Glossary
The words in your child's reports.
Written for the evening you are handed a document full of acronyms nobody explained. Short definitions, no further jargon, and where a term is commonly used to sell something, we say so.
A
- Access arrangements
- Adjustments a school makes so a child can show what they know — extra time, a reader, a separate room. They change the conditions of a task, not its content. Formal exam access arrangements usually need an educational psychologist report.
- Assistive technologyAlso: AT
- Any tool that removes a barrier — text-to-speech, a communication device, a pencil grip. Buying one without a plan for who will set it up and how you will know it worked is the most common way money is wasted here.
B
- Baseline
- What a child can do before support starts, measured rather than described. Without one, nobody can prove later that anything changed.
- Behaviour support plan
- A written plan describing what a behaviour achieves for a child and what will be taught instead. A plan that only lists consequences is not a behaviour support plan.
D
- Discharge
- The formal end of support. It should be a planned milestone written into the plan at the start, not something that happens when a family stops paying.
E
- Early intervention
- Support delivered in the preschool years, when change tends to come faster. It is a genuinely strong argument and also the one most often used to rush families into signing.
- Exit criterion
- The condition that has to be true for a stage of support to end, agreed in writing before that stage starts. If a provider cannot tell you theirs, they do not have one.
F
- Fading
- Deliberately reducing prompts, adult proximity or session frequency as a child becomes more independent. It should be scheduled in the plan, not improvised when a family raises the cost.
- Functional needs assessment
- An assessment of what a child can do, what gets in the way, and what a setting can realistically deliver. It answers what to do on Monday. A diagnosis answers a different question.
G
- Generalisation
- A skill working outside the place it was taught — with a different adult, in a different room, on a different day. A skill that only appears in the therapy room has not generalised, and is not yet useful.
I
- IEPAlso: Individual Education Plan, ILP
- The school's own written plan for a child — targets, provision and review dates. Outside support should work to it rather than beside it, or the child ends up with two plans and no one plan.
- Inclusion
- A child taking part in the ordinary life of a setting, not merely being present in the room. Attendance without participation is the failure mode this word usually hides.
- Independence File
- Our record of everything about a child's support — plan, goals, session data, reports, reviews and decisions. It belongs to the family, who can export all of it free at any time, including on the way out.
- Independence Plan
- Our one-page plan: goals in plain English, intensity, settings, projected timeline and review dates. Everyone involved works from it, and it names other providers where they are the better fit.
- Intensity
- How much support, how often. The number most commonly inflated in this sector, which is why our recommendations above a set intensity need a second signature from someone with no commercial role.
L
- LSAAlso: Learning support assistant, shadow teacher
- An adult supporting a child in class. Done well, they work to written targets under clinical supervision with a plan to withdraw. Done badly, they become a barrier between a child and their classmates.
M
- Mainstream
- An ordinary school, as opposed to a specialist setting. Which is right depends on the child and on what the school can actually resource, not on which sounds more ambitious.
- Maintenance
- A low, stable level of support for a child who will not reach full independence — typically a review each term and a number to call. A legitimate ending, provided it is named as one rather than implied to be temporary.
O
- Occupational therapyAlso: OT
- Therapy focused on the practical business of daily life — motor skills, self-care, sensory regulation. Formal sensory profiles come from an OT, not from us.
P
- Prompt
- Any help given to get a response — a gesture, a word, a hand on an elbow. Prompts are supposed to be removed on a schedule. Prompt dependence is what happens when nobody wrote that schedule.
S
- SENCOAlso: Special educational needs coordinator
- The person in a school responsible for children with additional needs. Usually the most useful single relationship a parent has inside a school, and usually the most overloaded.
- Sensory profile
- A description of how a child responds to sensory input — sound, light, touch, movement. Written by an occupational therapist. Useful when it changes what a room demands, not when it sits in a drawer.
- Shadow teacher
- Common UAE term for a one-to-one classroom assistant. See LSA. Ask any provider offering one what the exit plan is; the answer tells you most of what you need to know.
- SLTAlso: Speech and language therapy, SALT
- Therapy for communication — understanding, expression, speech sounds, social use of language. Functional communication comes before clarity of speech, in that order.
- Statement of need
- A written description of what a child requires, used to secure school or funding support. Its usefulness depends entirely on whether it is specific enough to act on.
T
- Termly review
- A scheduled point at which data is looked at and the plan is confirmed or rewritten. A review that never results in a change is not a review.
- Transfer
- Our fourth stage: moving skills from the therapy room into school life and training the teaching team to carry them. The stage most often skipped, and the reason support so often never ends.
If a report still doesn't make sense
Send it to us and we'll translate it.
Any report, from any provider, including ones we have nothing to do with. We will tell you in plain English what it says, what it recommends, and which parts are actually supported by the evidence in it.
There is no charge for this and it does not make you a client. It is the single most useful twenty minutes we can give a family who is stuck.
Reading a recommendation
A short guide to what a good recommendation contains, and the four things a weak one always leaves out.
Questions before you sign
Eleven questions worth asking any provider, including us, before you commit to a programme.
Where this starts
Tell us what you've noticed.
Twenty minutes on the phone with someone who does this every day. No assessment, no cost, and no obligation to become a client at the end of it.
If we're not the right people, we'll tell you who is. That includes naming providers we don't own, and it costs you nothing either way.