The role of Nottinghamshire's District Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCO)

The seven District SENCO's were appointed following a review of the use of High Needs Funding in Nottinghamshire and public consultation. They are specialist teachers who work within the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Inclusion Service (SIS).

They work as part of on of three SEND inclusion service teams:

Early Years
Cognition and Learning
Communication and Interaction.

They are managed by a Senior Practitioner who oversees the balance between all elements of the role. Each Senior Practitioner is also a Locality Lead with SIS offering an oversight of an area of the county.

Within SIS there is also a Senior Teacher who helps develop and implement strategies, systems and processes to provide support and challenge for Family SENCOs. This post is within the Cognition and Learning Team.

For further information about the role of the Family SENCO, please refer to the One-minute guide on Family SENCOs.

Purpose of the District SENCO role

To strengthen the role of Nottinghamshire's Family SENCOs and Family of Schools network.
To contribute to the shaping of locality-based ways-of-working in Nottinghamshire.

Key responsibilities include:

Supporting Family SENCOs with their use of the Additional Family Need SEND Funding Toolkit and Additional Family Need moderation arrangements, when required.
Maintaining contact information for the family SENCOs and SENCOs in their districts.
Providing advice, guidance and support to the Family SENCOs on a range of SEND matters.
Providing context around data pertaining to SEND in their districts and supporting the development of new ways of gathering and collating information pertaining to Additional Family Need allocations.
Supporting their Locality Lead, to develop and co-ordinate SIS locality meetings.
Delivering training for SIS colleagues SENCOs and Family SENCOs.
Contributing to locality-focused working and discussion groups alongside the Locality Leads on behalf of SIS.