ABSTRACT
Special educational needs (SEN) include learning difficulties, physical disability, sensory impairment, specific learning difficulty and emotional and behavioural difficulties. The majority of SEN students had brothers and sisters who also attended or had attended the local special schools. The majority of students lived with a natural parent and a step-parent and with a range of siblings who would usually keep their own family names. Adolescence is a difficult time, even for young people who have a lot of support from family and friends. Behaviour which would have been acceptable in a younger person can pose many more problems when the person concerned is nearly twenty years of age. Students arrived at the college via a number of routes: careers, social services, direct from the schools and through word of mouth. Domestic factors played an enormous part, in most cases, in compounding the difficulties the students were trying to cope with and overcome.
