Working alongside the staff and team, I have had the opportunity to witness first hand, Chatham’s holistic & inclusive approach to working with children and meeting their individual needs, as well as working closely alongside the families and external services.
– SEND Early Notification Team Liverpool City Council
The SEND EYFS curriculum at Chatham Nursery School offers every child the chance to succeed socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually, within a stimulating, nurturing and safe environment.
A play based exploratory curriculum allows our individuals to develop skills on a 1:2 ratio combined with intensive interaction, small group activities such as bucket therapy sessions, songs and number rhymes. We also provide regular opportunities for sensory circuits throughout the session. These activities help children prepare for learning by improving their alertness.
Our curriculum is based on the ‘Differentiated Early Years outcomes’ document which is adapted to ensure that all our children are able to access learning. This document breaks learning down into small steps so that we can track progress more specifically and use it to help set our children’s next steps for learning.
We focus heavily on the early development of communication and interaction and Personal, social and emotional skills. Intensive interaction assessments are used to assess engagement levels, helping staff design suitable learning activities that support interaction and participation. We support their learning with objects of reference, British sign language, visual cues and communication aids in all areas of the classroom. With the support of speech and language therapists, we have adopted a Total Communication Approach.
You can get an overview of the The Nest long term curriculum here.
Individual Learning Plans
Where assessment indicates that support from specialist services is required the school strives to ensure that the pupil receives this as quickly as possible.
Children identified with SEND needs have an individual learning plan outlining targets, provision and any interventions that are in place. Professional support from outside agencies contributes to the overall planning and development of targets for individual children. We follow an ASSESS-PLAN-DO-REVIEW model. Individual plans are updated and shared with parents half termly.
Partnering with Specialists
We are fortunate to regularly work with specialist services including OSSME Autism Initiative which offers a range of services to support children, as well as their families. MAST, a service which offers Consultant Paediatrician led Neurodevelopmental assessments with hands-on support for children with diverse needs. We also regularly work with educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, SENISS our Local Authority SEND support service, SEND family link workers at Picton and Kensington Children’s Centres, health visitors and Purple Circle Autism Consultancy .
The setting acts as a strong advocate for students and their families, especially recognising that many parents and carers may be
unfamiliar with the complexities of the education system. Staff express a deep belief that all students deserve access to the best education possible.IQM Report – June 2025