Courtney Garnett, 23, from Warwick, is a student at WCG, Moreton Morrell College and has spent the last academic year on a Supported Internship Programme with placements hosted by Warwickshire County Council. As part of this she has worked on a virtual platform one day a week with Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service's (WFRS) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion team.  

Supported Internships offer students with Education, Health and Care plans an opportunity to gain work experience while studying and a chance to develop their skills. Students spend at least three days a week working with an employer and performing a specific role to meet a business need. They are an initiative that Warwickshire County Council has been championing to support children and young people with special educational needs and disability in the county. 

Courtney’s main job role with WFRS was a project to develop a Service Directory of all the voluntary and community groups and organisations working to support children and young people, older people and groups covered by the Equality Act 2010. The directory will improve the capacity and efficiency of officers at WFRS with collaborative work, engaging with different communities across the county. 

Courtney said: “I loved my whole experience working with Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service. I loved creating the service directory and while there were challenges to find the information for some of the groups, the service directory has made me feel happy because I know it is going to be used by Warwickshire County Council WFRS as a service to benefit other people. 

“I wish I could have started my placement earlier than planned, but due to circumstances I couldn’t because of Covid. I would change the fact of being in the office a bit more with Imran and Jo - I really enjoyed these visits and it wasn’t always easy working remotely at College. I hope the next intern has the same great experience as me.” 

During the internship, Courtney developed a range of skills and qualities including her IT skills and knowledge, her confidence to communicate with others on a professional level, resilience to adapt to different situations and perseverance to learn new tasks.  

Warwickshire County Council is supporting a number of students with Supported Internships and members of the public can find out more here:  https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/post16help.  

Councillor Jeff Morgan, Portfolio Holder for Children, Families and Education, at Warwickshire County Council said: “I’m delighted to hear about Courtney’s positive experiences of working with Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service. Supported internships are a great way for young people with an education, health and care plan to gain valuable experience in the workplace and I look forward to hearing about Courtney’s next steps.” 

This resource provides information and support for children and young people with special educational needs and disability (SEND). It is called the SEND Local Offer and Warwickshire County Council has been working hard to improve its SEND Local Offer to ensure that families with SEND can find the information they need.

Every local authority in England must produce and maintain a Local Offer. It brings together information about the local services and support available across education, health, and social care for families with children and young people aged 0 to 25 who have special educational needs and/or disabilities.

Consultations with families, young people and professionals in Warwickshire across five months revealed that it wasn’t always easy to find the information they were looking for in the Local Offer. A task group of Warwickshire County Council officers and independent parent carers have worked together with young people and practitioners to address these concerns.

The group explored the understanding gained from these local evaluations with a mapping exercise across 167 other local authority inspection reports. They also cross-referenced against current SEND legislation on what must be included in a Local Offer.

The group worked on improving the navigation issues which were impeding access to information. They have created 12 broad categories to help people find what they were looking for within a more accessible and logical format. On completion, this was re-checked across a range of people through online exercises designed to identify and evaluate the user experience.

The process of redesigning the navigational aspects of the Local Offer enabled the group to identify where the problems in locating information and support were. Importantly, it also helped identify where there were gaps in information or provision. Mapping current information and services across the new categories is now underway. This work will continue alongside development of new information and resources that will see further updates to the Local Offer in the future.

Councillor Jeff Morgan, Portfolio Holder for Children and Families said: “Warwickshire County Council is committed to continuous improvement to build an interactive Local Offer that residents can be proud of. Actively engaging with people and working productively together within a ‘you said, we did’ approach is an integral part of our work going forwards. We were grateful for all the input from children, young people, professionals, parents and carers that fed into the redesign. Please do take a look and tell us what you think.”

Find the SEND Local Offer here: https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/send

An ambitious programme to transform special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support services across Warwickshire is moving forward with the aim of making a real difference to the lives of children and young people in the county.  

The programme, which was launched in July 2020 set out plans on how the service would be transformed. This included seeing a major revenue investment in the SEND transformation programme and a capital investment in the flagship Warwickshire Academy. The programme has seen the reinvigoration of the Warwickshire Parent Carer Forum, which aims to represent the voices of Warwickshire parents and carers, creating a single clinical commissioning group and implementing system changes to improve integration between health and social care.    

Despite the impact of COVID over the last year, outstanding progress has been made in reducing the number of excluded children and young people in alternative provision from 96 to 26, with all the children and young people successfully sustained within their new mainstream placements. Similarly, through a relentless focus on timely and good quality assessments between May 2019 and May 2020, the backlog of children and young people with disabilities with overdue assessments has been completely eliminated. 

Feedback from parents, carers and families is crucial to improving the way in which we deliver our services. To date the majority (82%) of parents and carers rate WCC above 7 out of 10 when issuing an education and health care plan. Our Children’s social care is rapidly improving with major transformation since 2019 and the CQC says health services provided by South Warwickshire Foundation Trust (SWFT) are outstanding. 

Councillor Jeff Morgan, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for Children’s Services said:   

“In Warwickshire we have the highest aspirations for all our children and young people, including almost 14,000 with special educational needs and disabilities. As a local authority we believe that we have the right plan in place to deliver the best outcomes and in the last year, we have been working hard to fundamentally rethink and transform the way that we deliver local services through our SEND and Inclusion Change Programme.  

"Whilst COVID has had an impact both here in Warwickshire and nationally, it hasn’t stopped good progress being made, which is a testament to those working in SEND provision across the county.  

“We recognise that change will take time and there is still more work to be done, but we remain committed to listening to the voices of our children and their families and working with our partners, we will continue to support all our children and young people to be the best they can be, so that Warwickshire is an inclusive and child friendly county.” 

For more information on the SEND local offer in Warwickshire, please visit https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/send