Statements of SEN

A statement of special educational needs (SEN) is a legal document that describes your child's special needs and sets out the type of support they need to help them make progress at school or pre-school. Not all children who have SEN have a statement, and not all children with statements go to special schools.

How to get a statement for your child

Kent County Council's County Panel (a group of senior officers) will decide if your child should be given a statement after the assessment process. We will only give your child a statement if we think they need one. The statement will contain all the reports from the people we consulted during the assessment process.

We will send you a draft statement that you can make comments on before we issue a final, signed statement for your child. If you disagree with any part of the statement, you can speak to your named officer for advice. They will tell you what you need to do next, and will give you information on appealing against our decisions.

How the statement works

Once we have signed the final statement and sent it to you, we must make sure that your child gets the help set out in it as well as making sure that the support offered in the statement is still suitable for your child as they grow. We will do this through the annual review process.

The annual review process

An annual review is a yearly meeting that allows us to:

• check that the support your child has received over the past year has helped them to make progress
• see if your child's needs have changed in any way
• think about and plan for the next year
• see if the statement is still suitable or needs changing in some way (sometimes, we might find we no longer need the statement).

First we will collect all the information we need, then we will have the annual review meeting. You can come to this meeting, and you can bring your child.

After the meeting, your child's headteacher will send us a report on the meeting, and we will then be able to review your child's statement based on this report. You will also get a copy of this report.

Changes to the statement

If we think we need to make changes to your child's statement, we will always talk to you first to find out what your views are. If you disagree with our changes, we will tell you about how to appeal against our decision.