Safeguarding Children with SEND

1. Safeguarding Children with SEND Caroline Higgins Assistant Headteacher Saxon Mount Community School

2. Keeping Children Safe in Education Children with SEN and disabilities can face additional safeguarding challenges and additional barriers can exist when recognising abuse and neglect in this group of children. These can include: • assumptions that indicators of possible abuse such as behaviour, mood and injury relate to the child’s disability without further exploration; • being more prone to peer group isolation than other children; • the potential for children with SEN and disabilities being disproportionally impacted by behaviours such as bullying, without outwardly showing any signs; and • communication barriers and difficulties in overcoming these barriers. To address these additional challenges, schools and colleges should consider extra pastoral support for children with SEN and disabilities.

3. Additional issues • Reliance on others for personal care • Impaired capacity to understand resist or report abusive behaviour • Reduced access to someone to tell • More frequently away from home, e.g. in hospital, respite care or residential living

4. Broad areas of need • Communication and interaction • Cognition and learning • Social, emotional and mental health difficulties • Sensory and/or physical needs SEND Code of Practice

5. NSPCC: We have the right to be safe • People do not think that disabled children get abused; • Disabled children do not get the support they need; • They do not know what abuse is; • They do not know where to go to get help. • learning new skills – for example learning more about sex and relationships • Knowing what abuse is and how to tell someone it is happening. • Getting support from friends so they know what to look out for too. • Strengthening the capacity of children and families to help themselves can be a key approach. • Opportunities to communicate and an understanding/confidence that they will be listened to. • Learning to tell people about abuse in a different way can help. For example, not using words but maybe drawing what has happened.

6. Individual Behaviour Plans If a child/young person has SEND, there may be an additional negative impact if using positive handling and staff should be aware of how a child may react and the increased risk of harm to both the child and staff. It would be best practice for there to be a plan, drawn up in conjunction with the child/young person and their parent/carer, which includes preventative strategies, de-escalation strategies and specific guidance on positive handling. Positive Handling/Use of Reasonable Force Guidance: Spring 2016 • Reviews • Staff training • 24 LADO allegations • 10 SLES complaints

7. Duty of Care Schools should not have a ‘no contact’ policy. There is a real risk that such a policy might place a member of staff in breach of their duty of care towards a pupil, or prevent them taking action needed to prevent a pupil causing harm. DfE Use of reasonable force: July 2014

8. Intimate care Every child has the right to: • Be safe. • Personal privacy. • Be valued as an individual. • Treated with dignity and respect. • Be involved and consulted in their own intimate care to the best of their abilities. • There should be a plan (IHP), drawn up in conjunction with the child, parent/carer and health professional, as appropriate. • Training needs should be identified. • Reviewed and updated regularly. • Important to protect children and staff.

9. Understanding Autism/SEN and the issues that affect Safeguarding Review our understanding of ASD/SEN and how this is manifested Recognise strategies for managing ASD/SEN pupils to safeguard wellbeing and responding to child protection concerns

10. Triad of Impairment • Social • Imagination • Communication

11. How would a difficulty with social interaction show itself? • Relationships • Behaviour • Wish to isolate themselves • Inability to understand the motives of others. • Inability to read the emotional responses of others • May not feel sensation of embarassment, e.g nudity

12. What are the implications for safeguarding? • Child unlikely to know what is usual in relationships. • Child unlikely to confide in another • Child likely to comply with request/instruction not to tell anyone • Child unlikely to know they are at risk until they have been harmed and even then they may still be unaware.

13. What are the main features of a communication difficulty? • Understanding Social Use of Language • Language processing speed • Limited receptive language skills • Restricted expressive language skills due to LD or obsessional interests.

14. What are the implications for safeguarding? • Child may not have the language skills to tell what has happened using visuals may feel like you are ‘steering’ them • Child may not realise they need to communicate to an adult what has happened in a way we understand • Child may be distracted by other interests when communicating

15. What features would you see if a pupil has difficulties with Imagination?

16. Social imagination allows us to understand and predict other people's behaviour, make sense of abstract ideas, and to imagine situations outside our immediate daily routine.

17. Difficulties with social imagination mean that people with autism find it hard to: • understand and interpret other people's thoughts, feelings and actions • engage in imaginative play and activities. Children with autism may enjoy some imaginative play but prefer to act out the same scenes each time

18. understand the concept of danger, for example that running on to a busy road poses a threat to them

19. cope in new or unfamiliar situations • predict what will happen next, or what could happen next • prepare for change and plan for the future

20. What are the implications for safeguarding? • Child is unlikely to anticipate danger or interpret the intentions of another • Child is unlikely to look at or experience a chain of events and theorise what may happen next. • Child is unable to respond to new situations previously not encountered, cannot apply prior knowledge. • Child doesn’t know what day/time something may have happened. Time telling difficulties.

21. Many of the ASD pupils have sensory issues and can be highly sensitive to what they see, hear, smell, taste and feel. • Many ASD pupils have poor thermic sensitivity.

22. What are the implications for safeguarding? • Sensations that normally hurt neuro-typical people may be experienced differently • Sensations that shouldn’t be unpleasant or painful may be for an ASD/SEN young person • Children may only focus on one aspect of the overall picture they are seeing.

23. What do we do to help?

24. Make the environment, teaching and social activities that go on in a school, low arousal and predictable with opportunities to respond to fight, flight and freeze impulses

25. Multisensory approaches to learning - Visual Object of reference Photo for reference Picture or symbol for reference Text for reference

26. Visual Timetabling What do we mean? How do we make it live? Who has what level of VT?

27. Visual Timetables Individual timetables either daily or weekly can be text or symbol for reference, any child who wants one should have one! More able could design their own = independence skill

28. CHANGE!!! Change is positive and must be communicated before the pupil meets it, visually wherever possible!

29. Transitions happen during lessons • In order to make the lesson structure and timing more predictable staff can use a range of strategies… • At the outset show and explain what is going to happen during the lesson…

30. ASD pupils are usually taking in information 75% visually 25% aurally… • Therefore showing them is far more effective.

31. Use the lesson structure format to guide pupils through what they are going to be doing… • First • Next • Finish

32. Be as explicit and visual as you can, pupils, especially those with ASD, struggle with lack of structure or ambiguity. Keep verbal language simple and direct.

33. Visual timers on the interactive whiteboard or sand timers can be used to further show the passage of time or the time allocated to an activity or task.

34. Let pupils know when you are nearing the end of the lesson. Finishing is just as important to ASD pupils and pupils with SEN.

35. Some ASD pupils can get quite upset if they haven’t been able to manage their time and finish a piece of work during that session. If completing the piece of work is likely to go over more than one lesson then let them know that at the outset.

36. The Environment is …..

37. the key ..

38. A clean, clear and predictable environment is good for ASD pupils and SEN pupils.

39. A designated space or spaces are great to facilitate a child’s need for ‘flight’ or to dissipate the need to ‘freeze’ or ‘fight’.

40. Anything extra we put into our environment needs to relate to current and recently covered themes. It can reinforce positive learning experiences and can make pupils feel proud of what they’ve done.

41. Here are some suggestions to reduce visual distractions..

42. Position all displayed articles level and not angled • Mount all displayed work in the same colour on the same board

43. Clearly display title/subject area above display • Limit additional animations to those that match the theme of the display but don’t distract from it.

44. Organise the work in a logical and balanced sequence • Avoid fancy trims around display board especially textured or day-glo edging

45. Make sure displayed work is not cut off in the middle by the frames of the display board doors. • Make sure each display depicts a single, linked theme which is clearly recognisable

46. Keep all other wall space in classroom clear other than :- displayed fire regulations, first aid information and behaviour system visual reinforcement

47. And if an ASD/SEN pupil does disclose… • Apply the principles that you know related to their type of SEN. • If in doubt repeat what they have said adding who, where, what, when, how or why if appropriate. • Reassure, remember ASD pupil will want to know most, if it will finish and will need to know what next…

48. Case Study TA • Observed change in behaviour different from usual, presentation, symptoms of harm • SEN children often retreat • Alert staff to monitor and record evidence • Support pupil communication e.g how do you feel? CIP, Makaton sign, symbols • Share information

49. Case Study DS • Observe change in behaviour and presentation • Ask pupil how best to help him especially if they are volatile, put this in behaviour plan or Risk Assessment • Alert staff what to look for monitor and record • Provide safe space, safe people

50. Case Study • Staff notice that an 11 year old boy with diagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome seems less communicative and less happy than previously. • He has started coming into school talking about killing zombies and being part of a group of new powerful friends. • Staff reported him saying Mum is upset at the moment and Dad seems very cross. When he is asked about this he just repeats the same thing again.