Rotherham SENDIASS

Although Service reach has increased year on year since the SEND Reforms, service feedback has not followed the same trajectory. This report therefor only allows insight into a small percentage of service users experience and so can’t be seen as a fair representation. (This report makes use of 170 service users’ feedback)

This year has also seen a slight decrease with parental satisfaction. We are unclear if there are specific reasons for this however, we could hypothesis the following.

• As a result of the service making changes to the number of families, we offer ongoing, in-depth support to. This is supported by a service user comment stating ‘No positive comment. Feel that SENDIASS should be easier to contact and they should’ve responded to requests for more support suitably’
• A result of some of the situations we have been involved with being more complex or more entrenched in dissatisfaction of the whole SEND system (see annual report showing an increase to the number of complaints we have offered IAS to for SEND Support, EHC plans and processes, and the number of appeals we have offered support to.) This may be supported by a service user comment stating ‘Struggled to get through at first, I’m a **year old carer for my granddaughter, I’ve tried to get support for years. Now she’s ** old. I’ve been trying to get school to send all info and reports in to be assessed for EHCP, I have just lost my mum, and I’m vision impaired!’ and a further comment by a Service User stating ‘Good service but it's still a challenge with school to get the right kind of support.’
• The Service carrying two vacant posts until July 22 (as this was when the majority of the dissatisfied evaluations were received). This is supported by a comment made ‘the only downside was the time it took to speak to somebody’