NAS Accreditation

National Autistic Society

Accreditation – Advanced Status 

Amid these very strange circumstances, we are pleased to announce that, following our review in February 2020, Delamere School have officially been awarded “Advanced Status” in the NAS Autism Accreditation

What is the Autism Accreditation?

Autism Accreditation is UK’s only autism-specific quality assurance programme of support and development for all those providing services to autistic people. It is a way for organisations to show they offer excellent support to autistic children and adults.

It is an ongoing process, in which the school is reviewed every 3 years to ensure provision for our children with autism evolves with the latest research, and our standards remain outstanding.

What is “Advanced” Status?

According to official NAS criteria, an “Advanced” provision “provides highly creative and very personalised support to enable each autistic person to achieve their full potential”.

Thank you all for your support in receiving this outstanding achievement!

Here’s what the NAS say about Delamere School’s Autism Provision:

What stood out as particular strengths:

• Underpinning teaching and learning is an emphasis on the development of communication. Engaging and motivating lessons are differentiated to provide opportunities for children to be challenged and to experience a sense of completion and achievement.
• Sensory circuits are established working practices and form a regular part of individual programmes. In addition other sensory based activities that have a positive impact on pupils are clearly identified through the schools sensory assessment system.
• Emotional regulation approaches are used in school to give pupils a means to identify, label and share their feelings. Strategies to help pupils to self-regulate are linked to different feelings.
• The school provides excellent support for autistic families. Families are supported before, during and after diagnosis. Parents and carers are provided with support, advice, and training and there are high satisfaction and engagement levels.

What else the provision does well:

• The school is recognised as a community hub school for training, outreach and advice and evidence shared in the format of evaluations supports the view that practice in this area is valued.
• The assessment team recognise the school’s commitment to inquiry based practice and willingness to trial new developments in the field of autism.

The school have a proactive Parent Council who work in collaboration with the school and who engage in consultation 

Emotional Well Being

At Delamere we have developed our own emotional and behavioural screening where there are concerns about a child’s emotional well-being. The screening tool indicates a pathway and support for pupils, staff and families. This may be following an incident at home or school or simply where school or home have noticed a change in behaviour.

We also routinely review all children who are looked after by the local authority or have previously been looked after in order to track their emotional well-being and put interventions in place in a timely manner.

The pathway of support includes consideration of strategies that are already in place for the child, including reviewing any existing learning support plans, looking at patterns of behaviour/triggers for emotional dysregulation as well as supporting to try and identify any other support that can be given both internally and from external partners.

Autism Teaching Assistant Support Network

This is currently run at Delamere for: SALT/SLCN Teaching Assistants/HLTAs from across Trafford authority who are working with children who have a diagnosis of autism. The meetings are held termly and led by Delamere staff and Jackie Tarpey from SEN Advisory Service

Topics covered across the year will include:

• Understanding Sensory Processing difficulties.
• Tools to develop reading comprehension skills.
• Communication friendly environments.

Post Diagnostic Workshop 

Have a look on the links below for an Autism Spectrum Diagnostic Workshop Sessions offering support to Autistic adults post diagnosis

Jackie Tarpey

Jackie Tarpey is our authority SEN consultant for autism and social communication. We work closely with Jackie delivering training to colleagues in mainstream settings. Jackie is also supportive to us at Delamere and provides support to us and our families