Welcome to the latest edition of Shropshire's SEND newsletter, co-produced by Shropshire Council's SEND Local Offer, PACC (Parent Carer Council) and NHS Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin. 

The newsletter aims to provide easy access to key information for SEND families.

Please do continue to provide feedback on this newsletter, we want this to work for you and we are keen to hear what you think of it, and what articles you'd like to see in future editions. You can email us your thoughts at Local.Offer@Shropshire.gov.uk

The SEN Team has been restructured and is now named The EHCP Team, as this better describes the statutory area of work for which they are responsible.

All Education Health Care Needs Assessments (EHCNA) will come to the team as before and they will support all those processes around the consideration of assessments and plans, plus the support of those children and young people with a plan.

You can find out more about the restructure on the SEND Local Offer

The following text was shared with stakeholders about children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing in Shropshire.  

We are writing to provide an update regarding the continuation of the BeeU service for children and young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing in Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin. The BeeU service, delivered by Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT), provides vital mental health support for children and young people up to the age of 25, including neurodevelopmental assessments for autism and ADHD.

Following careful consideration, the decision has been made to extend the current BeeU contract until the end of September 2025. This additional extension will provide the necessary time to further develop and commission a new and improved Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). The ongoing extension will also enable MPFT to continue its partnerships with Healios and Kooth to deliver psychological therapies and online emotional support, ensuring continuity of care during this transitional period.

This decision reflects our commitment to delivering a high-quality, sustainable mental health service for children and young people. It also allows us to build upon the transformation work underway, which includes addressing key areas such as expanding capacity, reducing waiting times, enhancing preventative support in schools and communities, and ensuring services are responsive to the needs of children, young people, and families.

We remain committed to engaging with stakeholders, including service users, families, professionals, and voluntary sector organisations, as we shape the future of CAMHS. Feedback gathered through engagement activities has been instrumental in informing both the immediate extension and the vision for the recommissioned service.

For further information or to provide feedback on the BeeU / CAMHS service, please contact: stw.getinvolved@nhs.net

To access emotional wellbeing and mental health services, please contact the BeeU Access Team on 0300 124 0093 or visit the BeeU website - BeeU :: Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust

A new survey has been launched to shape the future of emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children and young people in Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin. The initiative builds on previous feedback that has already helped shape services and ensures that the voices of children and young people, parents and carers continue to guide how these vital services will be planned and delivered in the future.

Participants can share their experiences, insights, and ideas for improvement, ensuring services align with the community's expectations. All feedback will build on previous input that has already shaped local mental health initiatives.

Who can take part:

• Children and young people (with adult guidance for those under 16).
• Parents or carers of children and young people.
• Professionals, schools, or volunteers supporting children and young people.

The survey is anonymous, and all responses will be used to ensure diverse representation and improve future service planning and delivery.

To have your say, take part in the survey by clicking on the following link here: www.shropshiretelfordandwrekin.nhs.uk/get-involved/cyp-emotional-wellbeing-and-mental-health-survey/

The deadline for submitting your views is Friday, 7 March 2025.

For more information or questions, please contact stw.getinvolved@nhs.net

Help us shape a brighter future where all children and young people can access the emotional wellbeing and mental health support, they need to thrive by sharing your voice today.

The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Change Programme is a national programme designed to test a number of policy changes to systems and processes for children and young people with SEND, and those accessing alternative provision in the UK. We provide an update on the programme in each newsletter, here’s the latest

Welcome! Since the last newsletter, the programme has been focusing on improving services. Here are our next steps:

• Develop Inclusion Services: We're enhancing service provision and curriculum development across our schools and services.
• Develop Alternative Provision support: A new specialist taskforce model is being developed in Shropshire to further develop Alternative Provision.
• Improve ELSEC Programme: We're working to ensure high-quality services and plan to extend the programme to new schools and nurseries.
• Develop Inclusive Practice: We are supporting our schools to further develop their Inclusive Practice to support the needs of all learners.

Alternative Provision (AP) Plan:

• A three-level approach to support students in both Alternative Provision and mainstream schools.
• An improved staffing model for Alternative Provision is in development to support students needing support.

ELSEC (Early Language Support for Every Child):

• Children continue to be supported in early years settings and primary schools.
• Talk Boost program is halfway through its 10-week plan in a select number of schools.
• Staff training for schools is ongoing.

Inclusive Practice:

• Further development of SEND Hubs across Shropshire.
• Training to support schools with improving their inclusive offer to all learners.

Completed

• The SENDAP Programme will no longer test EHCP templates, thank you to all families who agreed to take part in the pilot template, your feedback was fed back to Department for Education and proved valuable.
• The Local Area Inclusion Plan has been completed and signed off and sent to Department for Education.

Over recent years the number of children being identified as having a speech, language or communication need has significantly increased. It is not clear why this has happened, but it has been noticed at both a local and national level. The Department for Education have selected Telford & Wrekin and Shropshire, as one of 9 areas in the country, to trial a project named Early Language Support for Every Child (ELSEC). This began in September 2024 and will run for 2 years in the first instance.

The ELSEC team is made up of people from both health and education and they work with children, their parents and professionals to improve outcomes for children, with early intervention being key.

The ELSEC team are currently working with 8 schools and 6 nurseries in Shropshire to make sure every child has the best language support possible.

If your child is in Year 1, Reception or the pre-school year, and in one of these settings, they may have been included in a Talk Boost group. Lots of other schools and settings, not in the project, may also use Talk Boost.

Talk Boost helps children who may find talking or understanding words tricky. The children have 3 sessions a week, for 10 weeks, in a small group with a trained adult. They share activities, songs and stories in a fun way. Parents are included too with workshops and stories sent home with the pre-school children.

To learn more about Early Talk Boost, for pre-school children, follow this link:

What happens in Early Talk Boost sessions? on Vimeo

To see what a Talk Boost session might include for children in Year 1 and Reception, follow this link:

Running Talk Boost KS1 - example activities on Vimeo

We’re thrilled to share some updates about the future of our service. Following the successful retendering of our contract, we are delighted to continue providing impartial information, advice, and support to families, carers and young people in Shropshire.

 To align more closely with other providers across the UK, we will be changing our name to SENDIASS (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information, Advice and Support Service). While our name is changing, our commitment to supporting families and young people remains as strong as ever.

 What’s New?

1. New Website Coming Soon

We’re working hard behind the scenes to launch a brand-new website that will make accessing our resources and information even easier. Keep an eye out for updates through our social networks and local authority newsletters!

2. Dedicated Service Manager

We’re excited to welcome a new dedicated Service Manager who will be focused on developing strong working relationships with the local authority. Their aim is to help bring about positive and lasting outcomes for the SEND community across Shropshire.

 If you think that Shropshire SENDIASS might be able to help you, please do get in contact with the service.

You can call us on 01743 280 019 where you will be required to leave a message on Citizen's Advice Shropshire's answerphone, or you can email us directly at iass@cabshropshire.org.uk. Please include a contact number so someone can get back to you and take further details regarding your enquiry.

Aged 16-25? You can contact our dedicated youth worker, Lynne directly at lynnetaylor@cabshropshire.org.uk Text her at 07706 069 739 or leave a message with your name and number at 01743 644 807.

Are you a parent or carer of a neurodivergent child who experiences executive functioning challenges? Tracy Bowyer, Parenting Co-ordinator from The ADHD Foundation Neurodiversity Charity, shares strategies and advice for supporting children with planning, attention, memory skills, and more.

In this webinar, Tracy explores the concept of executive functions: the vital cognitive skills that help us manage our thoughts, actions, and emotions to achieve goals. We share some of the most common executive function challenges for children with ADHD, the impact of these challenges on daily tasks, plus ideas and strategies for supporting executive function skills to help our young people with ADHD thrive.

ADHD: Understanding Executive Functioning - Witherslack Group

Emotional health for an autistic child or young person – just like any child – is nurtured through relationships, feeling heard, understood, accepted. These are the foundations for emotional health for all of us in fact. And in turn, emotional health is the foundation for learning, education, functioning and progressing well through life. You can’t learn if all your energy is taken up with struggling to get through the day or dealing with crippling anxiety. 

So being the parent of an autistic child means throwing out the rule book, not holding yourself to the same norms and standards as might be appropriate for normative or neuro-typical parenting. It means learning, listening and really tuning in to what your unique individual child needs.

Yes all children need boundaries, actually did you know that boundaries can often make children feel safe, cared for held. But they may need to be negotiated a bit differently around autistic children and young people. With more flexibility, agility and creativity especially when navigating the usual expectations of nursery, primary school, secondary school, college, etcetera.

In order to really listen and validate children’s feelings and experiences, parents of autistic children need plenty of space for thinking in their own mind, and to create that space you too need to feel heard, validated, ‘contained’ and supported. So taking moments for yourself, sharing how you’re doing with others are so important. So look after yourself and reach out so that you have enough in the tank to pour into your relationship with your wonderful, differently-abled young person.

If you would like to learn more about your child’s stages of development and how to support them to thrive in everyday life our online course, Understanding your child with additional needs, is a useful tool for understanding the world they inhabit.

With 14 modules covering topics from reading behaviours, importance of sleep and developing communication it is accessible 24/7 on inourplace.

Shropshire’s Family Information Service (FIS) provides free information, advice and support to all families of children and young people aged 0-19 years old.

The FIS is always keen to make sure the information it provides, and the way in which it is provided, meets the ever-changing needs of families in Shropshire.

We would like to know more about what information you may want now for your family or what you think would be useful in the future. This will help us to provide that information to you.

Have your say by clicking on the this link Parent information needs survey 2025

The survey will close on 28th February 2025.

Following the survey, the feedback received will be analysed and used to inform a report. This will be shared with Shropshire Council’s People Directorate to inform its work and it will also be used to help inform Shropshire Council’s current programme of transformation.

Hi, I’m Amy Morris, and I am pleased to introduce myself as the Service Manager for the Neurodevelopmental Pathway for BEEU. I have worked as a Mental Health Nurse for over 15 years.  I have worked in many areas in this time including the Adult Inpatient Wards and CAMHS in the community.  I joined the BEEU Team as a clinician in 2018 and have had different roles all of which I have found enjoyable.  I enjoy working in BEEU and I have a passion and drive to maintain quality service delivery for young people and families.

I came into this post in November so it is still very new to me and at this time and there are considerable challenges with waiting lists. Although this is a national picture, we are looking at how we can improve things locally.  We hope that these challenges can be an opportunity to make some changes to help improve the way our service is delivered. The BEEU ND Pathway is going through some challenges with recruitment but we have very recently recruited a new Clinical Lead so we hope that in the Spring 2025 we can introduce a new model for assessments.  The Pathway also has a new Operational Lead Emma Faulkner who has been working hard during this transformation to identify what has been working well in the service and looking at areas where improvement is needed.  I am personally really looking forward to seeing these changes come to fruition. A new leadership structure in the service gives us a real opportunity to make some positive changes, which as a leadership team we feel positive about.

Although we do have this new leadership team, we also have continuing support for experienced clinicians in the team, and we feel very lucky to be able to work with them and support them to make the changes that are needed.  The clinicians in the team are all having training on ADHD in the coming months, so those who are very experienced in diagnostic assessments for autism, will also be able to contribute to diagnostic assessments for ADHD to help reduce waits for young people and families on both our pathway waiting lists.  This training is also happening through March, which supports our hope to change our model of working in the Spring.

My role as Service Manager currently is to support the leadership team in making these changes and to lead on the delivery of the Neurodevelopmental Pathway providing operational and strategic leadership.  So, in my role I will be wanting to maintain good working relationships with the SEND partnership and be able to inform you of changes and challenges for the service and looking at ways we can work collaboratively. 

After the very successful pilot project, it has been confirmed that the Neurodiversity Practitioners (NDPs) will be staying as a permanent team within the Shropshire Educational Psychology Service (EPS). The team will be a partially traded service, and we are exploring expanding boundaries to include more schools and settings as well as being able to support the broader neurodiverse constellation, i.e., broader than autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

We would like to thank the schools, families and, of course, the children who have provided feedback and enabled us to evolve the team and their offer over the pilot and into this new chapter. The NDPs would also like to celebrate the enthusiasm, effort and progress made in supporting neurodiverse children and young people and in developing neuroinclusive learning environments, and very much look forward to working with more schools and settings across Shropshire in the future.

Two specialist nursery nurses started the Children’s Developmental Centre team this week. In addition, the Band 7 SLT 0-5 ASD lead role has been approved and the new 0-5 autism assessment reporting is very close to being ready.

The care letters from BeeU are being coproduced and are nearly ready for dissemination.

We are in the latter stages of redeveloping a model to deliver Autism Education Trust (AET) training within Shropshire. Adding to the AET Good Autism Practice (GAP) and Leadership GAP training, which we are encouraging schools and settings to use as a solid foundation for knowledge and skills development, we are planning to offer some additional neuroinclusive practice modules based on the excellent continued professional development offers collated through the Partnerships of the Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) project. Moreover, the NDPs will be able to offer schools and settings additional support with the implementation of this learning, if requested.

 The Neurodiversity pages on Healthier Together website remain in top five of most visited pages on website and are actually in the top five three times. We very much hope that this means that the information on these pages are of value and interest to children, young people and their families, settings and schools. Support for neurodivergent children and their families

Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is now being discussed at different strategic and operational levels, thereby moving the dialogue forwards and increasing awareness. We are planning on adding to this and to continue the momentum.

Keep an eye on the Autism West Midlands Facebook page to be first to hear about our events or take a look at the events section of our website https://www.autismwestmidlands.org.uk/   

We continue to provide online advice appointments and have listed more slots for  January. No diagnosis is needed to access this service to Shropshire residents. Face to face appointments are available by request if you email the team.  

Here is an overview of our upcoming events:

Teen Events – Actio All In (ages 11-17 years)

17^th February – 10am - 12.30pm: Crafts and Board Games - Sunflower House, Shrewsbury

20^th February – 1pm - 3:30pm:  Attingham Park Wander/cafe  

Family Event

21st February – 9am -10.30am: Soft Play - The Gingerbread Man Market Drayton  

Face to Face Parent Meetings

31^st January  – 10am - 12pm: Oswestry training and coffee and chat, Memorial Hall

Book any of these sessions here.

Online Training

14^thJanuary - PDA webinar: https://www.autismwestmidlands.org.uk/event/pathological-demand-avoidance-pda-webinar/

11^th February  - Understanding Autism webinar:  https://www.autismwestmidlands.org.uk/event/understanding-autism-in-children-webinar/

WEEKLY Teams Advice slots   For those who would like some online advice we are offering this virtually via video appointments. Teams also works well on mobile phones. To book a 45 min advice appointment with a specialist autism advisor please book via our shop.  If the  dates/timings of our online advice appointments are not convenient for you, please contact us to make alternative arrangements – scroll down for details.   https://www.autismwestmidlands.org.uk/event/online-autism-advice-and-consultation-sessions-shropshire-county/   

Virtual Support Group for Parents - Wednesday Mornings 10am - 11am & Wednesday Evenings 7.30pm – 8.30pm – 1^st and 3^rd Weds of each month (term time)

Our online support groups meet twice a month via Teams. This is an opportunity to talk with other parents, share ideas, and offer support. We recommend that you have attended an online advice appointment with a member of the team before joining group sessions (link above).   If you would like to join either of the support groups, please email the team here shropshire@autismwestmidlands.org.uk  

Advice and support   We also offer advice and support over the phone and via email. Parents/carers and professionals can contact the team directly to arrange an appointment including face-to-face if preferable.

Shropshire office - 01952 454156 (answer machine only)

Mon - Fri - Kerry McLafferty 07900784186        

Mon, Tue, Wed - Dawn Lewis 07706309382

Tue, Thu, Fri - Nicola King 07706337511          

Email shropshire@autismwestmidlands.org.uk

Please remember - No formal diagnosis is needed to access the AWM Shropshire service and there is no formal referral route – parents/carers can self-refer by booking an advice appointment or contacting us directly on our Shropshire email address.  You can also use our helpline