The BuDS SEND Transitions Service is a three-year project funded by The Rothschild Foundation. The purpose of the SEND Transitions Service is to improve the experience of disabled children and young people moving through key transitions within school education and from school education into work or further/higher education.
The SEND Transitions Service is made up of workstreams from a number of BuDS projects, principally Fair4All Education and Reach4Work. This page explains the Education workstream, which is within the BuDS Fair4All Education project.
What Is The Education Workstream Of The SEND Transitions Service?
The Education Workstream is focused on improving the experience of disabled young people moving through the different phases of the education system. It has three parts:
- Research & Reporting: collecting information about Buckinghamshire services (both public and voluntary) supporting disabled children & young people through educational transitions to assess their adequacy, scope and fitness for purpose. This includes publishing analysis and commentary.
- Polling & Feedback: collecting the views of disabled children and young people, and their parents and carers, about educational transitions and services to support them through transitions. Using this feedback to inform plans and publishing it in anonymised form for use by other interested parties
- Driving Improvement: identifying areas for development and improvement in relation to SEND transitions including new services.
Independent Research Project
Working in collaboration with charities in the sector, local and county councils, schools, and other relevant organisations, BuDS is launching an independent research project into the scope and quality of the services available to support disabled young people moving through educational transitions. This research will be published and available to other stakeholders, to inform their work and help stimulate a debate about improving services.
Because of the scope and diversity of the support available for disabled young people during school transitions, the research will be carried out in phases. Each phase will look at one of the five key school transitions, with the aim of achieving comprehensive coverage of all school transitions over the three-year life of the service. The first phase of research in 2023 is focusing on services supporting the transition from primary to secondary for SEND pupils. The focus of future phases will be announced soon.
We are planning to meet directly with service and education providers about their transitions support offering. We will follow this up with more detailed enquiries after we have the results of the surveys.
The Authentic Voices Of Disabled Young People
BuDS is a disabled peoples’ organisation, and one of our primary aims is always to facilitate and amplify the voices of disabled people themselves. The Education Workstream of the SEND Transitions Service will be engaging with disabled children and young people directly to discover and record their experiences of educational transitions. We will also be engaging with parents and carers to gather their opinions on the support available to their children and/or young people during educational transition periods, as well as producing case studies and data from their personal experiences during this time. The views of disabled children and young people themselves and their parents/carers must be the key evidence base which drives change. It is only through truly listening that we can hope to address the barriers disabled children and young people face.
Surveys
The Education Workstream of the SEND Transitions Service will be launching three confidential surveys in September 2023:
- Asking children and young people with SEND about their experiences when transitioning to secondary school and about any specific worries or barriers they faced before starting school and during their first day. We are also asking for their personal opinions on any additional support they would have liked during that time.
- Asking parents and carers of children and young people with SEND about the extent of support and information they received during their child’s educational transition and whether they were satisfied with it. We also wanted to inquire as to whether they contacted any external services for advice and support (SENDIAS, IPSEA, BuDS, etc.) regarding their child’s educational transition. Lastly, we wanted to gather information considering worries and concerns that children and young people with SEND have before and after their educational transition journey by asking parents and carers about their experiences.
- Lastly, we wanted to design a survey that could be sent to SEND departments of secondary schools in Buckinghamshire of varying types (special provision, mainstream, PRU etc.). This is intended to gather data regarding the transition support available amongst secondary schools, and to pinpoint gaps and trends. This includes identifying who qualifies for this transition support, if staff feel that it is effective enough and whether they feel sufficiently informed of each SEND student’s needs during the educational transition.
Once the surveys have closed, we will review all of the survey feedback to identify common issues. This analysis will be published, but protecting the identity of survey respondents.
Recommendations & Findings
Work is still underway on the first phase of research and surveys – the full recommendations and findings will be published in Winter 2023.
Funding
The BuDS SEND Transitions Service is kindly funded by the Rothschild Foundation.