The Access to Inclusion (A2I) team is made up of advisory teachers with extensive experience working in education settings as teachers and as SENCOs, together with specialist knowledge and additional post-graduate qualifications in different aspects of special educational needs (SEN). Find out more in meet the team’s One Page Profiles.

The  A2I team is committed to ensuring that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are fully included in education; that their needs are accurately identified, and they receive high-quality provision which enables them to be happy and achieve good outcomes. The team combines the old Learning Support Team and Autism and Communication Team.

The team’s areas of expertise include:

• Whole school SEN systems and effectiveness
• SENCO support
• High-quality training for teachers, support staff and governing bodies.
• Identification and removal of barriers to learning
• Cognition and learning difficulties (including specific learning difficulties – dyslexia and dyscalculia)
• Autism and communication difficulties

We:

• Work closely with children and young people and their families, and with school leaders, setting staff, SENCOs and other professionals, providing advice and support around inclusive practice, accurate identification of needs and high quality appropriate provision.
• Support SENCOs and education settings to build their capacity to meet the needs of all children and young people with SEND and implement SEND policy and practice in line with the 0-25 SEND Code of Practice (2015) and local and national initiatives.
• Work in partnership with colleagues across Inclusion to support children and young people with SEND where there are difficulties with attendance and risk of exclusion.
• Provide joint annual planning meetings with settings, alongside colleagues from Statutory SEND and the Education Psychology Service (EPS) to plan support from the Inclusion teams and ensure the right children and young people have the right support at the right time.
• Work in partnership with colleagues from the Statutory SEND team on statutory assessment, Educational Health Care Plans (EHCPs) and education provision and placement.
• Promote fully inclusive practice and specifically an autism and a communication-friendly and dyslexia friendly approach in education settings.
• Work with individual CYP, their families and education settings to identify barriers to learning and advise on ways to remove the barriers.
• Promote and support the use of the Somerset Graduated Response Tool. Find out more at What to expect from education
• Promote and support the use of the Somerset Inclusion Tool (Contact Access to Inclusion Mailbox for further information)
• Provide a range of training (including nationally accredited courses) for settings, SENCOs, school staff, and parent carers.
• Work alongside Somerset Special Schools to provide SEND Networks

SENIT Leaflet

Type of provision

Targeted - This is for people with special educational needs and disabilities and their families