What is the Local Offer?

All families need extra support from time to time. Whether that support is from family and friends, community groups, services that everybody can use such as schools, children’s centres, leisure centres and doctor’s surgeries, or more specialist services, all can make a valuable contribution and difference to people’s lives. Knowing what is out there gives you more choice and more control over what support is right for your child.

To view our Local Offer website please click here

The Local Offer aims to bring together information that is intended to be helpful to children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their families.The Local Offer has two main purposes:

• To provide clear, comprehensive information, in one place, on the support and opportunities available locally to children, young people and their families and what can be expected from a range of local agencies including education, health and social care
• To make services more responsive to local needs and shaped by you

The Local Offer will provide you with all the information you need to help you identify the right support to enable your child to participate fully in and enjoy learning and achieve their goals.

The Local Offer will cover:

• Education, health and care provision for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
• Arrangements for identifying and assessing children and young people with SEND, including arrangements for requesting an Education Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment.
• Other education provision (outside of schools or colleges such as sports or arts provision),training provision, including apprenticeships.
• Respite support and leisure activities.
• Arrangements for travel to and from schools, Post 16 institutions and early years providers.
• Support to help children and young people in moving between phases of education and to prepare for adulthood.

The Local Offer will make it easier for you to find out what you need to do to support your child, making you less reliant on other people or word-of-mouth suggestions. It will explain how different services are accessed, including any eligibility criteria. This will ensure you can see exactly what support is available to you. It will also help parent/carers to feedback and challenge when they are concerned that their son or daughter isn’t receiving the right support to meet his/her needs or the provision they had been led to expect is not in place.

The Local Offer is being developed and written with parents/carers, so hopefully it will be as reliable and beneficial as when other parents tell you useful information and pass on the benefit of their personal experiences and the knowledge that they have gained from being a parent of a child or young person with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

We understand how important it is for parents and carers to have the information you need, when you need it. Whilst the site cannot provide you with the answers to every question you will have, it will hopefully be a really useful starting point. We really hope you find the site helpful and welcome all feedback so that it continues to improve as more information is added to it.

Staff at the Family Information Zone (FIZ) will be able to provide details of the information contained within the Local Offer to those without easy access to the internet, to contact them, please click here. Parent Partnership will also be able to provide help and advice, to contact them, please click here.

How we can help

The Special Educational Need and Disabilities (SEND) Local Offer has been written as a practical guide that gives details of the public services that are available within the area, covering:

• Education: e.g. nurseries, playgroups, schools and colleges as well as support services like educational psychologists, early years SEND and early help workers.
• Health: e.g. GPs, school nurses, health visitors, paediatricians, school and therapists.
• Social care: e.g. respite services and children’s disability services.

It should also enable you to find out what support and services are available in the voluntary and private sectors, for example from charities and disability groups, nurseries, youth clubs etc, both in your immediate area and across the island.

Leisure time is something we all value and the Local Offer aims to highlight opportunities for children and young people who have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) to engage in a broad range of activities, from cinema screenings for children with specific needs, to evening clubs like Cubs/Scouts or Brownies to short breaks and specific events offered during the school holidays. Additional information will be available for young adults.

The Local Offer is intended to help you make informed choices about things that are important to you, such as:

• Where to live.
• Transport.
• Social activities.
• Options after school - continuing your education, apprenticeships, supported employment etc.
• Making the transition from services provided for children to those for adults.

The Local Offer is intended to be much more than just a directory. Its aim is to help you find the material that you are looking for or to sign post you to somebody who can provide you with additional information or answer any questions that you might have.

It is also a resource that individuals, groups or organisations can draw on in the work that they do in supporting children, young people and their families, by highlighting other advice, resources, or services that may be accessed.

Most importantly the Local Offer is intended for you and will be shaped by you. If you have comments or feedback you want to give us on what is or is not included then please click here to send us a message.

As well as telling us how we can improve the content of the SEND Local Offer, we also want to know how easy you find the site to navigate and search what you like, and what you are not so keen on? You can do this by using the feedback facility. This enables you to provide comments and feedback on specific services or provision that you or your family have accessed. This Local Offer will evolve and develop over time and we want to make sure we do not lose the elements that work for you and improve it so it becomes more and more helpful for parents and carers.

Be part of our Local Offer

If you wish to be part of our Local Offer we ask you to complete a short template which tells us about your organisation.  The Local Offer work stream meets monthly where it will consider your request.

If you are an Educational Provider please click here the template also includes guidelines to help you complete the document 

If you provide a service please click here the template also includes guidelines to help you complete the document

Please contact us through the Local Offer if you wish further information or the documents sent to you in "Word" format. 

Local Procedures

You may also wish to complement or share your concerns locally and this can be done via the links below:

For the Isle of Wight Council - Children's Services - Children Complaints click here.

For Isle of Wight Council - Social Care Services – Adult Complaints click here.

For the Isle of Wight Council - General Complaints (Corporate) including SEN click here.