St Mary's Pre-School Yate
Inclusion - Special Education Needs
and the Local Offer
The setting is a full day care setting which operates from Monday - Friday term time only (South Gloucestershire Academic Term Dates.) We are open from 9:00 - 15:00 for 38 weeks of the year (September - July.) Places are available for children from 2-5 years. Sessions are for 3 hours - mornings, afternoons or full days ( 6 hours). Each session has between 24 - 36 children in attendance, with 4/8 members of staff in the preschool room and 8 children with 2/3 members of staff in the two year room. The premises is an old school listed building with one main room (preschool), a smaller room (2 year room) and an outside area. The setting has a nominated safeguarding officer and SENCO, a deputy DSL and Senco. We have two bathrooms, one disabled with a changing area, steps and potties.
Staff receive training in Makaton, we are a language champion setting, neurodiversity profiling trained, we use a variety of AAC , including personal visual aids, picture exchange system , Prologue2go and Grid communication aids ( ipad). Several staff members are trained in I can Early boost language therapy program and the Hennan language program and more than words language program. All staff members have completed the Autism Education Trust competency program. Their is wheelchair access and all staff have received training in support children with hearing difficulties , peg feeding, Epilepsy, Autism, neurodivergent differences, sensory processing differences, global delay, speech delay , and a range of health, medical needs. The two year room staff attend a 2 year network, the Senco and senco support attend inclusion network and Makaton networks and the owner attends moderating network within the local authority.
Children with additional health/Educational needs will be placed on a support plan, health care plan. We follow the local authority graduated response, when appropriate children will be referred to other professional services in a timely matter, We will gather evidence and observations of the child and have regular conversations with families, we will work together on strategies to support your child and meet their needs.
When appropriate other professionals whom are supporting these children will be invited into the setting and together we will work in collaboration to meet the child's needs. To ensure we can support our families as best as possible we may sometimes have to limit the amount of children with additional needs that we have to ensure we can meet all the children's needs in our setting. Every child is valued as important and being able to meet all our children's needs appropriately is our priority
The setting is situated in a small car park with two steps to the main entrance; there is wheelchair accessibility through the back entrance via a small ramp. There is a disabled toilet, with two further sets of toilets. The main room and outside areas are accessed via a hallway and ramp. The building is accessed via a doorbell system and then through two separate locked doors. There is limited storage for wheelchairs/car seats/mobility aids in the main building, some time specialist equipment will need to be brought in daily with the child unfortunately. The main room is set up daily with consideration for mobility taken into account when putting equipment out. The main room has high ceilings and a wooden floor; the smaller room has lower ceiling and a lino floor. Play-mats and cushions are used for relaxation and comfort. Children's equipment and resources are laid on the floor, tables or are accessible from the children's toy trolley, which have visual aids printed on them to help identify the activity. There is one captain's chair and two different sized pre-school chairs and tables, there are sensory cushions available, lycra suits, lycra bands, and ear defenders . There is a small cornered off sleeping area, with a travel cot, sleeping mats and sleeping bags for children to access if they are tired or sleep during the day.
To view the full details of the Special Education Needs Local Offer please click below.
Supporting children with restricted diet - Healthy eating/safe foods and reasonable adjustment
We recognise that some children experience aversions or dislikes of some foods, which can limit their diet. Some children may also have routines or environmental preferences related to eating and some children with sensory eating and drinking differences can have extremely restricted diets and may only intake a few ' safe foods,' these safe foods are not always the healthiest of options.
In order for us to make reasonable adjustments and ensure children do not go all day without eating because of a policy which does not allow ' safe foods' we foster an approach which encourages children to have positive experiences of eating and drinking within our educational setting without causing high levels of anxiety and stress for these children. These children will have a 'Health eating reasonable adjustment form created in collaboration of the child's parent and Senco.
Please see policy
Toilet training, Nappies and consent
Please click on the below document to read our Nappies/ potty toilet training policy