Back in December 2019, before the pandemic washed up upon our shores, CXK & partners launched the SEND Provision Map for Kent & Medway[i]. A place where professionals working with young people who have SEND could collectively pool their knowledge on an online document within the cloud. Local professionals could add any useful information about the services available to young people with SEND, whether education, youth clubs, or support agencies. The map enabled us to pool our collective knowledge, and in doing so share a larger amount of information about the support services available.
Since then, there have been leaps forward in the support of young people with SEND and access to relevant information. Local authorities since 2014 must have a local offer in place which details the support and services available to young people with SEND; in the last few years the content on the local offers locally have massively increased.
For example, KCC’s local offer now includes a “Communities Directory” with services and activities that families with SEND can find to help support them in their local community.
Partnering with many other agencies and working collectively with our local authorities, CXK has fed into the development of the local offers[ii] within the area, using our SEND map to aid in the development of the offer.
We applaud the many people, who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes within each of the councils, to ensure that high quality information is in place and updated regularly.
Our local offers, and those nearby, can be found below and is your one stop shop of highly useful information for young people, their families, and professionals:
If you are a professional working within the sector, or an advocate for young people, and running activities, programmes, or education provision for young people with SEND, please contact your respective local offer team, to ensure they are aware of the support you are providing. For Kent this is via email at: localofferteam@kent.gov.uk.
Note: The Local Offers are now the primary place to find out information for young people with SEND in Kent, so we have now retired our SEND Map. This article was reviewed 8th October 2022 to reflect this change.
[i] https://www.cxk.org/blog/cxk-partners-launch-send-provision-map-for-kent-medway
[ii]https://councilfordisabledchildren.org.uk/resources/all-resources/filter/inclusion-send/local-offer-guide
