Doucecroft School Services currently has provision for forty two boarding placements, all in single rooms. This is based over two sites, with eight places being within the Kelvedon Further Education provision and the remaining thirty four split between the four residential units at Eight Ash Green.

Elm, Ash and Sycamore can each accommodate eight and Beech is the largest service with and allocation of ten boarding placements. Elm, Ash and Sycamore, have been built to the highest specification, and reflect the needs of the young person with Autistic Spectrum Condition. These units recently won an award for their design and architecture.

Each individual house on the Eight Ash Green site is run during the daytime and night time hours by a senior member of staff; overseen and answerable to the house manager. At Kelvedon, the residential service has the same structure except the senior staff are overseen by the FE Department Manager. A professional team of residential support staff take over form the classroom staff at the end of the school day, then their well being at night is taken care of by awake night staff.

It is the aim of the residential provision to provide needs led services tailored to individual pupils and students. An individual assessment is undertaken as part of the admission procedure, enabling all relevant staff to have a clear indication of key areas of development for that child. Personalised care plans, complete with individual target areas, are produced and implemented during the initial stages of boarding. The care plans and individual targets are reviewed at key points within the school calendar and updated and amended where appropriate.

Full liaison with the educational provision is maintained at all times to ensure consistency and continuity across the 24 hour curriculum, based around the following areas:

• Education
• Social Skills
• Communication
• Behaviour
• Community Access.

A recent Ofsted inspection of the boarding provision, undertaken in December 2007, recorded four of the six key areas inspected as “the provision being outstanding” and the overall rating for the service reflecting the same, indicating that these key areas of the service provision are of exceptionally high quality.

See the Overview of Provision See the School sites in our Virtual Tour Please contact the School for more information