Placement Availability Overview
Year | Placement Availability |
|---|---|
2026 | No availability |
2027 | No availability |
Admissions Stages Breakdown
- Referrals are typically made by local authorities.
- In some cases, parents may initiate the referral directly.
- All referrals must be submitted to [email protected]
The following documents must be provided for the referral to progress:
- A current Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)
- Recent review reports
- Any additional relevant supporting information, professional reports (OT/SALT)
- The admissions panel reviews all submitted documents.
- The purpose is to determine whether the child potentially meets Loddon’s essential criteria for admission.
- Many referrals do not meet these criteria at this stage.
- Only referrals that meet the essential criteria move forward and young person may be added to waiting for place list.
- If the child potentially meets the criteria and a suitable vacancy exists at the time or in near future referral can progress
- If local authority/parents confirm their willingness to wait young person is added waiting to be assessed list.
- If no vacancy is available in near future, the referral cannot progress at the time.
- An in‑person assessment is arranged for the child.
- Parents are invited to visit the school, ask questions, and share further insights into their child’s needs.
- This stage is essential: no placement offer is made without an in‑person assessment.
- Following the assessment, the leadership team meets to evaluate:
- The child’s suitability
- Their compatibility with the existing cohort
- Whether the school can meet their educational, social, and therapeutic needs
- The leadership team makes the final determination.
- If the child is deemed suitable and their needs can be met, the process moves forward.
- If not, the referral ends at this stage.
- A formal placement offer is issued to the local authority.
- In exceptional or tribunal‑related cases, the offer may be sent to solicitors and/or parents.
- Placement is only offered once all previous stages have been successfully completed.
- We require all consent forms to be singed at the start of transition to The Loddon School
- Transition period usually takes 6 to 8 weeks depending on young person needs, ability to cope with change
- Transition includes us visiting young person at current placement or home and visits to our School.
Important to note about our placement:
- This is an incremental process: each stage must be passed before moving to the next.
- The full process typically spans several weeks to several months, depending on, documentation, scheduling, and vacancy and assessment availability.
- We are a joint registered school and children’s home which admits children only on a 52-week residential basis.
- Our students typically remain at Loddon until the age of 18 or 19, rather than leaving during traditional academic times.
- We are typically jointly or tripart funded by home local authority Special Educational Needs (SEN) and social care departments.
- Due to ongoing challenges faced by local authorities in securing suitable onward placements, some young people remain with us for longer than expected. As such, transition planning for children starting at The Loddon School is often beyond our control, challenging and frequently open to short notice change.
- Despite receiving placement referrals on a daily basis, Loddon can only accommodate 30 children at any one time. So, on average, only three or four children start at Loddon each year.
- Potential start dates for other in-process children can be open to change by several months when the offer of a place for another child is accepted. While we attempt to provide realistic estimated timeframes, due to the school’s small size, we must accept children on a first come, first served basis.
- Loddon School’s in-person assessments and the assessment report must be no older than six months at the point of admission of a child. As a result, we typically do not complete in-person assessments until 6 months prior to a potential vacancy becoming available.