Training Events and Consultancy

Makesense organizes a number of one-day courses at venues around the UK, which are advertised nationally and open to anyone involved in the education of children and young people with speech, language and communication needs.

All our courses are taught jointly by a teacher and speech and language therapist, and present an approach arising from a meeting of these two professional perspectives. We summarise the latest thinking in each area so that course participants have a sound basis for understanding the difficulties these children face, why their behaviours can seem baffling, and what practical steps you can take to help. However, the focus of the day is resolutely on what will work in the classroom.

All of our courses are currently costed at £120 per delegate, with a reduced cost of £80 for subsequent delegates from the same workplace. Included in this price are lunch and refreshments during the day, and a booklet covering course content and recommended strategies for intervention. For further details about our terms and conditions, see our on-line course booking form.

We can work with you to develop the workplace training that suits your needs. Usually, clients select training based on one of our courses which we can adapt, if necessary, to suit your particular circumstances - but we can also develop a bespoke package centred on your requirements and our expertise. Whether you work in a mainstream or specialist setting, in primary or secondary, or in a post 16 provision, we can design courses to your requirements.

Our trainers are practitioners - teachers and speech & language therapists with many years of ongoing experience helping children with special needs in the classroom. This means that our courses provide not only an understanding of speech, language and communication needs, but more importantly, how this translates into practice.

Financially, this can also be an attractive option as the costs involved in running your own, in-house training will inevitably be considerably less than sending similar numbers of individuals to separate courses.

We are happy to discuss what would be possible in your workplace without any obligation or initial cost.

If you are hosting the training, Makesense trainers will provide booklets for participants covering course content. We provide the first 35 booklets free but for numbers greater than this, we will make a charge of £2.00 per booklet to cover production costs.

You will be asked to provide basic audio-visual equipment, (OHP, screen and a flip-chart) and refreshments/lunch during the day.

Usually, our fees for workplace training are £1000 per day, plus travel @25p per mile from our base in Nottingham , and overnight accommodation, if necessary, for the two trainers delivering the course.

For delivery of our standard courses in your workplace, 'makesense' will not charge for planning time. For development of bespoke training, we will usually levy a charge of £350 for our time planning your course.

We are happy to discuss pricing structures for non-standard services .

Makesense can support you and your school, college or other organisation through advising individuals, or small groups of staff about how best to meet the needs of children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). We can help you with difficulties associated with particular students, or with how to approach subject areas which students with SLCN find problematic. Makesense can also offer advice on how best to deploy the resources that you have available to support students with communication difficulties, including ways to make the classroom and wider environment sympathetic to their needs.

We are practitioners with a wealth of experience of working with children with SLCN within busy classrooms.

Makesense consultants have experience of managing provision for students with differing SENs in both mainstream and special school settings, and can use their expertise to help you audit, review and manage your provision more effectively. We can do this through meeting with particular staff, either on a one-off basis or on a number of occasions to give you the opportunity to test out solutions and discuss and develop them to a successful conclusion. Makesense can run a 'surgery' at your school or college for a day, or half-day, during which members of staff can 'call in' to discuss problems they face with meeting the needs of students with SLCN, or to get ideas on how to make learning more effective.

If you are interested in engaging our consultancy service, we are happy to discuss what would be possible, with no obligation or initial cost. If your requirements are straightforward, e.g. for our staff to run a one-day advice 'surgery' for educators at your workplace, then this can be simply agreed and invoiced accordingly. Should you decide to proceed with a more complex service, in discussion with you we will draw up a draft brief outlining the service we will perform

• times allocated to different aspects of it,
• who will be involved,
• your documentation requirements
• costs.

When this consultancy brief has been agreed, we will draw up a contract detailing specific requirements. Consultancy packages are designed to meet your requirements but usually consist of an initial consultation carried out by a teacher/speech and language therapist team followed by an individually tailored programme using appropriate expertise.

Consultancy is charged per day at

£600: teacher/SLT team
£350: individual teacher or SLT

in addition, we charge for traveling expenses @ 25 p per mile, and overnight accommodation if necessary.