sensory support service Sensory Support Service Learning growing

sensory support service Sensory Support Service Learning, growing and succeeding together Local Offer – our experience 30 th June 2015

Sensory Support Service • Service across 4 LAs • Over 1, 200 CYP in our caseload • Provide EY sessions for children and parents/carers - stay or access information sessions

Initial consultation with parents • Before we developed our local offer we asked parents what they felt it should be like: • Main points: accessible, clear information about what is available, recognition of early intervention (early years) and emotional needs of children and young people.

Initial development of local offer Answering the 9 questions • What does the service do? • What areas does it cover? • Who does the service provide for? • How can CYP be referred to the service? • How are decisions made about who can use the service?

• • How we communicate with service users and how are they involved in decision making / planning? How accessible is our service? What qualifications staff have? What training in teaching / supporting chidlren and young people with SEND staff has had or is having? Where to get more information?

What else in our Local Offer? • Provision in the EY • Provision in schools - including different areas: Assessment, • Planning and Review • Teaching, curriculum and inclusion • Environment and Resources • Independence, Social emotional development and Pastoral Support • Access from our own website - word document - LAs will have a direct link to this - documents for VI, HI and MSI

What did parents/carers think? • Questionnaire and links of where to find the local offer for their LA • i. Pads and laptops available at family sessions • Finding our service in the LAs local offer – very difficult if not impossible – you had to search for sensory support service • Information in our service’s local offer – too much information, formal/clinical, not very parent friendly

In practice • Difficult to find our service in LAs Local Offer - some included a paragraph about the service (but not the same paragraph). • Answers to questions are OK but difficult to explain what we do in such short answer • Other information - particularly for school support complex and too much information - difficult to navigate

Reviewing local offer • One LA reviewed their local offer - we were sent a password to review it – we were told to make sure we added anything: blind / deafblind / multi sensory impairment / VI / HI • Asked parents/carers and CYP what we could do to make it better

Improving our local offer - ideas • Pathway that shows the journey and the different agencies / roles • Sections for EY, School age post 16 adulthood • Easy version available • CYP – more pictures (poster), highlight in colour parts they needed to read and CYP version (good to see the information as they need to learn to make decisions as they get older). • More interactive – web-based

Next steps - ideas • Develop more accessible version • Consider how we can show the journey through a pathway and whether this could be included in the local offer – probably this information needs to be part of our own local offer • Get technical support to develop more interactive web based with age range sections • Get a small group of parents / carers / CYP to work with us to develop further once we have done some improvements • Feeding back to each LA