• Feedback individual comments regarding provision or entries to individual commissioners/providers.
• Continue to contact registered providers on a three monthly basis to review information held and ensure it is kept up to date and accurate.
• Continue to promote to parents, carers, children, young people and practitioners via established newsletters, emails, social media and at meetings as appropriate.
• Provide training sessions on how to use the SEND Local Offer to parents, young people and practitioners via YouTube video and group sessions.
• Develop a mystery shopper scheme to further develop, test and review the SEND Local Offer.
• Work with user testers, mystery shoppers, authors and county commissioners to identify gaps in registered providers and look at accessibility of content.
• Work with providers and partners to encourage registering and updating of information.
• Arrange a SEND Local Offer Advisory Group to oversee the Local Offer and plan focused workshops and engagement mechanisms around the county. 
• Explore forms library.

• 89 people completed the SEND Local Offer Survey.  Ongoing and more detailed sessions are being held with children, young people and parent groups throughout the year.  This report relates to feedback received through the questionnaire completed in March 2019 only.
• The majority of those who completed the survey described themselves as parents and carers (46.07%).
• 60 respondents (68.18%) said they used or promoted Staffordshire Connects SEND Local Offer.  The information they accessed or found most useful included information on extra help, local activities, SEND forms/templates and information on Education Health and Care Plans. 
• Of the 28 respondents (31.82%) who said they hadn’t used or promoted the SEND Local Offer, the most popular reason for this included: Not heard of it; Not used it but intend to in the future; Not trained to; Lack of provision/activities in the area I live; Used it years ago before the refresh but didn’t find what I wanted.  Not used it since but intend to.
• Over a third of respondents (34.83%) had heard of the SEND Local Offer through a practitioner, followed by email (31.46%) and the internet (23.60%). 

Accessibility

• The majority of those who responded, described finding information and services on the SEND Local Offer as very/fairly easy (56.18%) with 14.61% as not very easy.  The majority of the 13 respondents who described it as not very easy, said it was because they found it easier to go to settings/other parents for information; or due to lack of provision/activities in their area.
  
  
• 60.67% felt it was easy to change the font size and background colour if needing to.  31.46% hadn’t tried and 7.87% felt it wasn’t easy.

Content

• The majority, 55.06 % of those who responded described the information on the SEND Local Offer as very easy/clear and easy to understand.  5.62% as not very easy.
• 73.03% felt the information on the SEND Local Offer was accurate and up-to-date.  15.73% felt it wasn’t.
• The majority of those who responded (50.65%) found the information on the SEND Local Offer very helpful/fairly helpful.  22.47% described it as very helpful, 20.22% described it as neither helpful nor unhelpful and 7.87% as not helpful.
• Of the 5.62% of respondents who said they felt the information on the SEND Local Offer was not very easy to understand 3 comments were received.  Two related to navigation and one felt the information was over complicated.
• 57.30% of respondents wouldn’t change anything on the SEND Local Offer. 
   
• 42.05% of those who responded felt there was something missing from the SEND Local Offer these all related to provision.  Suggestions included: More activity/short break providers across ages, needs and area; More local specialist educational provision; More independent specialist/supported internship providers.
• Areas the respondents liked best about the SEND Local Offer included the navigation/layout of the website, places to go/activities, accessibility and extra help.
• 60.67% of those who responded would like to be involved in shaping the SEND Local Offer in the future.
• Most popular ways to give feedback or be involved in shaping the SEND Local Offer included:  Focused workshops 60.66%, Development and review meetings 59.02%, questionnaires also 59.02%, established forum/support groups 47.54% and mystery shoppers 37.70%.
• 50% of the respondents expressed an interest in being part of a focus group to look at how parents, carers, children and young people and those that use the SEND Local Offer can be involved in its continued development.
  
  

The collated report can be found here.  A printable version is available in the download section.

Following feedback from last year’s survey an action plan was developed to take forward the suggestions made.  See below for more details.

• Feedback comments regarding design, accessibility and functionality of the SEND Local Offer website received from parents, carers, children, young people, partners, practitioners and providers to web company to inform the refresh and discuss possible solutions.   We did:  all comments were fed back and explored with the web company.  The feedback gained helped to inform the development of the refreshed website, which went live in April 2018. 
  
• Review content of the SEND Local Offer with all partners with a view to maintaining and updating useful information and to look at gaps, including those identified by survey responses.   We did:  approximately 200 new entries have been added to the SEND Local Offer over the past year.
  
• Identify nominated authors for the refreshed SEND Local Offer advice pages.  We did:  approximately 70 initial authors were identified to update advice pages. 
• Contact nominated authors requesting updated information for the refreshed SEND Local Offer website.  We did: a meeting was arranged with nominated authors to look at the information required, using a template devised with parents.  This was followed up with emails.  All identified nominated authors submitted a revised entry.
  
• Continue to contact registered providers on a three-monthly basis to review information held. We did:  three monthly reminders are automatically sent to providers as a reminder to keep their information updated.  This appears to be working, with an increase in edited listings around the time the email is sent.
  
• Develop a practitioner’s page as part of the SEND Local Offer website.  We did:  a practitioner’s page has been developed which hosts information requested during last year’s survey.  This includes: forms and templates, sharing best practice and a policy library.
  
• Contact prospective SEND Local Offer User Testers with a view to testing pilot site.  We did:  SEND Local Offer User Testers were contacted and a survey developed to help test and review the pilot site.

• Work with user testers, authors and county commissioners to identify gaps in registered providers.  We did:  we have contacted all suggested providers forwarded to us.

• Develop and implement a Communications Strategy.  We did: Flyers and posters have been developed with parents and young people.  These have been circulated widely, in line with our communications strategy distribution list.  Some SEND local offer demonstration sessions have also taken place with groups of parents and practitioners, with further meetings planned.   Articles have been placed in relevant special educational needs and disability newsletters and updates. 
  
  A promotional materials page for practitioners has been developed to enable them to download or link to the flyer or poster at any time.  The page includes a selection of SEND LO images that can be included on school/provider websites, a plasma screen image and a link to our new SEND Local Offer Facebook page.