SEND Local Offer Annual Feedback Summary 2022
Thank you to all of those who have provided us with such valuable feedback over the last 12 months. We believe this has helped us significantly improve the experiences of those using our Local Offer.
How have we gathered feedback about the Local Offer this year?
- Feedback gathered through the Local Offer website
- Feedback gathered by the Local Offer team
- Feedback gathered from peer reviews
- Feedback gathered from user groups and elsewhere
- How we plan to collect feedback and develop the Local Offer in 2023?
Feedback gathered through the Local Offer website
On every page of our Local Offer site, there is a feedback box that gives users a quick and easy way to make suggestions. Once submitted this feedback is received by the Local Offer team who wherever possible, take action in response and respond directly to the person who has left the feedback.
We have compiled the comments we have received and our responses below:
Comment:
"The video link is broken for LSPA"
Response:
This was checked and fixed.
Comment:
"Timeline for the Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment process: Please can you create a visual flow chart"
Response:
We are exploring ways of producing an animation or visual guide for this and hope to have an update soon.
Comment:
"Link to Preparation for adulthood no longer working as they have closed"
Response:
We have software available to us to be able to monitor broken links on the website. This link was corrected, the day the feedback was received.
Comment:
"Practice is spelt incorrectly"
Response:
The web tools available to us, enable us to pick up and correct spelling mistakes. In this instance Practice was spelt a different way (Practise), so was not picked up in checks. The spelling was corrected on the day the feedback was received.
Comment:
This is very useful
Response:
It's great to receive positive feedback, no further action needed.
Feedback gathered by the Local Offer team
Alongside the Local Offer website, there is also an email enquiry service, which responds to enquiries, feedback or queries that those visiting the site may have. Complaints, comments and detailed compliments are captured by the team.
In 2022 we have received one complaint concerning the appropriateness of a service to be on our Local Offer Directory. This record was subsequently reviewed and taken off.
General feedback received has indicated that most people are impressed with the service they receive in response to enquiries. A sample of some of this feedback is below:
- "Imagine what a great world we would live in if all companies were as efficient as you! Superb! Thank you so much and I am mega impressed".
- "This is really useful – Many thanks for your prompt reply"
- "Fantastic – thank you so much for your support!"
- "Many thanks, will share with the family".
- "That's super, thank you!"
- "Amazing, thank you so much!"
- "Thank you for the information, much appreciated".
- "This is fantastic! Thank you ever so much for getting this done for me so quickly. Much appreciated".
Our email inboxes are monitored on a daily basis and we aim to respond within 48 hours, we hope to keep offering a helpful service to those who contact us.
Feedback gathered from peer reviews
In March 2022, the Local Offer team at Torbay Council carried out a review of our Local Offer site. This comprised reviewing our Local Offer's compliance against aspects of the SEND code of practice which relate to what Local Offer's must or should publish.
The review gave a score of Yes (Y), Limited (L) or No (N) based on how successful we were in meeting the requirements.
Peer review scoring summary:
| Review | Total |
|---|---|
| Yes | 14 |
| Limited | 6 |
| No | 2 |
Peer review detailed feedback summary:
| Point | Category | Y/L/or N |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Local Offer available for those without internet access and for those with specific access requirements. | L |
| 2 | Comments, the local authority response and the actions they intend to take published on the Local Offer. | Y |
| 3 | In area education provision | L |
| 4 | Out of area educational provision | Y |
| 5 | Out of area education provision included on the Local Offer in the same way as the in area education provision. | N |
| 6 | In area health provision | Y |
| 7 | In area social care provision | Y |
| 8 | Requesting an EHC needs assessment | Y |
| 9 | Identifying and assessing SEN | Y |
| 10 | EHCPs | Y |
| 11 | Personal Budgets | L |
| 12 | Travel | Y |
| 13 | Phase transfer/higher education | L |
| 14 | IAS | L |
| 15 | Disagreement resolution, mediation, tribunal/appeals and complaints | Y |
| 16 | Accessibility | N |
| 17 | What the LA expects education settings to offer | Y |
| 18 | Preparing for adulthood | Y |
| 19 | Local Offer in one place | Y |
| 20 | Involving parents | L |
| 21 | Usability and visual appeal | Y |
| 22 | Involving children and young people | Y |
Actions taken in response to peer review feedback
The following checks/actions have been taken regarding any comments with a limited or no outcome.
| Point number | Our response |
|---|---|
1 | It is possible to contact the Local Offer team by telephone, the team will write or text to provide information to users where required. This offer has been made clearer on this page. Within the team there are Community Connectors who attend settings where families are present and receive enquiries directly from them. They will reply directly to the family in their preferred way. We recognise it would be helpful to do more, so would like to create a leaflet or booklet with key information and contact numbers. |
3 | Currently we tend to link directly to School's websites, from where you can link to details of SEN provision. We will consider whether this information can be including in the Directory records for schools. |
5 | There are a number of out of area education providers listed on the Directory. |
| 11 | Surrey County Council's Personal Budgets policy was being refreshed at the time of the review. It is now on the Local Offer website: |
| 13 | Whilst there is a detailed section, concerning transition from secondary education to further education or employment, we are developing content regarding other key stages. |
| 14 | We have now linked to or mentioned SEND Advice Surrey on various information pages on the site. SEND Advice Surrey is a service, so we wouldn't include it as an information page on the help and support section of the site. It is however on the Directory. |
| 16 | The accessibility statement included in this section is the Local Authority's accessibility statement. |
| 20 | Our 2021 feedback summary is explicit in its description of parent/carer input in the site. We are setting up a parent/carer user group and have highlighted elsewhere in our 2022 feedback how parent/carer's have been involved in the site's development. We have improved the visibility of this content on the site. |
Feedback gathered from user groups and elsewhere
We have also received feedback from a variety of other sources this year, which has often led to improvements being made to the Local Offer.
Proof reading from a Parent/ Carer
Family Voice Surrey, very kindly agree to set aside some time for a parent/carer to review the wording of numerous pages on the Local Offer, to ensure they are parent/carer "friendly". We have rewritten this information wherever possible based on their feedback.
Practitioners group/ internal review
This year we have received feedback from both a practitioner's group and internal review, this has led to developments which include the following:
- Improving the homepage: in particular the description of the Local Offer and the titles of sections.
- Improving content pages: This particularly concerns the What to do if you think your child has Additional Needs or Disabilities and Information about specific types of Special Educational Need pages.
- Adding the Ordinarily Available provision for schools to the Local Offer
- Improvements to the layout of the SEND practitioners' section on the site and the navigation to this page.
- Refreshing the Preparing for adulthood section of the site.
How we plan to collect feedback and develop the Local Offer in 2023?
How we plan to collect feedback:
- Through our user groups
- Further peer reviews: we want to hear further from other local authorities about our website
- Surveys: During 2023 we intend to have a survey lasting a couple of months about the site.
- Feedback questionnaires: We intend to create a feedback questionnaire to capture how helpful our enquiry responses have been.
Local Offer development:
- We want to create more visual/graphics/videos on the site where suitable to do so.
- We want to improve our pages regarding the support parents/carers can expect prior to applying for EHC plans.
- We would like to develop information content regarding transition from primary to secondary school.
- Creation of a leaflet or booklet with key information and contact numbers.