No one should be made to feel excluded from school. We want to create schools that are able to welcome well and help students reach their full potential, and can celebrate this with a Growing Hope Accessibility Award. Accessibility is an essential consideration for all schools with the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan published by the Government in March 2023. This plan aims to enable every child to receive the right support in the right place at the right time. The accessibility audit and award will help provide tips and celebrate the areas where you’re achieving this.

Additional needs are wide ranging, they can include physical needs, learning needs, mental health needs and undiagnosed needs – anything which impacts upon someone’s ability to participate within an activity.

Following your audit if you meet the criteria we will sign an award agreement. You will then receive a plaque, certificate and award logo. In order to maintain the award your SENDCO will need to complete an award checklist each year. If you don’t meet your criteria Growing Hope can support to regain award status. Growing Hope reserves the right to remove award status if the criteria are no longer being met.

It costs £500 for an accessibility audit and award from Growing Hope. This includes the time taken for us to visit and assess your school space structures and resources as well as to write a report and recommendations. This also includes your certificate, accessibility award plaque and promotional logos that you can use. Additional visits to increase your award level will be at the cost of £300. Travel costs will be charged in addition to all visits.

We can provide you with some helpful resources to refer to. If you’d like to you can also receive accessibility training from Growing Hope to help you as you take steps towards the award.

Our bronze award stipulates that adequate physical access is in place for all the areas normally used by the school community, however, some work arounds may be used where access is difficult. This could include the opportunity for someone who has a physical disability to be able to access school in a different way for example through accessing using a different entrance, or through community services and activities. Ultimately, we would like everyone to be able to access the school but we understand that some historical school buildings with grade listings can make this difficult. Growing Hope can problem solve with you and help you think through solutions which means that everyone can be welcome.

It is great to have provision for students with additional needs and we want to celebrate when schools are doing this well. We’d also like to encourage schools to think about how to establish and further community within their school and local area. We would love to support schools to create activities and groups which are accessible to all individuals whatever their needs. This may look like having the opportunity to initially join and meet together and then retreat to quieter spaces if needed.

You can only receive an accessibility award through first having an accessibility audit carried out by a Growing Hope Accessibility Award team member. All our accessibility award assessors have professional qualifications and training which enable them to assess and provide recommendations about accessibility.