About the Local Offer
What is the Local Offer?
The Local Offer gives children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities and their families, information about what support services will be available in their area.
Every local authority must talk with children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities and their families to find out what sort of support and services are needed. There will be many different types of services that children and young people may need, including support services in school and specialist health services.
Children, young people and their families may also have ideas about what leisure activities should be available, and what services are needed to help young people move towards independence in adulthood.
Every local authority must have a Local Offer that is available online, and must make sure that people without access to the internet can also see it. The local authority must tell children and young people and their families how they can find out more about the Local Offer. The local authority will then decide what services to make available.
Every local authority must get feedback on its local offer from young people and their families. They must show what feedback they have been given and say how they are going to make improvements to the Local Offer and services.
A Local Offer should also include information about what transport services are available for children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities and if there is any help available to pay for these services.
Follow Derby's SEND Local Offer on Facebook.
You may also want to visit the Derbyshire Local Offer to see what is available across the county.
Every year we publish an annual report to give an update on how the Local Offer has developed in the past year.
SEND newsletter
Our SEND newsletter is produced each school term. The newsletter tells the story of what is going on across the city to help young people, parents and professionals stay up to date.
- SEND newsletter - Spring 2022
- SEND newsletter - Winter 2021
- SEND newsletter - Autumn 2021
- SEND newsletter - Summer 2021
If you've got a story to tell or want to give us your views on our newsletter, you can get in touch by emailing local.offer@derby.gov.uk.
Get involved, have your say
We want to know what you think of our Local Offer so that it works better for you.
Local Offer User Group
The User Group meets four times a year to discuss and approve new and revised content for the Local Offer webpages. This is in collaboration with parent carers, professionals and other representatives from related organisations. These Terms of Reference expand on the purpose of the group. We are always looking for parent carers interested in joining the group. Please email Local.Offer@derby.gov.uk to express your interest.
Derby's Local Offer is monitored at the local area co-production delivery group. This group includes representatives from parent groups and the voluntary sector, as well as representatives for agencies and services across the local area. They are responsible for making sure that the Local Offer continues to develop and reflect the experiences of young people and their families across the city. When we need to develop or update areas of the Local Offer, we will arrange small working groups or talks with champions from across local services.
You said, we did
We will always listen to your feedback to help us to improve the way the Local Offer works.
Spring term feedback 2022
| You said | We did |
|---|---|
| There’s a need to understand that Blue Badges are for the person and not the vehicle | Posted on Facebook that Blue Badges can be used on holiday and in taxis as well as regular car use |
| Sections of website content reviewed as part of regular audit | Reviewed the Professionals webpage and moved it across to the SIP site and created Advice for schools and settings |
| A timeline to gauge when to apply for home to school travel | Transport team to investigate and provide more information |
| Sections of website content reviewed as part of regular audit | Speech and language were updated through agency champions |
| The fuel reimbursement is not fully mentioned | Transport team to provide more in-depth information about the fuel reimbursement process |
| Sections of website content reviewed as part of regular audit | Health and wellbeing were reviewed by multiple agency champions |
| Why is the Gold Card only valid after 9.30am when school has already begun? | Transport team to contact Derbyshire who run the scheme |
| Sections of website content reviewed as part of regular audit | Parent carer support was revisited and content moved to Health and wellbeing |
| How can fears over travelling be reduced for young people in Derby? | Transport team to develop resources with support from special schools |
| Suggestion of going out to schools, possible road show to inform of post-16 options | Team to investigate open days and recruitment fairs, week of webinars |
| Lack of awareness of annual health checks for learning disabilities | Team to promote on Facebook and take up issues with schools and GPs to do more |
| Annual health checks mean a repetition of information from parents to professionals | Team to look at integrating this health check into the annual review |
Winter term feedback 2021
| You said | We did |
|---|---|
| You wanted to be involved in our Local Offer decision making and content | We set up a new Local Offer User Group to report into our coproduction group |
| You said our EHCP webpages were difficult to navigate and parents did not understand the EHC assessment process | We’ve re-written and restructured our content. We will develop this further through our Local Offer User Group |
| You find our directories hard to navigate and that it's difficult to find services you need |
We’ve started an audit of the services listed and are looking at how we can present these differently within the platforms that we have |
Summer term feedback 2021
| You said | We did |
|---|---|
| You said the new Derby SAL service should be on the Local Offer | We created space for it in the Professionals Zone |
| You said there should be a formal local Area SEND strategy | We co-produced the Living My Best Life Strategy |
| You said you did not like the name Local Offer | We looked again at our branding to make sure it linked to our strategic vision of 'Living my best life' |
| You said the News webpage needed updating to include more about the good things happening in the city | We refreshed the content and created the Include and Inspire blog, reflecting stories from young people, parents as well as professionals |