Parents of children with special needs in Northumberland asked to share their experiences of pandemic

Northumberland County Council has launched a survey looking into the impact that Covid-19 has had on the education and the health and wellbeing of children, young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and their families.

RELATED: Northumberland sees spike in looked-after children

The responses will help the authority and NHS Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) better understand how residents can be supported in times such as these and identify anything they may need to do differently moving forwards.

Cath McEvoy-Carr, the council’s executive director for children’s services, said: “It is important for our team to touch base with our young people and families on this, so we can appropriately review our plans, and ensure any issues that have risen due to the pandemic are considered.

“We want to give parents the confidence that their child is receiving the best support possible, but we are aware that during these times difficulties are being faced.

“This survey will help us understand those challenges, and help us to learn and adapt from this in the future.”

The survey is available online at https://tinyurl.com/y72ac88y until Friday, August 14. Paper copies can be requested by emailing [email protected]

In a statement, the Northumberland Parent Carer Forum said: “This is a great opportunity for our voices to be heard. It will act as a sounding board for parents and carers of children with SEND, and will feed into a future plan of support for our community.

“We are encouraging all parents and carers to feedback into this survey, and support the council in moving this forward so they can further support us.”

The feedback is also likely to support efforts to address the three ‘areas of significant weakness’ outlined in the joint inspection of the county’s SEND provision by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission in October 2018. The council and CCG have been able to demonstrate progress across all three areas at subsequent monitoring visits.

Meanwhile, the local authority announced last week that hundreds of laptops, tablets and wifi routers have been loaned to Year 10 pupils, care leavers and children who have a social worker to support their home learning needs.

This followed a Government pledge to support disadvantaged students, while Coun Wayne Daley, the cabinet member for children’s services, explained that an additional £205,000 from the North of Tyne Combined Authority would supply more equipment, including dongles providing internet access.

He described the provision of the equipment as a ‘welcome relief’ for families, however, the previous week, the Northumberland Labour group had highlighted that the Department for Education had missed the deadline it had announced in April to provide 230,000 laptops for disadvantaged children by June 30.

The group’s deputy leader, Coun Scott Dickinson, said: “It’s very concerning that disadvantaged children without access to IT have now spent nearly a term without adequate access to education.”

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you