Children and Young People with Specialist Needs (SEND)

The Essex Local Offer

The Essex Local Offer has been published as part of the SEND reforms under the Children and Families Act 2014.

Under the Children and Families Act 2014 each Local Authority was required to publish a Local Offer detailing what provision and services were available in their area for children and young people with SEND by the 1^st September 2014. The Local Offer is a living and organic resource that will be developed over time with the assistance of our partners, parents and young people.

The Essex Local Offer will:

Give you information about education, health and care services
Give you information about leisure activities and support groups
Hold all the information in one place
Be clear, comprehensive and accessible
Make service provision more responsive to local needs and aspirations
Be developed and reviewed with the service providers and service user

Please see the link above for more information and how to join if you represent an organisation that provides services to support Essex children and young people.

Essex Local Area SEND Inspection 2019

Between 30 September 2019 and 4 October 2019, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC), conducted a joint inspection of the local area of Essex to judge the effectiveness of the area in implementing the disability and special educational needs reforms as set out in the Children and Families Act 2014.

Inspectors:

spoke with children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), parents and carers, local authority officers and National Health Service (NHS) officers
visited a range of providers and spoke to leaders, staff and governors about how they were implementing the special educational needs reforms
looked at a range of information about the performance of the local area, including the local area’s self-evaluation
met with leaders from the local area for health, social care and education. They reviewed performance data and evidence about the local offer and joint commissioning
considered the views and comments from parents and carers from the open meetings, the webinar, emails and letters

Read the findings from the inspection, including some areas of strengths and areas for further improvement.

Maze - A community for parents, carers and families of children with additional needs

MAZE is a unique approach that helps parents and professionals to understand how a child is affected by his/her additional needs The MAZE Approach was developed by Sue Anderton who has 25 years’ experience as a special/additional needs teacher, with 20 years spent in school leadership.

She developed the MAZE approach to meet the needs of these children and young people. The MAZE Approach offers:

Specialist Parenting Programmes held each term in locations in North East Essex
Monthly drop in sessions
MAZE Approach training within schools

Sue has also collaborated with the University of Essex to compile accredited training for professionals: ‘Working with Children with Additional Needs and their Families: Using the MAZE Approach’.

Learn more about the MAZE group

A Parent’s Guide to Services in North East Essex

This directory has been compiled by Colchester Parent Support working in collaboration with The MAZE Group CiC and parents of children with additional needs, and has been funded by NHS North East Essex CCG.

The purpose of the directory is for parents to provide other parents with information about services and organisations available to them in North East Essex.

The Multi Schools Council

The Multi Schools Council was started in 2012 to help break down perceptions towards SEND and mental health in schools and the wider community.

Each term, children from mainstream and special schools meet to learn more about each other and put their plans in place for making a difference.

Not only does the Council help break down perceptions, it provides young people with an opportunity to improve their confidence, to develop their personal and social skills and to promote important values like democracy and tolerance.

News from the Multi Schools Council

In December 2019, members of the Multi Schools Council released a brand new music video!

In July 2019 the Multi Schools Council walked to every special school in Essex, in just 5 days. That’s 150 miles, which is more than a marathon a day!

The walk raised awareness of special schools and raised nearly £3,000 to fund student voice ideas, which will help break down the perceptions towards children with special educational needs and mental health difficulties.