1 Who we support
West Sussex Sensory Support Team (SST) supports children and young people aged between 0-19 years who have a sensory need - hearing, visual or multi-sensory impairment.
The team covers those within the Special Educational Needs (SEN) pre-school or school support groups.
It also covers children or young people with a Statement of SEN or Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) who attend:
- a West Sussex-maintained mainstream primary or secondary school
- a special school
- an academy
- a free school.
Any child or young person with a diagnosis of sensory impairment can be referred to us for support. This includes those whose hearing thresholds are at least in the mild, moderate, severe or profound levels of hearing loss as diagnosed by an audiologist.
For children or young people with visual needs, their vision would be less than 6/12, diagnosed by an eye clinic and not correctable by glasses.
2 How we support you and your child
We visit children and young people in their home, providing support and advice to parents so that you can monitor your child's development.
Our rehabilitation and mobility officers (RMOs) provide specialist input to children with visual impairments. They focus on mobility, including orientation, long cane skills and route training as well as independent living skills, such as pouring drinks, making cakes, dressing and appropriate social skills.
We hold regular meetings with audiologists, speech and language therapists, paediatricians, orthoptists, portage and social care to ensure that up-to-date information is shared between professionals.
We can help children:
- with a visual impairment who may need a CCTV or specialist software in school to access text from a book
- who are unable to access text and would need to be taught Braille by an advisory teacher
- with hearing aids or auditory implants needing a radio aid system to support the clarity of the speaker’s voice in lessons where background noise and distance from a speaker would affect them. The advisory teachers for hearing impairment set up the radio aid to work with the child’s hearing aids or cochlear implant.
3 How to start using the service
Most referrals come through the health service, in which case we contact the families, schools or preschools to offer our support. We also take referrals from parents, schools and other services that may already be involved.
If you would like to make a referral please call, email or send us a completed referral form. We do ask schools to gain written permission from parents before we become involved.