 Inside this edition
1. SEND Local Offer website development
2. Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS)
3. Joint Commissioning and SLIP Programme Update
4. Summer Short Breaks Offer
 Local Offer website development
The SEND Local Offer is planned to move onto a standalone website dedicated to content for the Local Offer. This has been an ongoing task of cleansing and bringing together up to date information as well as reviewing feedback about the current Local Offer from parents/carers, young people and professionals to build the requirements for the new site.
We are glad to say that user testing phase between March – May 2024, went really well. A big thank you to all the parents/carers, young people and professionals who had engaged during this period. In total we had 113 users review the site and provide useful feedback about navigation, visual design and whether the overall content was relevant.
A lot of positive comments have been expressed about how user friendly the new site is. However, there are also some areas we can improve on and suggestions about this have been gathered, such as including a search engine.
We are currently working on making improvements and will then start to include content on the new website. We aim to have a soft launch of the new site within September 2024 and will further engage with parents/carers, young people and professionals before we go live.
Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS)
 This project is funded by the Department for Education (DfE) supported by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England (NHSE).
It works to the principle that meeting the needs of children with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) in mainstream schools is a way of improving outcomes, parental confidence and delivering a long term SEND system Improvement Plan.
All 4 localities across the Black Country are involved in this project that will run for a year until March 2025. This is a national project with schools from across England taking part.
The aims of the project are to:
- Improve partnership working with Health, Education and Parents to create environments that enable the best outcomes for neurodivergent children.
- Move away from the need for diagnosis and more intensive levels of support with focus on strengthening knowledge, skills and improving environments to better meet the needs of neurodivergent children.
- Strengthen parent carer and school partnerships in mainstream education settings
There are 10 schools in each of the Black Country localities taking part in this project, each of the schools has completed a survey scoring themselves on how they are inclusive to all children, further surveys have also been undertaken with children using the schools and all parents and carers in the schools taking part in the project.
The PINS project team in Wolverhampton includes representative from the local authority, NHS and Voice 4 Parents, the team will be working with Barnardo's ensuring that a nationally identified program of support, tailor made for each school, will be delivered between September 2024 and March 2025.
This is an exciting project and whilst there are only 10 schools from each locality taking part the learning will improve outcomes for children in those schools, we can share learning regionally as well as helping inform the Department of Education on what they need to do nationally.
We are already seeing sharing of great ideas across project teams, more engagement from schools with parents and we are only at the beginning of the project!
Working Towards Better Joint Commissioning of SEND Services in Wolverhampton
Commissioning is how we ‘buy’ services through an ongoing cycle of planning, agreements and monitoring.
There are some services which Health, Education, Social Care and Mental Health codesign and commission jointly together with the input of those with lived experience, however, there are still lots of services which are commissioned separately.
Following a SEND inspection (which included the commissioning of SEND services), inspectors felt that there more services which could be jointly commissioned. There are a number of benefits of jointly commissioned services, including:
- Improved outcomes for children, young people and their families;
- Closer partnership working;
- A better service offer;
- Shared best practice, expertise and what works to improve outcomes;
- Shared data and information and a shared understanding of local area need;
- A better understanding of the aspirations of our young people and what they have told us is important to them.
To explore joint commissioning opportunities further, the City of Wolverhampton Council, the Black Country ICB, Black Country Healthcare Trust and others are working together with Islington Borough Council on a Sector Led Improvement Programme. There are 3 key areas of focus:
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Best use of data to understand patterns, trends and to forward plan;
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Working with children, young people and their families to coproduce services where appropriate;
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Better understanding of joint commissioning opportunities for the future.
Further updates on the progress of this work will be shared in future newsletters.
Summer Short Breaks Offer
 Voice4Parents and The City of Wolverhampton Council are delighted to introduce the Summer Activities Programme for families living in Wolverhampton whose children and young people have additional needs. These leisure activities are free and available for the whole family including siblings.
A full programme of events will soon be advertised on the SEND Local Offer and also on the Yo! Wolves website under the SEND option, with dates and times. The booking form can be found here https://forms.office.com/r/zHL2GGF8Pq to request places.
Related news
For information about what’s on, information, awareness raising, sessions, activities and local support please see news from the following trusted sources:
Wolverhampton Local Offer
Voice4Parents
Latest News | Wolverhampton Young Opportunities (yowolves.co.uk)
WIASS E-Bulletins
Wolverhampton Voluntary and Community Action
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