This case study looks at a survey designed by a city council to better understand the thoughts of parents and carers on the effectiveness of the SEND system. The survey was split into three definable sections:
The local authority typically surveyed parents and carers on an annual basis, so they placed emphasis on the importance of asking targeted and concise questions in this survey to gain original and valuable insights in addition to the results from earlier that year.
What they did: Graph 1 illustrates an example of how this LA compiled and visualised the survey results into a clear and understandable graph. Questions can be focused towards understanding how much support parents and carers feel their children receive and what exact provision can be accessed once an EHCP has been provided.
What they found: Parents and carers value better trained staff at the school, the prioritisation of 1:1 time and specialist services/support being readily available. LAs can use this information to understand which services should be prioritised to better meet the needs of children and young people.
Next steps: To follow up on these results, the local authority then spoke directly to parents to understand the reasons why they wanted to see more 1:1 time. They found that it was primarily for enhanced support for their child to express their feelings, emotional needs, and support for learning new things. Parents and carers did not believe this type of support existed outside of having an EHCP or being in a specialist setting.
What they did: In this example, a unitary authority compiled the survey output results from multiple stakeholder groups to understand the primary change required to better support children and young people in a mainstream setting. Conducting a survey for these audiences provides a first-hand insight into the experiences of children and young people with SEND. By asking the same questions to a range of stakeholders, it enables direct comparison of opinions and how they may differ or align throughout the system.
What they found: The survey results provide a clear picture of where the focus areas should be to improve the support for children and young people with SEND in mainstream settings. For example, Graph 2 shows that the most frequently requested change was increasing the availability of extra support.
Comparisons between stakeholder groups can also be drawn. In this LA, it was discovered that education providers stated much less frequently than the other groups outlined in Graph 2 that the ability for other children to be inclusive was an area of improvement.
Next steps: In this case, the LA continued to explore these themes by surveying opinions related to the key priority areas and by speaking to parents and carers directly to further understand the rationale behind these themes.
Key considerations: It is important to not take individual evidence bases in isolation and to instead compile a range of different data points to help understand priorities. LAs should be careful to not to rely on individual opinions alone but link them with quantitative evidence too.
