Annual report for SEND Local Offer

Together for Change Panel

One of the highlights of this year has been the growth of the West Sussex Parent Carer Forum's Together for Change Panel. Panel members include parent carers and education, health and social care practitioners, including our SEND Local Offer Advisor. The panel shares projects at early stages, gets feedback from parent carers and works towards co-production.

This year The Local Offer Advisor presented to the panel asking for help in making improvements to the information available on the Local Offer website and how it works.

The West Sussex Parent Carer Forum Chair of the Together for Change Panel says:

"Over the past 12 months, the WSPCF Together for Change panel has played an increasingly active role in shaping and updating the Local Offer, through sharing the lived experiences of our members.

"Sarah (Local Offer advisor) has consistently engaged the panel with well-structured questions, enabling good discussions and genuine co-production. Her approach exemplifies best practice in co-productive working, and the Local Offer work stands out as a strong example of what can be achieved at the Together for Change Panel.

"We look forward to continuing to work with Sarah and contributing to further improvements in the Local Offer."

The ‘Together for Change’ logo shows where there has been engagement and co-production. Look for it on publications as we improve co-production over the year.

Co-production Week 2025

We worked with the Working with West Sussex Parent Carer Forum, Young Voices, and colleagues in education and health to give daily Facebook posts and articles. These posts showed how co-production helps families and young people.

Co-production Steering Group and Co-production Charter

Local Offer is part of this group which developed the Co-production Charter. We co-produced the charter with young people and parent carers and we will use it in co-production work in the future.

You said, we did for SEND Local Offer and SEND services

We now link to ‘You said, we did’ pages from the homepage of the website. This gives us more room to explain how to give us your views and what we do in response. Find out more on the You said, we did page.

Young voices

We must involve children and young people in the development of the Local Offer. We need to do better at this so it is one of our aims for the next 12 months.

SEND Local Offer steering group

The steering group meets 6 times a year to make sure that the SEND Local Offer meets the requirements of the SEND Code of Practice. The group includes parent carers and practitioners, including a representative of Young Voices. See more information about the steering group.

In May 2024, The Local Offer became part of the WSCC Family Information Service (FIS).

You told us that information was not always up to date and was often difficult to find. So this year, we focussed on the SEND Code of Practice requirement for us to provide ‘clear, comprehensive, accessible and up to date’ information.

How many people use the SEND Local Offer website?

We use Google Analytics to study how people use our pages. We saw increases in use of the Local Offer website from September to November 2024 and again in January and July 2025. This shows that use of the site increases around the beginning of school terms and at the end of the academic year.

There was a small increase in the number of users over the year. It is clear that we need to focus on publicising the website to increase the number of people using it.

Information pages

Before the relaunch in May 2024, we rewrote and reviewed may of our information pages. We worked with the West Sussex Parent Carer Forum, the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information Advice and Support (SENDIAS) service, and FIS.

We are prioritising the development of the section for Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). This is because of your feedback and data that shows us it is one of the top 3 most used parts of the site. This year, we will co-produce new pages for this section, making them easier to use and answering common questions so that people can find the information they need. We will get feedback throughout the process.

Service directory

As of August 2025, there are 473 entries for services run by WSCC, the NHS, district and borough councils and private providers in the SEND Local Offer service directory.

Last year, working with the West Sussex Parent Carer Forum, we changed our standard text at the beginning of private provider entries. It now reflects that WSCC do not recommend services and highlights that customers must ensure the service is right for them.

We also removed listings for mainstream schools and maintained special schools from the service directory this year. We now have an information page for choosing a school. From here, you can visit the WSCC find a school academy or college page, where each school's entry has a link to the SEND information on their website and special support centre information, where appropriate. We also have an area of the SEND Local Offer website for admission to special support centres.

You can find all section 41 approved independent schools and non-maintained special schools in the service directory. Some are not in West Sussex, which means they do not appear in the county's school list. We include them in our service directory so you can find and use them. 

To make the directory easier to use, we are reviewing the filters with the West Sussex Parent Carer Forum and Young Voices. We will also improve the search when using mobile devices and continue to update and expand directory entries.

Phone calls

The local offer advisor previously took all phone calls so that we could understand what types of call we receive and we should respond.

After 6 months, the Customer Service Centre took over the service. This means that we now answer calls to the SEND Local Offer at a rate of more than 90%. We are also able to transfer residents directly to the service that best meets their need. 

Customers that have queries needing specialised information from the Family Information Service usually receive a call back on the same day.

Outreach events

We attended Christmas, Easter and Summer SEND events at the family hubs. We were also at the Crawley Freeshop in Bewbush.

At these events, we shared information with families in a relaxed, child-friendly space. We plan to hold regular events as we grow our presence around the county, with an ongoing ‘roadshow’ at local venues.

Social media

In this reporting period, the number of followers of the SEND Local Offer Facebook page increased from 100 to 2,500 followers. We have a strategy for the coming year to publicise information about SEND news and events around the county.

News and events

Following requests from families, we reintroduced the news and events SEND Local Offer webpage.

We produced a summer SEND events webpage, which included summer holiday events in libraries, family hubs and other places in the county. We included events both specifically for children and young people with SEND and those including all children. 155 users viewed the page 253 times during July and August.

As a result of the popularity of this page, we plan to add half term, Christmas and Easter details during the year. We also plan to offer information about more events.

Publicity flyer

We created a new A5 flyer for general use, co-produced with West Sussex Parent Carer Forum and NHS colleagues. The flyer outlines the purpose of the SEND Local Offer, what residents can find on the website and how they can contact the service. 

You can get the flyer at West Sussex family hubs and across the library service. We also plan to share copies with early years settings, GP surgeries, schools and colleges across the county.

The SEND Local Offer is part of the Family Information Service (FIS). The FIS run a specialist service providing extra help to find suitable childcare. Parents and carers can access this service through the online form under 'Extra help' on the search for childcare page. They can also use phone, social media or speak to us at events. The FIS team also become aware of families that may need support through their work with family hubs.

From September 2023 to August 2024, 223 families accessed the extra help service. 117 of the families (57%) had children with SEND. In the last year (September 2024 to August 2025) 263 families used the service and 79 of those (29%) had children with SEND.

Sometimes parents and carers of children with SEND can find accessing a suitable early years or childcare place challenging for other reasons than the child's SEND needs. These reasons can include having English as an additional language, living rurally or having their own disability or neurodivergence.

The most common area of children's SEND reported by parents and carers using the extra help service was autism, followed by speech and language issues and physical disabilities.