How can schools support families of SEND pupils?

The pandemic has been challenging for everyone, but for some families of children with special educational needs and disabilities the past two years have been particularly tough.

With less access to additional care and support, and ongoing delays with diagnoses, the pandemic will have left some feeling extremely isolated.

According to Professor Claire Hughes, deputy head of the University of Cambridge psychology department and its Centre for Family Research, the support that schools offer these parents is vital in building relationships and improving outcomes for their children.

So, what can schools do to offer more effective support? We spoke to Hughes to find out more about the challenges that families are currently facing.

What are some of the biggest difficulties that parents of children with SEND are experiencing at the moment?

It’s almost inevitable that the pandemic will have increased parental burnout. Families will have had less access to support from schools and from respite care, so struggling to get some relief would be something that is very topical. 

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You will also hear parents talking about “diagnostic odysseys”. Getting a diagnosis for a child is not a quick and straightforward process. There are a lot of delays, there are a lot of inaccuracies, which can be very frustrating. 

What can schools do to improve how they support families of pupils with SEND?  

It’s all about improving the quality of parental engagement. Sometimes parents feel that they are at loggerheads with the school and there’s conflict. So yes, there’s an engagement but they don’t see themselves and the school as allies.  

Schools really need to help the parents to recognise that they have the child’s best interests at heart. To do this, they have to know what’s going on in the family. Often there can be a lot going on connected to the child’s needs - appointments, and so on - that most families won’t have to worry about.

For an effective partnership there’s got to be trust: the parents have to trust the teachers, and they have to think the teachers are on their side. 

Are there any practical steps that schools can take to build trust?

In order to build that trust, promises need to be kept, expectations need to be met and teachers need to work on their soft skills - for example, making sure that you really listen to parents, rather than automatically assuming that you know better.

One really nice practical idea that one of my students came across is a school that had a coffee morning for parents and invited health professionals. It’s a simple thing to do but it allows everyone to talk openly in an informed way about what’s going on.

If a school suspects that a child may have a special educational need, how should it approach the initial conversation with the parents?

When it comes to diagnoses, in my experience there are three types of parents. 

You have the early advocates, parents who have an inkling really early on that there’s a problem, so are already engaged: they’re the ones trying to drive things forward.  

Then you’ve got the “worried well” group, who may be prone to over-interpreting and thinking their child has a problem, when, in fact, they don’t.

And then you’ve got the parents who don’t think there’s a problem at all, when actually there is.

So it’s important to know where the family is on that journey.

If it’s the school that’s first alerting the family to the possibility that maybe their child’s not on the same trajectory as other children, those parents may need more nurturing and support than those who are coming to you and saying, “Look, I’m worried about X, Y and Z.” 

Is there anything that schools need to be cautious of when it comes to having these conversations?

The possibility for misinterpretation and “misdiagnosis” is a big one. For instance, there’s good data to show that children who are born in the summer months are 50 to 60 per cent more likely than children born in September or October to get an ADHD diagnosis. Some of these children do have ADHD, but for others, it is about misinterpreting being young in the class with being inattentive and hyperactive.

When children start school and parents start seeing other people’s children, they can get very stressed about the fact that their child isn’t doing what other children are doing in the classroom. They always use the most stable child as their benchmark rather than thinking, “Where’s the average?”

For example, being late to talk doesn’t tell you anything at all. Einstein was late to talk. But about 80 per cent of kids who are late to talk will catch up and you won’t notice a difference. 

If a parent comes to you, worrying that their child isn’t holding the conversations that other children are having and they just seem so much less articulate, that’s probably not something that should raise red flags. 

However, being delayed in your receptive language is. If parents are saying they give a child a really simple instruction, and he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, this is more of a concern. So, sometimes you can work out if there is a problem just by getting the parents to tune in.

Are there any other misconceptions around particular special needs that schools should be aware of?  

Yes, particularly when it comes to co-occuring conditions. Take Down’s syndrome, for example. There is a stereotype that children with Down’s syndrome are quite sociable. And while that is true for most children with Down’s syndrome, one in five or so are also autistic.

The high-functioning end of autism is very vocal, but there are plenty of autistic children that have really quite significant impairments and may be completely non-verbal. 

For a parent of a child with both Down’s syndrome and autism, this can lead to them feeling doubly isolated. If they go to a Down’s syndrome support group, their child is not necessarily going to be like the other children there, and if they go to an autism support group, their child may not be like the children there, either. So they are left with no place to go to find others who are having a similar experience.  

Do you think the long-awaited government SEND review could help to address some of the problems that parents face?

I know that people are hoping that the review will bring much more coproduction: giving families more input into what’s going on.  

But it also needs to address that diagnostic odyssey. If you want children to get the right support, so that they can achieve, which is one of the things that governments say they want, then we have to identify the problems early and make accessing the support so much more straightforward.  

My understanding is that it can literally take most of primary school for a child to get the diagnosis they need. We’re talking years. And that’s years that are lost in terms of being able to help children with the basics. 

Claire Hughes is a professor of developmental psychology and deputy director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. She is also one of the speakers at the upcoming E-ACT Ideas Conference in partnership with Tes