2023 Local Offer Annual Report | Local Offer Reports

Introduction

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

‘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.

This year we have focused on refining our website and working on ensuring that content is as accessible as possible to users on a range of platforms. We know that the majority of users access the website via a mobile phone, so we are working to ensure that the Local Offer works as well as possible on mobile phones as well as on computers.

The move away from PDF's across the local offer and focus on content delivered as webpages.
More video content
Developing a more visually appealing style across the website with more "buttons" taking users to content, rather than lists of text.
Simplified language across the site with the aim for making the site easier to use on mobiles (ie reduced text on home screens)
Option to be able to choose your own theme across the Local Offer, which potentially makes the site more visually appealing, but also allowing users who find it helpful to have alternative backgrounds & colours to create a visual style which produces less visual stress.
A smarter search engine which provides more suggested links and autocompletes searches.
Social media plug in on every page so users can see updates from our facebook page without needing to have a facebook account.

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”.
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 and the 4 Families Together place based teams.
Attending support groups (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 ran 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.

Following the success of the Local Offer live in 2022, we ran another event this year.

This was held at the Dewsbury Town Hall 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 300 people attending the event.

Local Offer live 2023 report (opens link in same window)

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 are aware that one of the issues with a paper booklet is that it can become out of date quickly, so we plan to review this booklet annually. The current booklet will be reviewed and re-published in early 2023.

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.

Summary of the Local Offer performance

The information below shows the user data 13^th December 2022 to 13th December 2023 (when this report was written).

Views - 271,868 - this is consistent with last years viewing figures.

The most popular page was the search results page, which demonstrates that this is the most popular way that users access the Local Offer.

Facebook performance summary

We have a had successful Facebook page in place since 2021, last year the reach was of over 40,000, which is 25% than last year. It currently has over 1,400 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.

‘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.

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.