Educational support for children with physical disabilities

We have a part-time specialist teacher who can offer support to schools in meeting the needs of children and young people who have a significant physical disability (PD).

How to access the service

Children with significant physical disabilities are usually referred to us at an early age by the health service, but occasionally schools or other professionals may need to make a referral. You can download and use the Physical and Sensory Service (PASS) referral form or you are very welcome to contact us for an initial discussion as necessary:

Who we work with

We aim to promote inclusion and educational achievements by working with:

  • Parents and families
  • Early years settings
  • Early years consultants
  • Schools (and colleges, see below)
  • Health service professionals, for example, therapists, doctors, nurses
  • Relevant voluntary organisations

Whether we charge for the service

All our core and statutory work is provided free of charge to early years settings, state-funded schools and colleges of further education.

The services we provide

We offer specialist services relating to:

  • Advice on accessibility of school sites and buildings (Equality Act planning duty)
  • Adaptation of educational materials (Equality Act planning duty)
  • Advice on access arrangements for internal and external examinations and assessments including SATs
  • Contribution to statutory assessment, annual reviews and individual programmes of work
  • Transition planning, for example, starting in reception, moving to high school, post-16 placement
  • Advice on health and safety issues, for example, fire evacuation, moving and handling training
  • More specialist equipment such as supportive seats may be provided by the local authority. The Occupational Therapist (OT) will make an assessment of the child's equipment needs in the school setting and make a recommendation to the authority. Once we agree to the recommendations it is our responsibility to ensure that the equipment is provided.
  • The council operates an equipment loan scheme to schools. When items are no longer required they should be returned to the equipment store for cleaning and storage.
  • For further information see the accessibility in schools for disabled pupils page.
  • Specialist equipment: (Equality Act auxiliary aids duty)
    • All schools are expected to provide low cost aids such as a writing slope, posture pack, laptop, sound recording device or similar up to the value of £750
    • We can provide short-term trial loans of some equipment, for example writing slopes, book stands and copy holders
  • Assistive technology: (Equality Act auxiliary aids duty) - as far as possible we encourage the use of everyday mainstream technology which pupils are likely to encounter in the outside world:
    • Accessibility and 'Ease of Access' facilities built into modern computers and tablets including iPad
    • Accessible alternatives to standard mouse and keyboard, for example, joystick, roller ball, mini-keyboard, on-screen keyboard
    • Assistive software especially as an alternative to handwriting, for example, word banks, prediction, symbol-supported writing, speech output, speech recognition