Welcome to the School

The David Lewis School is a small and very specialist non-maintained residential special school. Non-maintained schools are, in general, schools run on a not-for-profit basis by national charities, and The David Lewis School is a service provided by The David Lewis Centre from its extensive parkland campus in rural Cheshire.

The school is registered with and approved by the Department for Children, Families and Schools. However, unusually, it also has the school’s residential houses grouped to form two Children’s Homes, and these make residential provision for 365 days per year. The school also has an extensive medical, nursing, psychology and therapy establishment, and great experience in providing for children with severe neurological conditions.

Our children are all very different, but their difficulties are likely to include severe learning difficulties, communication difficulties, difficult-to-manage and possibly still-to-be identified medical conditions (usually including serious epilepsy or conditions likely to produce epilepsy in the future), sleep disturbance, incontinence, autism and difficult-to manage behaviour.

Approximately half our children are placed with us on a 52 week basis. Very few of these young people will actually be living at the school for the entire year, and we encourage as much contact with parents and time in the family home as a young person’s condition will allow. However the school’s Children’s Homes are open and busy throughout the entire year, and we normally have about eight or ten young people with us even on Christmas Day! The majority of our other pupils, who are with us on a term-time only basis,  also have additional provision for respite care in our Children’s Homes. Approximately half of our young people have “Looked After Child” status.

The school seeks to be a significant part of the “team around the child” for each of our young people, working with parents and professional colleagues to aim for return to local provision in the home area where possible. We have a long track record of enabling children to be re-included in home area provision, although for many this may not be an appropriate option.