The school local offer

1. The school local offer Aims, duties and next steps

2. What is the local offer? The government have listened to what parents say their experience of services is like and have put in place a number of things to bring about improvements. One of these is the ‘Local Offer’. The Local Offer will cover: • special educational provision • health provision • social care provision • other educational provision • training provision • arrangements for children and young people to travel to schools, colleges and early years education

3. The purpose of the Local Offer is to enable parents and young people to see more clearly what services are available , in their area and how to access them. • The offer will include provision from birth to 25, across education, health and social care and will be developed in conjunction with children and young people, parents and carers, and local services, including schools, colleges, health and social care agencies • By September 2014 local authorities will be required to publish and keep under review information about services they expect to be available for children and young people with special educational needs aged 0-25.

4. Local Offer aims • To make provision more responsive to local needs and aspirations by directly involving children and young people with SEN, parents and carers, and service providers in its development and review • To provide clear, comprehensive and accessible information about that support and opportunities that are available

5. The school policies for the identification, assessment and provision for pupils with SEN , whether or not pupils have EHC Plans, including how the school evaluates the effectiveness of its provision for such pupils. The school arrangements for assessing the progress of pupils with SEN The name and contact details of the SENCO ( accredited within 3 years) Information about the expertise and training of staff in relation to children and young people with SEN and about how specialist expertise will be secured. Information about how equipment and facilities to support children and young people with SEN will be secured. The role played by the parents/carers of pupils with SEN Any arrangements made by the governing body relating to the treatment of complaints from parents of pupils with SEN concerning provision School individual duties to publish information

6. Individual school responses • Discuss types of information you could pull together to meet the requirements above • What tools already exist in your schools to support this? • What ways would you be able to ‘publish’ this information to parents and the community?

7. Task 1 – Locality opportunities • Discuss what partnership opportunities do or could exist to support locality offers eg Cross schools, cross phase, cross locality, clusters opportunities • Note ideas for later collation and distribution

8. Next steps • HT Representation on a sub group across all phases working with LA and Brian Lamb – first meeting September 2013 • Stakeholder involvement April 2013 – Jan 2014 • First draft of overall Local Offer by Dec 2013 • Local Offer in place September 2014

9. Sharing information • Information from HT meetings collated and distributed • HT representation agreed – all schools informed • Direct contact : Karen Woolhouse SEN Inclusion Commissioner karen.woolhouse@essex.gov.uk 07500990356