Service feedback

Online survey

We appreciate your comments and feedback, good and bad, and welcome parents, carers and young people who have an interest in what we do to help shape our service.

Complete online survey

Complaints

We strive to give you the best possible service, if you have a comment or complaint you can put this in an email to: [email protected] – marking for the attention of the Service Lead.

Latest service feedback

Sample of positive comments received:

I feel clear what to do next which is good, I have a few steps I can take and I know I can come back to you if I have any questions, thank you

Thank you for your call – I feel clearer now with the questions I need to ask the school today.

Thanks for calling after the meeting, I felt able to share what I thought today which was really good.

this has been really helpful, thank you for your time and advice

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, it was really helpful. Thank you for sending all of this over it’s really helpful and has put my mind at ease.

Its reassuring to go through my next steps. I didn’t think I would get a response so quickly and I feel that with the information you have given, we will get a more positive outcome, thank you.

I think I know what I want to do next having spoken to you, thank you for this its been so helpful

I feel so much more positive after speaking with you, thank you – I feel like there are some new ideas to try which is really good

Many thanks and thank you so much for your support and help!

Thank you so much, this has been really valuable information. I thought I only had one option but after discussing this with you I feel like I have more.

This is incredibly helpful I feel like everything is much clearer now, thank you so much

Thank you for calling me – that’s very helpful information because I had no clue about what happens next or what I should be doing.

Thank you for talking to me, there is so much to it all and it is really hard to understand sometimes, this has made it feel easier.

Having someone to speak to is so helpful, it can be overwhelming knowing which way to turn but this has been great, I am so grateful.

You’ve been amazing, You’ve given me so many ideas to talk to the school about, more in our conversation than I feel like I’ve had in the last two years. Thank you so much.

You’ve helped me understand how this part of the process works and what my options now are. Thanks a lot.

I hadn’t heard about you before and really wish I’d known sooner. Thank you for letting me go through it with you,

Thank you it’s a minefield and you have helped to put it all together.

Thank you so much for your call and thank you for not judging me.
Service feedback, January 2025

Training feedback

I will be using this a lot. My child is ASD and struggles with seeing others points of view.

The session was really useful – it reinforces other ways of doing things. It is really helpful to hear the questions from other parents too. This really helps him at school. These sessions really empower parents.

Was very informative and will definitely use this at home and in our setting. Thank you.

thank you, I am here as a parent but as a professional I think this would be great for us to share with families we work with.

I have found this really helpful and will use it at home with my ASD children and go forward and use it in my professional role. Thank you

Thank you, great advice and this session has been brilliant 🙂

thank you, a super session and at a great pace too – thank you

Excellent session very clear and would be great if this can be repeated.

This was an excellent session

Thank you. I will definitely be using this.

We use this technique and its been very successful.

Thank you, a really helpful session and some food for thought as a parent with an autistic child who shuts down and becomes non-verbal. This can be really helpful. I have used this in schools before but had forgotten about colour coding, and would work well with my child.
Training feedback, January 2025

Your views, we’re listening…

In response to our feedback survey question: ‘Do you have any suggestions about how we can develop and improve our service?’

We regularly review comments received to this question and follow up any concerns flagged (where we have contact details).

January 2025

‘I had use sendiass before and had fantastic advice and help with our son some yrs back . This time was was a while different experience, had to talk to someone other than leaving a message a call back several days later with very little advice/ help . Felt very let down not sure I would use again, what has happened to a service that was absolutely brilliant.’

‘Answer the question I asked and help me deal with the phone problem, being a parent your views get overlooked and not taken seriously, people like you can influence but you don’t really get involved just give advice.’

‘Personalised responses, speaking to a human rather than just generic advice, helping families feel valued and supported.’

‘Phone service so it’s easier to explain why U are looking for.’

SENDIASS response – Thank-you for sharing your experiences and ideas for ways we can improve the service. We want to provide families with high quality, information and advice.

We try to tailor our responses for more specific enquiries, though we will often include general information (about the processes around SEN Support and EHC plans, for example). We respond to enquiries via the method originally used to contact us (or as specified by the enquirer on our web contact form). We acknowledge emails can feel less personal. Many parents find it helpful to talk things through with us and we will often suggest this option in an email response.

Our service aims to empower people to understand and take part in discussions and we would only be directly involved when the person using the service has let us know they have support needs of their own (and are therefore unable to independently navigate SEND processes or communicate with school/the local authority).

We’re sorry we fell short of your expectations on this occasion. We hope very much you give us another opportunity and encourage you to let us know about any specific additional needs should you use the service again – so that we can provide you with the right level of support.

November 2024

‘Not at all. Could not improve, amazing service.’

SENDIASS response – Thank-you for your kind comments.

October 2024

‘I understand that the service may be busy but to employ more advisors… sometimes families are in mental health crisis like myself dealing with the issues with the SEN educational system in Suffolk. I feel that to also have a coding on prioritising needs and considering when someone needs more support quicker than someone else. Maybe a green amber and red with red being crisis and very distressed. I had to wait 4 days for a call back and in that moment of need I was in a very bad way and emotional and stressed when you don’t receive an answer on a call.‘

SENDIASS response – Thank-you for your helpful feedback. We are currently reviewing our processes and exploring digital technologies which might help us to manage enquiries efficiently and focus resource where it is needed.

August 2024

‘Improve on communication and time scales for things to happen.’

SENDIASS response – We are aware that the delay in responding to enquiries can be frustrating. We aim to meet our published response times (within 5 working days). Due to high demand, we sometimes exceed this and we have been working on ways we might build capacity.

We followed this up with the parent – thank-you for sharing your experience of using our service, this will help us to work out where we can improve.

July 2024

‘Contact parents by telephone if they requested that rather than just sending an email of info that isn’t personal and doesn’t particularly give specific support. It was the first time I had contacted you, I was desperate for advice. However I waited over a week to hear back then just received a email of information that was very vague and didn’t address my concern.’ (anonymised – unable to follow up)

SENDIASS response – We aim to provide a high quality, personalised response to queries, via either the method originally used to contact us or the method specified by the enquirer on our web contact form. The nature of some enquiries about specific processes means that the email response can feel less individual. If you might be willing to contact us with your name, we can check back to our record of the enquiry and respond to you.

April 2024

‘I appreciate your knowledge and support so much. It just takes a long time. I couldn’t get through on the phone and no one responded to my voicemail. Emails take a long time to get a response, although it is clear that this will be the case from the auto reply. So… thank you for your help, but the main improvement, as I am sure you are aware, is to have more of you.’

‘I had to wait a week for someone to ring me back which I wasn’t expecting and it meant we didn’t have the answers to our questions when we had a caf meeting.’

‘As with anything SEN related, more resource, and by that I mean more people employed to offer the expert support you provide.‘

‘…advice has been instrumental in helping us win our appeal! Only thing I will say is it’s not always the easiest to get through on the phone but XX has always called me back as soon as she can. Thank you!’

SENDIASS response – Thank-you for sharing your experiences and ideas for ways we can improve the service. During March and into April our response times were much longer than we would like, up to 6 working days. We are aware of this concern, and we are working out ways we might build capacity within the service to manage the high demand.

March 2024

‘I feel with the number of children in the system it needs an overhaul with more resources and to cut wait times. Not directed at yourselves as I said xx was extremely helpful once I got to talk to her.’

‘More face to face workshops for parents in Saxmundham and Leiston area would be beneficial to parents of child with SEN needs.’

‘Online live chat feature that could help answer small questions.’

SENDIASS response – We are very grateful for the helpful suggestions for ways we can improve and will consider these when planning next steps for our service.

We are already exploring online chat options to improve accessibility to our information and advice, and working out ways we might build capacity within the service to manage the high demand.

We re-introduced face-to-face training sessions after Covid and were surprised to find there was very little interest from families (we had an average of 3 people attend our sessions around the county which wasn’t sustainable). We therefore made the decision to offer training predominately online with the option of offering a face-to-face session on request. The positive feedback we receive from families suggests this works best for the majority. However, if you know of a group of parents and carers who would like a face-to-face session, please encourage them to contact us so that we can agree a venue, day and time which suits the group. Email: [email protected]