There seems to be a greater awareness of neurodiversity in our community. Neurodiversity covers such things as ADHD, ASD, dyspraxia, or a Specific Learning Difficulty with impairments in such areas as reading and writing.

Families and educational and medical professionals are trying to catch up with how to best meet the needs of tamariki who may or may not present with a neurodiversity.

Currently, we have a high number of parents turning up with forms given to them by their  GP’s to be filled in by teachers. These are usually for suspected ADHD.

If you do get given a form for the teacher to fill in from your GP please make sure the form goes to our SENCO, Nicky Horne in the first instance. n.horne@somerfield.school.nz. NOT THE CLASSROOM TEACHER. Nicky's role is to manage and coordinate all referrals so the form must go to her. She will get back to you.

In some cases, parents are seeking private professionals to support them with their children. Sometimes these professionals want access to classes to carry out observations, which raises privacy issues for other students or spaces, which are limited, or access to personnel. At other times we have been presented with reports from professionals, usually unknown to the school, giving parents the expectation that the school will fund some support.

Funding is limited at our school. We have an equity rating that has halved our funding for learning support in the last two years. The only other funding is for specific students allocated by the Ministry of Education, usually for high-needs behaviour students and it is never enough. At times we also get funding from other organisations such as Oranga Tamariki for specific child who are usually in their care.

Currently, our Board of Trustees funds mentors from the Methodist Mission and this comes from our operations grant. We also work with Mana Ake to support our tamariki.

If you have a report from a professional, please do not come with an expectation that there will be resources available. Sadly, there are unlikely to be any resources but please make an appointment with our SENCO Nicky Horne to discuss the report and see what support we might be able to provide.

Denise Torrey

Tumuaki