| Summary: | The Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice (CoP) (DfE, 2014) places a duty upon further education (FE) settings to support young people (YP) up to the age of 25, with SEN, in FE. College settings can choose to commission external services such as the Educational Psychology Service (EPS) to support them to fulfil these duties. Relatively little EP work has been carried out in FE. The aim of this research is to explore the challenges for the role of the EP in colleges by gaining the views of frontline and senior college staff from two mainstream college settings, and EPs from one local authority EP service, through the use of focus groups. Focus group discussions were informed by introductory data, deriving from two young people, who attended local mainstream college settings. The data collected from college staff and EPs was analysed using Grounded Theory tools. The findings demonstrate that there are opportunities for EP work in FE, especially in conjunction with staff development, working with individual students or where a college has a potential student problem. However, the research also demonstrated how misunderstandings can arise between colleges and EPs. In the main this is due to the nature of a potential buyer and seller relationship, the sense of their competence being questioned, the lack of knowledge of each other, and differing views about the type of role the EP may have in college. Implications for the role of the EP in FE are discussed.
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