2022 Local Offer Annual Report | Local Offer Reports

Introduction

Welcome to the annual report on the Kirklees SEND Local Offer for 2022-2023. This report explains what developments have happened with the Local Offer over the last year.

You can download a PDF of this report here (opens PDF in new window)

‘Local authorities must publish a Local Offer, setting out in one place information about provision they expect to be available across education, health and social care for children and young people in their area who have Special Educational Needs (SEN) or are disabled, including those who do not have Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. In setting out what they ‘expect to be available’, local authorities should include provision which they believe will actually be available.'

The Local Offer has two key purposes:

to provide clear, comprehensive, accessible and up-to-date information about the available provision and how to access it; and
to make provision more responsive to local needs and aspirations by directly involving disabled children and those with SEN and their parents and carers, and disabled young people and those with SEN, and service providers in its development and review.’

SEND Code of Practice

The Kirklees SEND Local Offer is more than just a website. We aim to help families and young people with SEND to have access to good information advice and support via a wide range of different methods:

Comprehensive website which is regularly updated
Regularly updated facebook page
Telephone, email and facebook messenger support for specific questions
Face to face drop in sessions within the community
Large scale “Local Offer Live” market stall events to bring services face to face with families as well as offering workshops delivered by Kirklees SEND expert
Inclusion Support Offer which offers support around emerging SEND issues for all educational professionals
Local Offer Booklet produced which provides a summary of the SEND Offer within Kirklees
Exploring pilot project with Ravensthorpe Community Centre to trial sessions whereby users can be supported by community representatives to access information on the Local Offer website.

In May 2022, Kirklees SEND services were subject to an Ofsted Local Area inspection. The Local Offer and the way we work closely with PCAN was identified as an area of strength.

…”Leaders have worked with PCAN to ensure that the website used to promote the Kirklees local offer is accessible and has a wide range of relevant information. The website is now used more widely than before by parents to get information about services for children and young people with SEND..”

Joint area SEND inspection in Kirklees, Ofsted 2022 (opens link in new window)

Image of home page explaining changes we have made

Other developments of the Kirklees SEND Local Offer.

We are working on the following website developments:

Smart search function which will suggest search terms as the user starts typing. This will work in a similar way to Google, making finding the right information more intuitive.
Social media feeds added directly to pages. This will mean that users do not need to go to Facebook or even have a Facebook account to access the information on our facebook page.
The addition of personalised backgrounds to make the site more visually appealing and potentially reduce visual stress for some users. This is the result of some co-production work with young people in Kirklees with SEND.

Kirklees SEND Local Offer Facebook

We have a had successful Facebook page in place since 2021 which has had over 6,000 page visits in 2022 and has a reach of over 58,000. It currently has over 1,150 followers.

We also use this as a way of advertising engagement events where families can talk with us face to face.

This also provides a rich source of feedback from users and influences the continued development of the Local Offer service.

Kirklees SEND Local Offer YouTube channel

We have created a YouTube channel to allow videos about SEND to be easily searchable by users on YouTube. Videos on this channel have had nearly 2,500 views.

We use this to share videos we have produced as well as sharing videos which could be useful for families and young people with SEND.

Image showing Local Offer youtube channel

We have continued to engage with families and young people from across Kirklees:

Regular engagement sessions with Project Search in both Huddersfield and Dewsbury. This is an opportunity to work with young people with SEND who are 18+ who can give us a unique perspective as someone who has been “through the system”.
Project work with Project Search including VR content creation and the development of a book called “Me and My Wonderful Mind”.
Working with young people with SEND in a mainstream setting (North Huddersfield Trust School) to develop a Local Offer awareness video for young people with SEND.
Regular community drop in events for families to come and speak with the Local Offer team face to face alongside other community teams such as Community Plus.
Working along Kirklees Families Together to embed the Local Offer across Kirklees.
Attending support group (such as PCAN) and school coffee mornings to explain what the Local Offer is and discuss any concerns they have.
Large scale “Local Offer Live” market stall events to bring services face to face with families as well as offering workshops delivered by Kirklees SEND experts.
We are running a series of “How to use the Local Offer” alongside PCAN in March 2023, this will be an opportunity for families to understand how to effectively use the website as well as providing us with valuable feedback.

We were very pleased to host our very first Local Offer Live event in 2022.

This was held at the John Smiths football stadium and had over 60 stalls from local services and activity providers. We also had a range of workshops running throughout the day. We had over 500 people attending the event.

Families at the event gave tremendous feedback:

“Today has helped me feel confident, not alone and that solutions can be found”

“The workshop topics were spot on and there was such a variety of stalls”

“This has really opened our eyes as to how many places exist”

“Thanks for organising this – a great opportunity to get information all in one place”

“It was amazing to find out what’s out there and to meet new groups”

We are now in the process of planning a Local Offer Live 2023 which will be held in Dewsbury Town Hall.

A full report of the 2022 Local Offer Live can be found on the Local Offer website (opens link in same window)

There are a number of key themes that we have gathered from engaging with families, young people & professionals across Kirklees:

The vast majority of users of the Local Offer find it very helpful, easy to use and provide them with everything they need in order to find help.
Facebook is a good way to engage with families as they use the messenger function to communicate when they need help, to show support or to express concern.
Some people in Kirklees find websites very challenging and need to have a conversation in order to be able to get the help they need.
Young people still don’t really know what the Local Offer is, but if they where to search for some help, the Kirklees Local Offer now comes up as the first result in any search relating the Kirklees and SEND.
Videos are a good way to engage with people.
The amount of information on the Local Offer is overwhelming and some people need support as to how to navigate this.
The Local Offer Booklet has proved very popular as this removes the need to know where to start and provides all of the basic information around SEND in one easy to read format.
Events such as the Local Offer Live are incredibly popular and something that families in Kirklees want to see more of as it allowed services to come out from behind a website or telephone number.

We use all of the engagement that we have with families and young people to inform how the Kirklees SEND Local Offer operates and we constantly evolve our offer to better meet the information, advice and guidance the needs of the young people in Kirklees with SEND.

The SEND Code of Practice requires that we provide the Local Offer to those without the internet, we do this via a telephone number which families can speak to a member of the Local Offer team or leave a message. We also have produced a 19 page Local Offer booklet which brings the essential information about SEND into one easy to read place.

We distribute this booklet whenever we meet with families at any face to face events and following feedback from PCAN, we have added a link to the PDF for this to the Local Offer website so that it can be printed at home.

Yorkshire & Humber Regional Group – Video

The Local Offer team are part of a wider group of Local Offer leads from across Yorkshire & Humber, this provides an opportunity to share ideas, content and experiences of managing each areas Local Offer service. We decided to work together and produce a short video which explains what the Local Offer in a simple way.

Summary of the Local Offer performance

The information below shows the performance from 19^th November 2021 (when the last report was produced) to 20^th February 2023 (when this report was written)

Local Offer performance report for 2023. Showing over 284,000 users

Facebook performance summary

2023 Facebook performance

Facebook posts performance

facebook audience 2023

The information in the website analytic report has the following highlights:

Usage of the local offer has continued to increase, with pageviews having more than doubled over the previous year’s figures (2021-22 = 118,609 views 2022-2023 = 284,681).
The search page continues to be the most popular page on the Local Offer, showing that most people are using this as a way to navigate the site. The inclusion of newer smart search technology should improve the user experience in this area.
The majority of users are accessing the site on a computer, but we still have a good number using mobile devices to access the site.

The information in the Facebook analytics has the following highlights:

Social media is a very effective way to reach an additional audience.
Some posts have reached over 8,500 users.
We have over 1,150 followers, the majority of these are 35-44 females.
We have slightly more users from South Kirklees than North (34% to 32%).

‘The governing bodies of maintained schools and maintained nursery schools and the proprietors of academy schools must publish information on their websites about the implementation of the governing body’s or the proprietor’s policy for pupils with SEN.

The SEN Information Report should give details of the school’s contribution to the Local Offer and must include information on where the local authority’s Local Offer is published.’

SEND Code of Practice

In Kirklees all schools and further education colleges are expected to have a link to the Local Offer as part of their SEND Information Report. Furthermore, we are promoting the new Kirklees Local Offer in schools through SEND newsletters, SENDCO (Special Educational Needs & Disabilities Co-ordinators) Net, Heads Up (school newsletter) and through conversations with school staff. All existing links to the current Local Offer go to the new Kirklees Local Offer.

The Local Offer invites visitors to feedback on their experience of using the site. When appropriate feedback is passed on to the relevant service managers and commissioners to respond to.

Following the report conclusion below, all of the comments and our responses as published on the Local Offer can be found. These can also be viewed online on the following page:

2022 You Said - We Did page

We continue to work closely with families, young people and colleagues across education, health and social care as well as in the community sector to co-produce the Local Offer and ensure it meets the needs of children & young people with SEND and their families.

We are constantly learning about how we need to deliver information, advice and guidance to those who need it in different ways.

We are committed to continuing to be more than just a website, with more community drop in sessions, the Local Offer Live event, SEND workshops and sessions alongside PCAN to help teach people how to use the Local Offer website.