Communication and interaction

The Communication and Interaction (C and I) Team consists of highly qualified and experienced Advisory Teachers, a Speech and Language Therapist, a Pre-5 Autism Specialist and Specialist Support Assistants. We offer support, advice and guidance for children and young people where Autism and Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) is the primary need.

Who do we work with?

We work in partnership with educational settings from 0-25, as well as individual children and their families. Where possible this is in partnership with other agencies in education, health and social care.

What do we do?

We enable settings to provide best practice in educational provision for pupils with Autism and SLCN, including:

• high quality teaching
• targeted group interventions
• individualised learning

We enable staff to meet the needs of pupils through whole-school development, consultancy and training. In collaboration with schools and other professionals, we support parents and carers through parent programmes for both Autism and Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN). Direct engagement with parents and carers is always facilitated in partnership with school staff.

How do I access the service?

Early Years settings
Communication and Interaction Team support into an Early Years Setting. To make a referral please use the Request for Access Form

This will continue, whilst we review Early Years service models in partnership with Early Years consultants, Nursery Plus and the early Years Complex Needs teams.

Primary and secondary settings
Support from the Communication and Interaction Team for school aged children (Reception onwards) continues via the newly established C and I advisory clinic model, forming part of a new triage process to requests for support.

Setting staff (SENCo) should now (from Nov 2021) use the new RfA (Request for Access) form.

This is used for access to all SEND support teams. This will then lead to a booking into a virtual C and I advisory clinic appointment (hosted via Microsoft TEAMs, video enabled) to discuss a specific child where Communication and Interaction (Autism and Speech, Language and Communication Needs) has been identified as the Primary Need requiring advice and guidance.

You will be asked to submit:

• Parent and carer consent (essential to proceed with advisory engagement)
• School based plan
• Graduated response tool – C and I assessment indicator section
• Desired outcomes being sought from this request

The above will both inform, guide and support advisory advice offered.

Virtual clinics are held weekly throughout the term in 4 localities for school based staff only. Advisory clinic attendance is only open to setting staff (SENCo, teacher and learning support staff) and will support attendance, engagement and progress for Children and Young People (CYP).

Please be mindful that there remains a limited availability to these C and I advisory clinics for our county wide settings to access. Where you might hold larger cohorts of C and I CYP with identified needs, please do not block book clinic appointments. But instead discuss priorities with your locality C and I advisory teacher so access to  clinics remains for everyone.

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