Back in July, I was invited to attend a series of summer activity sessions for children with complex needs ran by the Wirral Council. Children with complex needs are often neglected in terms of suitable and safe events that accommodate their needs, even amongst disability-friendly events. Wirral Council aimed to address this by running its own series of summer play events, focussing on physical activity and sensory experience with a team of specialist SEND staff.
During these sessions, the guardians of the children were in a focus group discussing the challenges and barriers they faced, and where the local offer of SEND support and events were lacking. My task was to take meeting notes of the discussions to be used in an evidence case that was put forward to the Wirral Council urging for more SEND funding.
In addition, from these notes I discovered pain points of the Wirral Council’s current online SEND provision, SENDLO. I identified several areas where we could use web solutions to address challenges faced by the guardians, such as creating a dynamic SEND events calendar application. We are now working with the SENDLO team on a proposal for how we can improve their digital provision to ensure that it meets the needs of local people.
Sally Tittle, SEND Manager at Wirral Council, said “We’re so pleased we invited Zack to support us at these much needed and engaging sessions. His unassuming yet knowledgeable manner helped him strike up an easy rapport with the families attending across the four sessions and he captured every detail discussed. And there was a great deal discussed and at pace! His creative suggestions as to how we can improve the content specifically for our families with children and young people with complex needs are superb and will undoubtedly make a real difference to the quality and breadth of information housed on out Local Offer website, SENDLO. We are excited to develop these plans and delighted that the equality, diversity and inclusion lens is front row centre in this key piece of work. Thanks Zack!”
Seline Wakerley, Participation and Engagement Team Leader at Youth Matters Wirral, said “Jamescape were great to work with. Zack listened and translated the voice of the parents into content that works well for a website catering for families with SEND complex needs children and young people. Their consistent care and awareness of the needs that SEND families face and how that could be improved online via the SENDLO website was a great help for professionals who haven’t been involved in web page building before.”
This project with SENDLO demonstrates the need for initiatives that bridge that gap between technology and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). If you think there may be synergy between our expertise in EDI and technology, and your organisation/project then please drop us a line and we’d love to have a chat.