You said, we did
Welcome to our third ‘you said, we did’ since we redesigned our local offer in November 2021. Here is the latest feedback we have received from parents, carers, young people and professionals together with how we have responded.
Previous updates can be found under the 'You may also be interested in' section on the right hand side of the page (at the bottom if viewing on a mobile device).
| You said | We did |
|---|---|
| I really like the idea of change champions in schools – it needs to be countywide. |
All school consortia (for primary schools) and area networks (for secondary schools) now have SEND change champions in place. Together with change champions, parent carers and young people we have coproduced a school inclusion charter outlining the commitment to inclusion across Warwickshire. We are now pulling together the tools that will sit behind the charter to help schools put it into practice. |
| I can’t easily find the recording of the SEND webinars. I need to click each one to find out the topic - they need to have the presentation title with the date so it’s easy to find the right one. |
The SEND webinars are now easier to find on the Local Offer webpages. The ‘Get Involved’ section now says ‘webinars’ on the title and the section is more clearly laid out in a table with the title for each session. |
| I have struggled to locate the right information about Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). It needs to be clearer. |
The search box on the Local Offer takes you to information on Education Health and Care Plans including a one page flow chart which shows the process. Training has been delivered to SENDAR teams to improve communications with families and standard letters are being reviewed and improved. We also held a parent carer webinar on SENDIAS which included EHCPs in the Q&A. |
| Waiting times are too long and timescales need improving, particularly for autism assessments. |
Waiting times for autism assessments are reducing, with more resources for assessment in place. By end of October the longest reported wait for autism assessment was 153 weeks (down from 242 weeks in January 2022), with a target to reach 13 weeks by March 2024. An e-booklet providing information and advice whilst awaiting an assessment or after an assessment has also been produced to help neurodivergent people and their families. |
| Parents highlighted that the Local Offer landing page was not so practical if people are accessing it on their smart phone, so it would be more helpful to reorder the content of the page. |
In order to develop and maintain the SEND Local Offer webpages, we have established a regular working group including representatives from Warwickshire Parent Carer Voice and IMPACT (Young People’s Forum for SEND), Family Information Service and the Web Team. This group will respond to feedback about the SEND Local Offer webpages and co-ordinate changes and development work. Recent work has focused on restructuring the layout of the landing page to make it more user-friendly and easier to find information. These plans will also be informed by the feedback from young people at a Local Offer Event in 2022. |
| Families have told us that the sensory experience of school has an influence on the capacity of children and young people to be in school. |
As part of the improvement plans, funding has been established to develop an e-learning resource on sensory experiences to support workforce development in schools and inclusion. Feedback from parents and young people indicated that it needed a whole-school response, which influenced the option of an e-learning resource, to help more people access and then benefit from this information and advice. This resource will be coproduced with parent carers, young people and relevant agencies. |