In the Autumn of 2022, we held a series of Inclusion Roadshows for Headteachers, SENCOs and school leaders throughout the county, to update them on the work being undertaken to improve SEND Services in Suffolk.
You can view the slides presented on the day along with a summary of the feedback received here.
Communication
One of the key feedback themes we heard was around communication.
We know that we haven’t always communicated with schools and settings as well as we would like to, and we are committed to improving this. We are continuing to recruit to our Family Services teams, to enable us to more promptly respond on matters regarding specific children.
In addition to this, the following routes and sources of information for schools and education settings might be useful:
- Our new Inclusion Support Line specifically for education settings, to give quick answers to general enquiries about Inclusion Services or any aspect of SEND processes. You can call the ISL on 01473 265502 Mon-Fri 9am-5pm.
- There is school-facing SEND information on our SENCO Central page
- For general school news updates you can subscribe to Suffolk Headlines by emailing suffolkheadlines@suffolk.gov.uk
Training
Another common theme was around training for SENCOs.
- There is information around the Suffolk Inclusion Toolkit (VSEND, the Essential SENCO Toolkit books and the Analysis of Additional Needs Tool or AANT) on the SENCO Central page.
- You can read more about other training from the Psychology & Therapeutic Service, such as Keys to Inclusion, on their webpages: Psychology & Therapeutic Services
- Our Workforce Development team have developed a SEND Learning & Development brochure
- We also provide training and CPD events through the SENCO Forum network: the calendar for this is on the SENCO Central page linked to above, or you can subscribe to the SENCO bulletin by emailing SENDNews@suffolk.gov.uk which is where we publish future dates.
We would like to thank all our school and setting based colleagues for all your hard work to improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND. We continue to work hard to respond to your feedback and make improvements, and are confident that this will enable us to work even more productively together in the future.