Local Offer Live 2023 Report

On Wednesday 29th November we held our second Local Offer Live event at the Dewsbury Town Hall.

Following feedback from last years event, we changed the times to allow more families to attend at a time that worked for them.

It was an afternoon and evening, public ‘drop in’ event (12pm to 7pm) featuring over 60 stallholders made up of services offering support to children and young people with SEND aged 0-25 and their families. There were a range of services in attendance across Education, Health, Social Care, the third sector, activity providers and national charities.

There were also 3 information workshop sessions which families could pre book or access on the day.

Attendance

The event was attended by over 300 people, this is lower than last years attendance figures (over 500).  There could be a number of reasons for this such as:

• A lot of families may have come to last years event and received the information they needed and did not need to come again.
• Families had to pay for parking in Dewsbury, which may have been a barrier (it was free last year at John Smiths Stadium)
• There were a number of traffic issues on the day between Huddersfield and Dewsbury on both the main roads and the motorway.

However, overall the number of families attending was positive.

Stallholders

We would like to thank everyone who came along and had a stall at the Local Offer live, these members of staff really showed the amazing level of support and care that they offer for children and young people with SEND in Kirklees.

Coproduction

The event was co-produced with significant input from our Parent / Carer forum PCAN who helped identify services, and in the design, marketing and communication elements of the event.

You can find out more about PCAN on their webpage

PCAN Webpage (opens link in new window)

Communications and marketing

The Local Offer Team sent ‘Save the Date’ pre-comms out in January 2023 to all relevant services, activity providers, schools and settings via a number of different channels with a polite request to share widely within their own networks where relevant.

Event flyers were distributed in September in both digital and hard copy form through a variety of channels to schools and settings including out of authority provisions), EHE networks, relevant council staff, internal and external services, GP surgeries, council buildings with public access (libraries and customer service centre) etc.

The councils communications team supported this by creating the event flyers and distributing them via their channels.

To build momentum we ensured repeated social media posts were made via the Kirklees SEND Local Offer page, Kirklees and via PCAN social media networks.

Project Search support

The Local Offer team were supported on the day by the Project Search team interns from both Dewsbury and Huddersfield who were involved in various roles through the day including welcoming and signposting for attendees,  promotion of services and floating support.

The support that the Project Search interns provided was absolutely invaluable and the event could not have run without this support.  The Local Offer team would like to say a huge THANK YOU to the interns and the Project Search teams across Kirklees.

For more information about Project Search, please see the Local Offer Project Search page (opens link in same window).

Interpreter support

Colleagues from Community Plus supported the event by providing interpreters.

Quiet space

We had a dedicated quiet space which was outlined in the welcome pack and was announced through the day.

Consultations at Local Offer live

There were a number of consultations open during the time of the Local Offer live, one about Short Breaks and one from the School Transport team.  Both teams took the opportunity to speak with members of the public about these consultations and allow them to share there views on these whilst discussing what these proposals would mean for them.