Local Offer Newsletter - December 2019

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Meet the Team

Engaging with children, young people and parents

Jane Hall

The SEND Transformation & Compliance Team is a new one, formed in June, with the appointment of Jane Hall, who is the team manager.

The aims of the team are:

  • To make sure that all of the SEND Reforms are implemented through a programme of SEND projects and work streams;
  • Ensure that SEND associated functions are delivered in accordance with the SEND Code of Practice and relevant legislation; and
  • With partner agencies and services within the Council, challenge and review current processes and ways of working.

The team is currently coordinating working groups that are focusing on:

  • How to engage more with children and young people and their families in order to shape and improve services and provision;
  • Pathways to help young people prepare for becoming an adult; and
  • Improving our assessment procedures so that we can identify needs quicker and ensure that provision is able to meet them.

Contact the team by email via SENDT&C@bradford.gov.uk or call 01274 435300

Sam

Bradford Council’s recently formed SEND Transformation & Compliance Team has been busy meeting with children and young people, and families, to help shape the revised SEND Strategy for the district and improve provision and services for those with SEND.

We have met with Sam (pictured), one of our SEND Ambassadors to talk about the role and to begin our plans. He is a very independent young man and likes to do the same things as most young people his age.

Hasan and Liaba are to become SEND Ambassadors too. They attended a meeting at Margaret McMillan Tower of key strategic decision makers – the SEND Strategic Partnership Board. They spoke eloquently about what it is like growing up in Bradford with SEND and what they want it to be like. The Partnership Board members were humbled and actions will follow after hearing Hasan and Liaba’s feedback.

The SEND Transformation & Compliance Team have also arranged engagement events with parents in order to hear first hand experiences with regard to SEND provision and services. This will help inform our SEND Strategy and actions to improve things. From the New Year we are going to hold monthly sessions across the district, starting with one at Keighley Town Hall in January (see Parental Engagement  Events below)

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: I want to apply for an assessment for an Education, Health & Care Plan (EHCP). What do I do?

A: Ask the SENDCo at your child’s school to apply on your behalf and provide you with the relevant form for your input into the process.

Q: My child’s school refuses to help me apply for an assessment.

A: You are able to apply yourself by completing a form.

Find Out More

There is whole section on EHCP's on the Local Offer website.

Find Out More

Parental Engagement Events

We would like to invite you to one of our engagement events for parents and carers throughout the first half of 2020.  We are offering small group workshops with senior staff from across the local authority and its partners to establish common themes for development and to look at how we can improve our SEND services.

Places will be limited to 30 attendees per event and light refreshments will be provided.

DATE TIME WHERE
Thursday 30 January 10am to 12pm Keighley Civic Centre
Wednesday 26 February 12pm to 2pm Margaret McMillan Tower
Thursday 26 March 10am to 12pm Shipley Library
Wednesday 29 April 12pm to 2pm Keighley Civic Centre
Thursday 21 May 10am to 12pm Shipley Library
Monday 22 June 10am to 12pm Margaret McMillan Tower

 

To get further details and book a place email SENDT&C@bradford.gov.uk or call us on 01274 435300

Revised SEND Strategy

Thanks to all those parents and carers who have responded to the consultation on our revised strategy. We are now at the stage of considering the responses.

Help us improve health services in Bradford District

NHS Bradford District and Craven Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are responsible for planning, buying and monitoring (commissioning) local health services.  The CCGs have a system called Grassroots that collates people’s feedback on health and wellbeing services and then identifies key themes. This feedback is gathered from lots of different places such as local Healthwatch, voluntary sector partners and the Care Opinion website.

People’s views and experiences help NHS organisations understand what’s working well and what needs to improve.  We need to hear about your experience to make sure we’ve got an accurate picture of health and care services; so please share your story.

Your feedback can be:

  • About any local NHS or social care service.
  • Positive, negative, mixed or indifferent.
  • About any aspect of your experience.
  • It should be about a recent experience, ideally in the last six months.

Top tips for writing about your experience:

  • Include the name of the health or care services that you were using.
  • Say when this experience happened.
  • Try to describe the impact the experience has had on you.
  • Don’t include people’s names or any identifiable information.
  • And lastly, you do not need to write a lot – a couple of lines may do.

Use Care Opinion to share your feedback online: www.careopinion.org.uk/youropinion

Care Opinion is an online platform for sharing stories about health, care and support services.  NHS Bradford District and Craven CCGs will by pick up all feedback for Bradford health services that is shared on Care Opinion, and you may also get a response on the site from the service itself.

All feedback used by the CCGs is anonymous; no personal data is included, nor are any contextual details that could make someone identifiable.


Things to do over the Christmas break

christmas family image

For ideas on how to spend the Christmas break, take a look at the Things To Do section of the Local Offer website.

Christmas Competition

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

You have until this Thursday to enter the Local Offer Christmas Pantomime Competition.

The prize is a family ticket for up to four people to the relaxed showing of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at The Alhambra Theatre on Tuesday 14 January 2020 at 6pm.

Simply answer the following question and email your answer and contact details to LocalOffer@bradford.gov.uk

Which of the seven dwarfs is missing from this list: 

Dopey, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Doc, Bashful and...

The competition closes at 4pm Thursday 19 December 2019 and the winner will be announced on Friday 20 December 2019. Good Luck and Happy Christmas from the Local Offer team.