Training at Paddock School
As part of our allocated Pupil Premium Funding, we employ a full time Family Liaison Officer, who works closely with parents to support them in their role as parents. Georgina organises and runs many coffee mornings and workshops throughout the year and consults parents regularly about the types of workshops they would like.
Some of the workshops are led by teachers from Paddock School as well as by therapists and external trainers. Sessions including specialist strategies aimed at supporting pupils' communication and development in the home, have been very successful. Other sessions have included Attention Autism, Sensory Integration, Toilet Training, 'Fussy Eaters', Puberty, Sexual Wellbeing, Relationships and Keeping Safe. We periodically provide First Aid Courses for parents giving them the skills and knowledge to cope with accidents that might happen around the home.
Paddock is a Makaton Signing School. Georgina is a Makaton Regional Tutor and runs regular training sessions for staff and parents. She also works closely with parents planning for 'Life after Paddock'. Georgina supports the Careers Team in arranging visits to Post 16 provisions and liaises with staff in the transition programme.
First Aid Course 
Elklan Training
Elklan is a speech and language therapy training organisation that writes, delivers and verifies learners on bespoke training courses which support the development of communication in children and young people. Our parents/carers have been given the opportunity to attend a 5 session 'Let's Talk' course. We will continue to offer this course to parents, so please contact the school to find out when the next course will be running.
All of the Let's talk courses are very practical and throughout each session there are opportunities to:
- Think about your child's communication
- Try new ideas
- Choose activities specifically for your child
- Discuss a range of issues
- Practise using ideas at home
- Gain recognition for taking part in the course by recording your ideas, observations and activities in a booklet. Parents have the opportunity to gain a certificate, and are given support and encouragement to achieve this goal if they wish.
We have run several Elklan courses since it started September 2015 and parent feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
"The course is very interesting and very helpful for my child. I learnt a lot. I got all the tips I wanted."
"The most useful thing was learning to work and interact more with my son. I am more aware of the way he communicates with me, have more patience and listen more to what he is saying."
"The course was extremely useful. It taught us how to encourage our son to talk more, and how to help control his meltdowns and to understand why he could be misbehaving when he does and how to tackle it. Since starting the course, me and my husband have tried out various methods and all of it has been successful and for the first time we are excited and very optimistic. Our son, who did not talk often, about once in three days, now has spoken about 10 new words a week. He has for the first time called us 'mummy' and 'daddy'. We are very grateful for this excellent course."
