Feeding back on the Local Offer
We love hearing from you. Without insightful feedback we don’t know what you want us to improve. We really want to make this site work for you.
You’ll find a link at the end of each page where you can tell us if there is a problem with information or if something isn’t working properly. Information provided is anonymous. Is it not clear, not up to date or correct, or not working? How can we make it better?
You can also email us at localoffer@somerset.gov.uk or message us @LocalOfferSomerset on Facebook.
Reporting what you tell us
Each year we summarise statistics on usage, key messages from feedback, and our actions and plan for the next year in our Local Offer Annual Report. But feedback doesn’t come in just once a year so this page is kept up to date with feedback as we receive it and what we are doing about it.
Over the year we have acted on your feedback. See more information about how we have done this below.
Awareness
Parent carers said the site is really helpful and they wish they had been told about it sooner. In response, we
- have developed some publicity resources and are encouraging professionals to use these when they meet with families
- are developing a training module to help people who advise families to understand what SEND is, what the Local Offer is and how it can be used
- have attended events such as Careers Fairs and Family Fun days with a stall to help raise awareness
Lack of a roadmap
Parent carers said there isn’t a roadmap to say this is where you are and this is your next step.
We have made clearer pathways through information using steps to show where you are in the process and what comes next.
For example Education, Health and Care Plans – The page takes you on a journey breaking down the process into steps, which is often numbered. Eligibility criteria and supporting documents or referral forms are available in the relevant steps to avoid overwhelming before you get to that point. It is clear what comes next but also what should have happened before.
We are now updating other areas to use this format.
Understanding who does what
Parent carers said they don’t know who to speak to about what, and professionals have complex job titles.
We have
- made an A to Z of the different professionals you may come across
- explained what their roles do and where to find more information
- explained some of the meetings these professionals will have together
See more at What SEND professionals do.
Too many acronyms
People said they struggle to remember what the acronyms professionals use mean.
We used to write for example CYP instead of ‘children and young people’ to make the text shorter. But people have said this gets too confusing.
We try to avoid using acronyms now and we are updating older pages. But there are times when an acronym is frequently used by both professionals and parent carers – for example SENCO.
We have developed a new tool to make it easier for people to check what the acronym means whilst reading the text. You don’t need to navigate away to a new glossary page to find out what it means.
Test it out now – hover over an acronym in the paragraph above. If you spot a page we’ve not updated yet then don’t forget to point it out to us using the feedback link at the bottom of the page.
Preparing for the future
People said they need more information about choices they may have.
The Unstoppables told us that they found it hard to find reliable information about what things they can do when as they grow older, and if their additional needs will have an impact on that.
Parent carers have told us that they would love a list of “when your child turns this age, you might want to look at this”.
Alice, our Local Offer Young Person’s Champion has updated the Preparing for adult life section.
Community Inclusion and Activity Team Calendar
People find it hard to find out about the events being run and not everyone knew paper copies of the calendar were no longer posted out.
All Community Inclusion and Activity Team events are now on the SEND events calendar and can be found using the ‘CIA Team’ category filter.
We are now taking to events QR codes to help you quickly access the filtered online calendar, or to download a pdf in the traditional style.
We are looking at options for subscribing to updates.
Broken links
Feedback forms are mainly used by people to tell us of broken links.
We have a program that tells us if there are broken links – the webpage no longer exists – so we can try to make sure this does not happen. But, this process won’t tell us if the webpage linked to still works but no longer has the content we told you they have. Somerset Parent Carer Forum audit pages every year to catch these broken links. Please continue to use the feedback form at the bottom of every page to let us know if you find any links not working or not showing what you expected to see.