How Can SENCOs Work Better With Parents?

Penny Whelan

As teachers, we know a lot about the children in our care. We know their strengths and areas for development, we know their favourite subjects, their peer group and their social skills. We know a lot about their academic ability and their emotional development, but we can’t claim to know everything. The people that know the child best will always be their parents or carers.

What we see in school may be a big part of their life, but it’s still only a snapshot of it. We don’t get to see how they interact with their families at home, how they play with their siblings, how they struggle with their homework or with bedtime routines. We don’t see how some children will mask their emotions and try incredibly hard all day at school, only to collapse when they get home to their safe space because they are overwhelmed or over stimulated.

There needs to be a partnership between school and home, between parents and teachers, and especially between SENCOs and parents. As a parent of a child with complex special educational needs, I know first hand how much this relationship matters and just how important it is. My child attends an incredibly supportive and proactive school who have done everything they possibly can to try and meet their needs and I am so grateful for that.

So how can SENCOs work effectively with parents?

1. Create relationships

The first step is to build positive relationships with parents. Many parents of pupils with SEND children will have had negative experiences in the past, either with their own schooling, or with that of their child. Parents want the very best for their child, rightly so, and many will have had to fight for them to be recognised and understood. Don’t make them feel like they need to fight with you. Show them that you appreciate their opinions, value their time and want them to be included in the SEND process in your school. Be a SENCO who is visible and approachable, that will actually call them back and who they feel they can talk to about their child’s needs.

2. Make time and listen

Make time to talk to parents. Call them back when they leave messages, and if you can’t do it right away, get someone to let them know they haven’t been forgotten and you will call as soon as you can. Make time for meetings with parents and include their class teacher or other colleagues if necessary and ensure you really take time to be present and listen to their concerns. Sometimes we need to meet people face to face and share our worries to feel really heard and understood. Parents have so much knowledge about their child that helps to build the bigger picture when we look at special educational needs and referrals to outside agencies.

3. Take what is said seriously

Believe them! Listen and take it seriously when a parent tells you their concerns about their child or when they tell you what they have found that works well for them. You will learn so much from those conversations, and just because a parent says they see certain things at home that aren’t visible in school, doesn’t mean they don’t happen. If we only went on what we see in school, many children with additional needs would never achieve the diagnosis that will help them to make progress, or the EHCP that will support their learning through the education system. It’s only by all parties sharing what they know, that we can put the pieces of the jigsaw together for each individual.

4. Be proactive and supportive

Support parents when making referrals. I have worked with many parents who felt that something “was different” about their child and wanted me to make a referral for possible ADHD or Autism, and I haven’t always been sure that this is the right course of action. This is usually because I haven’t seen the “signs” firsthand, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I’ve been proved wrong several times and I’m happy to have learnt from those situations.

If a parent wants you to help with a referral because they believe that the child needs some support, then it’s good to be able to support them with that process. The outcome may be that they do need a diagnosis as the parent has suggested, or they might not, but you are then able to look at other avenues of support for the child and the family and hopefully get the right things in place for them. If a parent feels something “isn’t right”, then it needs looking into, and I believe SENCOs need to be supportive of parents here.

I’m not saying that we should be referring every single child to a paediatrician or educational psychologist for assessment, but it opens the conversation between parents, schools and other professionals to look at the individual and think about the pathway of support they might need to follow. For example, sometimes mental health and well-being difficulties are uncovered when parents pursue a special educational need, and that might not have happened if they hadn’t.

5. Be open and honest

Following on from this, I believe that it is also the duty of a SENCO to be open and honest with parents if school feels there might be a potential difficulty or additional need for a child. Again, this is something I have experienced, this time as a parent myself. My child’s school spoke to me about the possibility that my child might have ADHD and this took a while to sink in and for me to digest and start to accept that it might be true. The school spoke to me from a place of care and compassion and wanted to do everything they could to support my child, and I hope that this is what I try to emulate. Parents really appreciate schools who care about their child and want the very best for them.

They appreciate understanding the level of need their child has, or the support they would benefit from, or the fact that they might need to consider more specialist support for them, whatever that looks like in your setting. Parents may also need time to digest your observations and opinions and come to terms with the level of need their child might display, and you need to be the supportive factor for them to be able to do this.

6. Show that their child is wanted, valued and included

For parents of a child with special educational needs or disabilities, one of their main worries is that schools won’t want their child, teachers won’t want to have them in their class, that peers won’t like them and want to play with them, and that they won’t be accepted, value and respected. It is imperative that your school shows just how much this is not the case. This isn’t only the job of the SENCO. This starts with the Headteacher and the Senior Leadership Team and files all the way through every member of staff from teachers and teaching assistants, to members of the office staff etc. Your school needs to be welcoming and inclusive, in every sense of the word.

Inclusion should be built into the ethos and culture of the school and it needs to be something that people can feel when they enter the building. Every teacher is a teacher of SEND, and every school needs to be welcoming and promote inclusion. If parents feel you really, genuinely like, want and will support their child, they will be so much happier and feel much more able to communicate with you.

Parents are the most important ally in their child’s education and they need to be made to feel that way. Make a real effort to build those home/school relationships and you’ll see the impact it has on each individual pupil, but particularly those with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities.