We’d like to tell you a little bit about what we offer our students and families at Swalcliffe Park School.
Working with students and their families
We want all of our students to be happy, healthy and empowered young people. So, we think it is essential to ask them about what matters to them, what makes them happy and what they would like to do with their lives.
We also think it is important to work closely with families. So, we ask them about the impact of autism on family life, about what they would like to do but currently can’t and about what is important to them.
We know that working together in this way leads to brighter futures and a better quality of life for our students and for their families.
“All individuals with autism are entitled to a good education and a good quality of life”
Autism Education Trust
Strengths and difficulties
The starting point for helping our students is finding out about their personal strengths and difficulties, as well as their hopes and aspirations, so that we can help them to prepare themselves for adulthood.
However, we believe it is also very important to ask them, regularly, how things are going in their lives. To achieve this, all students have weekly keyworking sessions and complete termly surveys.
Support and guidance
This gives students regular opportunities to evaluate their feelings about themselves, their relationships, their emotional and psychological well-being and their personal circumstances at the time. By sharing this information, each student is giving us his personal perspective on what is going well in his life and what is not.
We then focus our support on four main areas, namely:
- Communication
- Self- Management
- Independence
- Achievement
Quality of Life
Our approach also involves working closely with families. As student lives influence family lives, we recognise that some families will need direct support and guidance. This makes it essential for us to know how autism affects each family’s life.
We do this through weekly keyworking conversations and termly surveys. These provide us with up-to-date information on what issues families are facing, so we can see how best to support them.
We then focus our support to families in four main areas, namely:
- Support for school-related issues
- Family-to-family support
- Support for home-based issues
- Training
We use ‘Quality of Life’ information from students and their families to target support on the issues that are important to them. This is ‘why we do what we do’ and are proud to have been awarded ‘Advanced Level’ Autism Accreditation for our approach. We have also established the ‘Quality of Life’ network for other schools that are interested in adopting our approach.
If you would like to know more about anything you have read, please visit our website www.swalcliffepark.co.uk or give school a call on 01295 780302 and ask to speak to either Kiran Hingorani, Chief Executive Officer, or Rob Piner, Principal.
Different Thinking
Brighter Futures
Swalcliffe Park School
Swalcliffe
Banbury
Oxfordshire
OX15 5EP
T: 01295 780 302
admin@swalcliffepark.co.uk
swalcliffepark.co.uk
DfE No: 931/7007
CIO Registered Charity No: 1173113
Principal: Robert Piner
CEO: Kiran Hingorani MEd
