About your child’s needs

All children may have difficulties in education or with learning at some stage, but with support from home and school they can usually overcome these challenges.

What are Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)?

A disability is when a someone has a physical or mental difficulty which has a significant and long-term effect on their ability to carry out activities. This can include a long-term illness. A child or young person has special educational needs if they have a learning difficulty or disability that means they need extra support at school.

You might have heard of "Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)." This is the phrase often used to describe how some children require additional support to their classmates.

Young people have told us they prefer the term 'Additional Needs and/ or Disabilities (AN&D)'. So, this is what we use in Surrey, unless we have to use the term 'SEND' for legal reasons. One young person told us: "I think that 'additional needs' is more of a suitable term because we are not special, we just have additional needs."

If your child has additional needs and/or a disability, they might need extra support, or support in a different way, to make sure they can learn.

In this section:

What kinds of special educational need are there?
How do I know if my child has additional needs and/or disabilities?

What kinds of special educational need are there?

There are four broad categories:

Communication and interaction
Cognition and learning
Social, emotional, and mental health difficulties
Sensory and/ or physical impairment

1. Communication and interaction

Children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) have difficulty communicating with others.

They may find it hard to do any or all of these:

say what they want to
understand what is being said to them
understand/use social rules of communication.

Every child with SLCN is different and their needs may change over time.

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) makes talking and listening difficult. It is a type of speech, language and communication need (SLCN) that affects about 2 children out of every classroom. Children with DLD have significant, on-going difficulties understanding and/or using spoken language, in all the languages you use. Sometimes DLD can affect children's social interaction and behaviour.

Children with social communication difficulties may struggle with:

Interacting with other people
Switching their attention between people and activities
Understanding and using eye contact, facial expressions, body language
Listening and paying attention to the world and people around them

Some children with social communication difficulties may have Autism.

Autistic children and young people have varying and complex needs. Autism affects social interaction and relationships), social communication (verbal and non-verbal communication) and social imagination (predicting outcomes or other people's reactions). Autistic children and young people may also have sensory differences, involving sounds, touch, tastes, smells, light or colours.

2. Cognition and learning

Children and young people who learn differently to their peers may need support for learning difficulties. This covers a wide range of needs, including:

Moderate learning difficulties (MLD)
Severe learning difficulties (SLD), where children need support in all areas of the curriculum, as well as mobility and communication
Profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD), where children have severe and complex learning difficulties, as well as a physical disability or sensory impairment.
Specific learning difficulties (SpLD), such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia.
Attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) or
Other underlying difficulties

Social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs are a type of special educational needs in which children/young people have severe difficulties in managing their emotions and behaviour. Children and young people may experience a wide range of social, emotional and mental health difficulties.

There is often a range of different reasons why a child or young person can face difficulties in this area, and these are not always easy to initially identify.

Behaviour may include:

becoming withdrawn or isolated
behaving in a way that challenges or is disruptive
displaying worrying or risky behaviour

A child may have SEMH needs for different reasons including, attachment difficulties, experience of trauma, mental illness or many more reasons.

4. Sensory and/ or physical impairment

Some children and young people require extra help because of a sensory disability or need. This could be:

A physical disability (PD)
Vision impairment (VI)
Hearing impairment (HI)
Or a combination, which is a multi-sensory impairment (MSI)

How do I know if my child has additional needs and/or disabilities?

Some additional needs and/or disabilities are identified at birth or very early in a child's life.

Other needs become evident later. Children develop at different rates and are unique in their own interests, personality and family situation. So, it can take time to understand their individual needs.

You might be told by a health professional that there is a possibility your child has an additional
need or disability
You may notice that your child is developing or learning at a different pace to children the
same age

Sometimes a need emerges when a child starts pre-school, nursery or school. These settings have a responsibility to identify children with additional needs. They will tell you about their concerns and may refer your child to specialist services or signpost you to further help.

Your child doesn't need a diagnosis to receive additional support in school.

A diagnosed medical condition, need or disability does not mean a child has additional needs or requires extra support above what a school can provide ordinarily. See the sections on disabilities and medical needs for more information.

A child must have an educational need to have 'special educational needs.'

What you can do

If you have a concern, you can talk to a health professional such as your GP or health visitor – this is particularly important if you are concerned about your child's health. They can make referrals to other services if needed