What we will do

We will make sure that the user voice is shaping our services and that we are communicating effectively. We will use real life experiences to inform our work. We will have clear and effective ways to communicate to help share information and encourage better involvement.

Our parents and carers have said:

“Parents and carers place a very high priority on two-way communication, where services are responsive and respectful in listening and answering emails, phone calls, etc”.

Our actions to deliver this are to

Develop and implement a SEND communication and engagement plan, with a parent led communication charter to provide the standards to which parents want us to work;

• have regular joint SEND briefings in place for headteachers and multi-academy trust chief executives
• implement a clear coproduction approach and structure to input into improvement and wider services, ensuring we involve relevant and local independent and support groups
• work with children and young people with SEND through schools and community groups across the wider children’s services participation engagement activities
• ensure that incoming requests by phone and email are responded to within 72 hours.

What will be different

We will be more responsive and you can challenge us if we are not. You will have more opportunities to be involved with the development of our services and we will use your feedback to help us understand what is important. You will have lots of ways to get in touch and your views will be respected and responded to.

Progress to date

Funding has been increased for wider engagement with the parent and carer groups across the area. During March and April, the local authority held workshops with schools and parent and carer organisations to discuss the areas in education where there were delays or poor outcomes, alongside a review of recent complaints from parents. Findings of this work is now directly informing the development of the new SEND strategy, the associated SEND sufficiency strategy for education and subsequent strategies with schools for example, a new Belonging Strategy to encourage wider inclusion for our SENSENSpecial Educational Needs is a term which refers to children who have learning difficulties or disabilities that make it harder for them to learn than most children of the same age. cohort of students.

We have developed a co-production charter, transformed the CYP mental health and emotional wellbeing work, developed a neurodiversity hub website and improved our annual health check project (promoting uptake of annual health checks for young people with a learning disability from 14 years of age) which includes resources and training that have been coproduced with young people and parent carers.

Return to the How we are improving SEND services page.