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SENDIASS Southend
Special Educational Needs & Disability Information, Advice & Support Service
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About Us

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Transcript (SENDIASS Southend take no responsibility for the content of this transcript provided by the 'WatchCDC' YouTube Account)

What is an Information Advice and Support Service?

The Children and Families Act 2014 includes a duty for each local authority to provide an Information Advice and Support Service to support children, young people and parents on matters relatng to a child or young person’s special educational needs or disability from birth to 25 years.

Operating at ‘arm’s length’ from the local authority, the service offer is free, confidential and impartial and provided through a direct telephone helpline, website, email or face to face by appointment.

The service is an all year-round flexible service, opened during normal office hours.
If you cannot get through to the service there should be a 24-hour answer machine with a call back and signposting service.

Whatever the concern or level of need, your local friendly and flexible service will often offer a listening ear, access to resources, regular e-bulletins, information, events, and provide the opportunity to meet others in a similar situation.

They will also help and support you to navigate the Local Offer.

Minimum Standards

All services across England are underpinned by a set of Minimum Standards which are endorsed by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care.

The Standards are based on the requirements as set out in The Children & Families Act 2014, The SEND Code of Practice, Legal advice commissioned by the IASS Network

A copy of the standards is available on request from your local service.

How can the Information Advice and Support Service Help you?

Your local skilled and supportive service team would have completed high quality training on a range of topics including SEND advisers legal training and practical skills training.

The team are equipped to offer information advice and support about:

- Education health and social care matters, annual reviews and relevant law
- Support available in schools, early years, and post 16 settings
- Funding arrangements
- Identifying needs
- Representation at SEND tribunals
- Exclusion from school

Based on your circumstances your local service can also offer individual support which may include:
- Support at and preparing for meetings
- Help to understand and complete paperwork
- Help to participate in discussions and decision making
- Liaising with other services and organisations
- Looking at positive outcomes
Your local service will also be able to provide advocacy support for individual children, young people and parents as well as empowering all to express their views and wishes as well as to help with understanding and exercising their rights.

How can you find your local Information Advice and Support Service?

Visiting your Local Offer Page. Each local authority is required to have a “Local Offer” page containing relevant information and support on offer.

To find your Local Offer page simply write the name of your local authority followed by the term “Local Offer” into your search engine and press return. The results of the search should include a link to your local authority “Local Offer” page.

Directly Contacting your Local Information Advice and Support Service

To find your local Information Advice and Support Service simply write the name of the local authority, followed by the term “IASS” into your internet search engine and press return.

The results should include a link to your local Service with information on how to contact the service team.

Parents with a disabled child aged from birth to 25 looking for support can also contact the national helpline for parents and carers.

You can phone the helpline on 0808 808 3555 between 09:30 and 17:00 Monday to Friday

Calls are free from UK landlines and UK mobiles.

To find out more information and advice please visit www.contact.org.uk

Parents looking for legal advice can also contact the “Independent Provider of Special Education Advice” who provide free and independent legally-based information, advice and casework support.

To find out more information and advice please visit www.ipsea.org.uk

For further information and details of all local information, advice and support services please visit www.councilfordisabledchildren.org.uk

SENDIASS are the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information, Advice and Support Service for children and young people with SEND and their parents or carers.

This short animation video will help children and young people with SEND, and their parents, learn about the service and support on offer from their local SEND Information Advice and Support Service (IASS). Sometimes referred to as IASS, or here in Southend as SENDIASS.

It also talks about how a local SEND IASS team can be contacted - including how to access the National Helpline provided by Contact.

 

 

Your local SEND Information, Advice and Support Service has to work in a certain way to make sure they are meeting the minimum standards.

This short video tells you what that certain way is, and some of the things services have to do. This is so you understand more about your SEND IASS service.

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Transcript (SENDIASS Southend take no responsibility for the content of this transcript provided by 'WatchCDC' YouTube Channel.

How must information advice and support services be run to meet the minimum standards?
Your local information advice and support service has to work in a certain way to make sure they're meeting the minimum standards. This film tells you what that certain way is and some of the things services have to do. This is so you understand more about your service.

Those minimum standards based on the law say that the services have to:
-include children young people and families in planning their service
-be open during working hours, this normally means from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Friday
-be open in the school holidays and during term time
-have a special number that you can call at any time and have a way of leaving a message if no one is there to take that call
-have people there that can tell children, young people and their families about who else can help and support you
-make you trust that they are separate from other organisations like health social care and education
-always be confidential
-advertise their service in a way that makes them easy to find and contact ensuring other services also know about them and can tell children young people and families about them
-have a manager who doesn't work for another service
-work with other IAS services to learn from each other
-ensure the people that work for them have access to and complete training
-work with children and young people as well as their families
-work with other services in the area to make services and support better for all children and young people with send
-have policies in place about how to complain if the service wasn't good or wasn't meeting the minimum standards
-be well-run and have a plan for the future gather the views of children young people their families and professionals and use this information to make their service better

The SENDIASS Service are trained by IPSEA (Independent Provider of Special Education Advice) through the National IASS network. 

We provide information and advice about the law on Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) including:

  • the local authority’s policies and procedures
  • the policy and practice in local schools and other settings
  • the Local Offer 
  • health and social care where it is linked to education

We aim to help parents and young people work in partnership with services and professionals and we can help you find solutions when you’re unhappy with how things are going.

Our service is for children and young people with SEND and their parents or carers living in the City of Southend-on-Sea.

You need to live in Southend-on-Sea to use our service, but there is a SENDIAS service for every area across the country. Every local authority has to make sure parents carers and children and young people with SEN and disabilities have access to impartial information, advice and support on issues to do with SEN and disability.

If you live in Essex, your local service is Essex SENDIASS 

Young people and their parents or carers can contact the service themselves.

We provide access to information that is:

  • clear
  • accurate
  • relevant
  • based on legislation 

This will help you take part in decisions about yourself or if you are a parent, your child. We:

  • aim to help you to feel confident to have your say and feel heard
  • are not an advocacy service and we do not speak on your behalf
  • do not favour either side
  • do not have influence over the outcome of any meetings

We cannot:

  • offer counselling - enquiries must be based around a question related to SEND
  • deliver emergency support or interventions
  • make decisions for you - you know your child’s, or your own wishes and needs best
  • attend all meetings
  • arrange meetings or take minutes*
  • write letters or emails for you*
  • complete paperwork on your behalf*
  • routinely read or check draft EHC Plans*
  • spend time re-addressing an enquiry that has already been addressed by our service
  • offer information, advice or support or review forms on issues that are not linked to SEND e.g. DLA or PIP

*Unless you have additional support needs that mean you cannot undertake these actions independently and we have agreed that we have the capacity to support you at that time.

If you are receiving support from a solicitor, we regret that we will be limited in the information, advice and support that we can provide. This is to avoid the potential for conflicting advice and to ensure our service is available for parents or carers not receiving any other support.

You may find the answers to some of your questions by:

  • looking through the information here on our web pages
  • viewing our social media channels

If you can't find the answers to your questions, you can get in touch by phone,  by email, or by using our contact us form. You choose which works best for you. 

If you do not live in Southend-on-Sea or Essex, you can look for your local service on the Council for Disabled Childrens website.  

We can offer more direct one-to-one help and advice to young people and in exceptional cases, to parents who would really struggle without this, for example, because they don’t speak English.

To help families where English is not their first language, we have translated our service leaflet into some of the most commonly spoken languages in Southend schools, identified from recent school census information.  

  • Albanian
  • Bengali
  • Chinese (simplified font)
  • Czech
  • Dari
  • French
  • Lithuanian
  • Malay
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Tamil
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu

Please contact us to request a copy of our leaflet in your preferred language from the list above.

Translate our pages

We want our information to be accessible and understandable to everyone. This information explains how you can translate our information into your preferred language.  These tools might not provide a perfect translation, but they should provide you with an understanding of the content of our web pages.


Google Chrome 

If you are using Google Chrome, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Google Chrome browser.
  2. Visit the webpage you want to translate.
  3. Right-click on the webpage, then select "Translate to [Language]" from the menu.

For more detailed instructions, visit Google's support page (external webpage).


Safari 

If you are using Safari, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Safari browser.
  2. Open the webpage you want to translate.
  3. Click on the "View" menu in the top bar and select "Translation". 

For detailed instructions, visit Apple's support page (external webpage). 


Microsoft Edge

If you are using the Microsoft Edge, follow these steps: 

  1. Open the Microsoft Edge browser.
  2. Visit the webpage you want to translate.
  3. Right-click and select "Translate to [Language]". You should see a translation drop-down appear in your address bar.
  4. Select your preferred language. 

For detailed instructions, visit Microsoft's support page (external webpage). 

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  • Thank you so much for everything you do to support us, it is valued so much and appreciated always.”

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