Local Offer Feedback Report
August 2016 /
From 1 September 2014 all local authorities were required to publish information on the services and provision for children and young people with special educational needs and/or a disability (SEND). This is known as the SEND Local Offer.
The original Rochdale SEND Local Offer was devised in consultation with several service user focus groups including parents, carers and young people.
Rochdale is required on an annual basis to publish comments on the Local Offer and its response, including any action it intends to take as a result of the feedback.
So what has been happening since our last report in August 2015?
We have been tracking the use of our Local Offer on a monthly basis. These reports tell us that usage remains very low.
As we knew the use of our Local Offer was low we undertook some face to faceconsultation in October and November with parents and carers to start to learn about what worked and what did not work. One of the big issues was the name of the Local Offer, parents and carers and young people said it was not something they would look for or link to the offer and provision of services. So we are in the process of updating the name.
Making the Local Offer Real
/ To get the name right and also the look and feel of the Local Offer we ran some further consultation at Rochdale Borough’s first annual SEND Information Day on 16 June 2016. We see the SEND Information Day very much as us bringing to life the Local Offer for parents, carers and professionals alike.Learning from when parents had said that they had not heard about some of consultationevents in the past, we sent out flyers about the information day by post to the parent/carer of every child who had a SEN statement or EHCPlan. We also asked all short break providers to give leaflets to all children who attend a short break.
Below are some of the things that parents & carers said about Rochdale’s Local Offer during the consultation day
We are currently working with OPEN OBJECTS which is the company who do the work on our Local Offer to make the changes to the Local Offer in draft formats so that we can consult again about these changes before they are uploaded onto the system.
However, this is only the first part of the planned changes we want to make. Following the young people’s comments about the Local Offer, rather than us just consultingand making the changes, we are really excited that we will be working with Hopwood Hall College from September 2016. The College will develop a specific project work for some of their Level 3 learners to explore and analyse how accessible council websites and their SEND Local Offer (LO) is, identify ways to develop and make required improvements to the current format used to present information to young people with SEND/LDD.
We are also working directly with the Local Authority’s Website Team to sort out the problems we have been told about around finding the current Local Offer website page. This work will mean that wherever you go to access information or advice around children with disabilities and complex health needs, it will take you straight to the right page so cutting out the guess-work in trying to navigate there.
As people say they are not aware of the Local Offer, we have started to advertise it in different places such as in the Health & Community Guide - North-East Manchestermagazine that is in all GP Surgeries.
We will also be publishing our first quarterlyNewsletter in November again as part of increasing awareness of the Local Offer and services in Rochdale Borough.
/ We know the current usage is as follows
As parents and carers said it was important to have the words spoken on the Local Offer website so it was accessible to all,we have added Browsealoud onto the website. This offers a range of reading; translation support and customising options to suit people’s individual needs and to help them better access the website. We have commissioned this to remain on the webpage because it was asked for and is being used.
Developing Short Breaks
This year saw theParents and Carers’ shaping of the short break contracts.
From April 2016 year we had to recommission our universal short breaks contract.
Parental consultation events took place on 19, 21, 22, 23 and 26 October 2015. Sessions were also held on 1, 10 and 15 December 2015. The events were held at a number of locations across the borough of Rochdale and at different times of the day, in order to make them as accessible as possible for parents/carers.
The findings of the consultation were wide-reaching as they focused on issues around the duration of an effective short break, gaps in provision for under 8 year olds and for children with ASD. The consultation also looked at the criteria and confirmed that the offer needed to be restricted to children and young people living within Rochdale Borough.
The outcome of the consultation was then translated into the recommissioning of short breaks under eight categories as follows:
- Category 1 – The delivery of arts, craft, music, drama, dance on a weekly basis, year round.
- Category 2 – The delivery of a range of therapies including those to aid relaxation and in response to sensory issues.
- Category 3 – The delivery of outdoor activities on a year round basis to include evenings, weekends and school holidays.
- Category 4 – The delivery of year round sports sessions for under 8s.
- Category 5 - The delivery of year round sports sessions for older children, 8 years and above.
- Category 6 – The delivery of school holiday provision.
- Category 7- The delivery of an all year round youth club for young people with ASD (14 plus)
- Category 8 – The delivery of a sibling support group.
Lack of information around accessibility and provision in schools
Parents andcarers tell us when they are looking to make informed decisions regarding school placements there is lack of information and it is not always easy to compare schools as information is reported in different ways. We are therefore developing a fully interactive map of all schools in Rochdale Borough showing information around accessibility. The information is grouped and coded in a way that means at a glance you can compare across provisions. This map will grow to include other settings as well.
Information and Advice
A key message we have heard is about the lack of information and advice for parents. While we have the Family Information Service this is a generic information service. To increase the capacity for the team from 12 September 2016 we will have a full-time SEND Parent & Carer Engagement and Information Officer. This post was appointed jointly with the Parent Carer Voice (Forum) as the Officer will work closely with them and Rochdale’s Family Information Service with a lead responsibility being the Local Offer.
Other listening and learning we are doing
We have been working with parents and carers around the whole issue of transition for young people to adults. We have jointly revised our transition policy and we are using real-life experiences to help us shape our service design as we move to 0-25 provision.
During theautumnterm we intend to consult with a number of service user focus groups to collect further feedback on the look and feel of the Local Offer website and to find out if there are still gaps in the services and provision within Rochdale Borough for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disability. If you would like to be part of one of these focus groups, please contact the Local Authority by:
Phone: 01706 926400Email:
You can also leave feedback at anytime by going onto the Local Offer website: at the bottom of the home page clicking on the “Let us know” button.