At Hargrave Park School, we are committed to ensuring that our specialist learning spaces – HP House and HP Cabin – are nurturing and inclusive environments which support children who have complex learning needs. Our mission is to offer a highly personalised learning experience that enables children to access the benefits of a specialist provision while attending a mainstream school setting.

SEND Mission Statement

HP Cabin caters for a young cohort of children who are pre-verbal in their stage of development and require specialised teaching and learning approaches, which include: Makaton Signing, PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System), Attention Builders Activities, targeted development of fundamental communication skills including joint attention, listening skills, turn-taking, engagement with others, developing communicative intent and social interaction skills, Sensory Play and Exploration, Sensory Circuits and Movement Breaks. An Individual Plan (IP) is created for each child in HP Cabin and is reviewed termly to monitor achievement and progress.

Hargrave Park School supports a Total Communication Approach – this is a philosophy adopted from Speech and Language Therapy, that refers to determining and using the right combination of teaching, learning and communication methods for a child, to ensure the child forms connections, ensures successful interactions and supports information exchanges. A Total Communication Approach is a way of optimising a child’s potential and reducing the extent of their difficulties, helping them to better access learning activities and to communicate and interact successfully. This approach aims to improve accessibility to learning activities for all children.

The admission criteria for entry to HP Cabin at Hargrave Park School is primarily based on: a child’s presentation, the barriers to learning a child may be experiencing, the level of the child’s learning needs, and the difficulties the child may be experiencing with accessing learning in their mainstream classroom.

The Head Teacher is responsible for deciding which children would benefit the most from the specialised support offered in HP Cabin. This decision is made following the four-part cyclical graduated approach of ‘assess, plan, do, review’ as outlined in the SEND Code of Practice (2015), and takes into consideration advice from the Educational Psychologist, the Speech and Language Therapist and all other relevant professionals.