths, needs and situation change.
What do the five levels mean?
Universal Inclusive
Good teaching and everyday support for every child. This includes ordinarily available provision – support schools provide through their existing staff and resources. Finding difficulties early and making helpful changes are important parts of supporting children to learn and join in. Reasonable adjustments are changes to the way school activities, teaching or support are provided to remove or reduce difficulties linked to a child's disability. They help the child have fair opportunities to learn and take part alongside other children.
Targeted
Extra support focused on particular needs. This is called special educational needs support, or SEN Support. It is additional to, or different from, the everyday support schools normally provide.
Targeted Plus
SEN Support that is more closely tailored to your child, with those helping them working together. It draws on a detailed understanding of their needs and specialist advice where needed. Targeted Plus is a Derbyshire name for this support. It remains part of SEN Support.
Specialist
Ongoing specialist assessment, help or support. This is for children whose difficulties are complex, continue over time or have a major effect on learning, joining in or wellbeing.
Highly Specialist
Intensive, ongoing support designed around the individual child. This is for a very small number of children with significant, long-term and complex needs.
Assess, Plan, Do, Review
The Graduated Response uses four steps: Assess, Plan, Do, Review (APDR). Together, these form an ongoing cycle of understanding needs, trying support and reviewing progress to keep support up to date.
Assess
The school, your child and your family build a shared understanding of what your child does well, what they need and what makes things difficult.This brings together your views and information from school and any professionals involved.
Plan
Together, you agree what the support aims to help your child achieve. These goals are called outcomes. The plan sets out the support or changes needed, who will provide them and when everyone will check how things are going.
Do
The agreed support is put in place, and those involved look at how your child responds.
Review
Together, you check what difference the support has made. This may include learning, joining in, attendance and wellbeing. You agree what to keep, change, increase or reduce. The four steps can be repeated as needed.
Working together throughout
Your child and family have an important part in shaping support at every step. This is called co-production. Working together means making sure your views help everyone understand strengths and difficulties, agree goals, choose support and check whether it helps.
What does inclusive support look like?
Inclusive support recognises that each child may need different help to have the same opportunities to learn and take part.
Your child may need different ways of teaching, changes or reasonable adjustments to help them learn and join in alongside other children.
Support might include changes to:
- teaching and the way information is presented
- communication
- classroom routines
- the surroundings, including noise, light and space
- how your child shows what they have learned
- support during social times, breaks and other times without a set activity
- moving between activities or settings and getting ready for change
- seating or positioning
- resources or equipment
Many of these changes are part of a mainstream school's everyday support. This is called ordinarily available provision. It means support and changes provided through the school's existing staff, resources and arrangements. Reasonable adjustments can be made whether or not your child has a diagnosis, an EHC plan or extra funding.
If your child's needs become more complex or need more individual support, help can be tailored more closely to them. This may include a detailed assessment, focused activities, specialist advice or different services working together.
Working together with children, young people and families
Good support starts with your child and what matters to them.
A partnership between the school, your child and your family helps everyone work together to:
- recognise strengths, interests, hopes and needs
- listen to your child's views
- find and remove things that make learning or joining in harder
- agree goals that matter to your child
- choose support and reasonable adjustments that may help
- check whether support is making a difference
- change support as needs and circumstances change
- understand what is going well and what is difficult
This helps keep support flexible and shaped around your child.
Education, Health and Care needs assessments
The Graduated Response helps schools understand needs and provide support. It works alongside the legal duties that schools and the local authority continue to have.
An EHC needs assessment can be requested at any support level, without waiting for your child to complete every level or a set number of Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycles.
An EHC needs assessment can be requested where your child may meet the conditions set out in law. Continuing suitable support at school remains important while a request or assessment is being considered.
Other useful Derbyshire resources
Early Years Graduated Response
The Early Years Graduated Response is for children in early years settings. It helps staff notice needs early, provide suitable support and change that support as needs change.
To access the Early Years Graduated Response document, please visit the 'Related Documents' section of this page.
Derbyshire Sensory Processing Needs Toolkit
The Derbyshire Sensory Processing Needs Toolkit offers practical help to understand how children respond differently to information from their senses, such as sound, light and touch.
Professionals from different fields developed the toolkit together. It helps schools understand how sensory differences affect children, change the surroundings and choose ideas that suit each child. It uses a graduated response, so support changes to match needs.
For more information and to access the toolkit, please visit: Derbyshire Local Offer - Supporting Sensory Processing Needs (SPN)