NAS Accreditation

Accreditation – Advanced Status 

We are pleased to announce that, following our review in March 2023, Delamere School continue to be 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:

• Staff made excellent use of a range of methods and approaches used to provide autistic pupils with the means to communicate.
• Structured teaching and learning provide tailored experiences that provided autistic pupils with access to sensory activities they enjoyed and which were meaningful to them.
• 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.
• The school promotes a Total Communication environment, the commitments to which are set out in the Communication Policy. There was strong evidence throughout the assessment that autistic children are very well supported in all aspects of their communication.
• 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.
• There were many examples where strategies of support were differentiated to ensure that learning was accessible to all, and where staff were mindful to adapt lessons and work flexibly in the moment, in response to pupils learning and emotional wellbeing needs. In all observations, autistic pupils were treated with dignity and respect. So as to boost the children’s confidence and self-esteem, staff provided suitable levels of challenge whilst differentiating their approaches and adapting expected outcomes.

What else the provision does well:

The Committee found evidence from the Accreditation report that the provision met the following standards to a high level of quality and
consistency.

• Staff have a working knowledge of evidence-informed approaches associated with good autism practice.
• They can adapt these specialist approaches so that support is personal-centred and tailored to individual abilities, interests, preferences and
  challenges.
• Adaptions are made to the environment to support individual well-being and self-reliance.
• Each autistic young person develops skills and confidence in communicating with others and engaging in a range of rewarding social
  activities.
• Each autistic young person develops skills and confident in carrying out tasks independently and in being empowered to make their own
  leading to them having greater control and self-autonomy in their lives.
• Each autistic young person enjoys an increasing range of sensory experiences whilst developing regulation strategies to help them avoid
  sensory overload.
• Support enables autistic young people to take part in activities which are purposeful and engaging and which promotes their emotional wellbeing and social inclusion.
• Proactive and preventative strategies are employed to help each autistic person avoid anxiety or distress and to help them understand and
  regulate their emotions.

• 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.

Read the full report below  

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