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:

It’s been really helpful, you have given me ideas of what I can do next, thank you

Thank you – really appreciate you responding to my emails – it helps me to understand a bit better what is happening when the same situation keeps arising and possibly how everyone can navigate it better.

The support you give really is invaluable, its such a hard thing to work out what you need to do next sometimes

Thank you so much for your advice – I was feeling all tangled up with things but now feel like I have a clearer idea of what’s happening.

Thank you, that’s been really helpful I know what my options are.

Your help has made such a difference to us

You’ve been amazing, your advice is going to make such a difference, thank you so very much

People often say there’s no support around, but you’ve been beyond helpful – thank you so much.

You spend time googling but you don’t know what is valid and what is not. I really appreciate talking to someone who knows the system.

This is so helpful – you’ve hit the nail on the head about wanting to understand what is reasonable to expect. You can feel so alone and isolated and it’s so good to have someone at the end of the phone who can talk things through with you and build confidence. I know we have a journey ahead and it’s really useful to know that we can come back to you at any time. Thank you so much – really appreciate your help.

Thank you so much for all your advice – i have learnt more today than i have in the past few years – so good to talk it through with someone

Thank you so much, it feels so much better to be informed about things, you really have made a big difference

This makes more sense now after speaking to you, I know it will get easier and I can come back for support which is great.
Service feedback, May 2025

Training feedback

Thank you for the session, I can use a lot to try help my 7 year old son, who’s being bullied and has lost his confidence and is not his happy self anymore.

thank you this was a brilliant session, I have learnt some coping techniques that I will put into place, that will hopefully over time help my son. I would be interested in any other sessions.

Hi this has been amazing. Thank you. My daughter is 7 and being diagnosed with asd so just trying to gain ideas to help her build resilience so this has been helpful.

This has been really informative, thank you.

Honestly (this session) has been so good and I’m gonna start using the battery idea alongside it which I think will fit nicely.

Thank you for a very helpful session.

Thank you, that’s really helpful. We do practice strategies in and out of school and the comic book conversations sounds interesting.

Would really appreciate more of these (sessions) going forward.

Thank you so much for a helpful session.

Excellent, well presented and slides.

Informative helpful session thank you.

Thank you, that was all thought provoking! I have to run off soon but will have a look at all the links.

This was really, really useful. I’ve done a few of your courses. I knew some of this but really good to confirm and handy to refresh and share ideas.

Thanks so much, this was really helpful.

Training feedback, March 2025

Your views, we’re listening…

June 2025

At our June Advisory Body, Suffolk Parent Carer Forum raised that the impact of our lengthier response times lead to families seeking support elsewhere.

SENDIASS response – We want to thank everyone who has taken the time to give us feedback about our lengthier response times recently. We truly value your honesty and patience with us and appreciate the impact this may have had to individuals, groups, and services.

We’ve made some changes across our team so we can be in the best position to respond more quickly to meet the ongoing needs of families.

Some improvements will be seen immediately, particularly with our response times. It will be a few months before the full positive impact will be felt – while we bring on board and train our new team members.

Thanks so much for your support and understanding.

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).

May 2025

‘I understand you are probably short staffed but the time that you get back to people could be quicker I did wait quite some time to hear back from doing the online form. But I do appreciate your very busy… you guys are amazing and know your stuff! So worth the wait. Thanks again’

SENDIASS response – Thank you for your kind comments. We appreciate your honesty and patience around our current response times. We are aware and are making changes to our ways of working so we can be in the best position to respond more quickly to meet the needs of families.

April 2025

‘To make it easier to access the online system. Codes and portals were complicated.’

SENDIASS response – We believe the person leaving this feedback means the local authority’s EHC portal, as we do not have an online portal for families to use when accessing our service.

‘Would fall on deaf ears.’

SENDIASS response – We’re sorry we fell short of your expectations. We would be pleased to check our records for any quality issues, do get in touch again so we can look up the contact you had with us.

March 2025

‘Super service great advice very helpful to parents as it’s a minefield.’

SENDIASS response – Thank you for your kind comments.

‘I think increasing staff so that getting through to someone on the phone immediately instead of a call back and decreasing the call back waiting time from days/a week to call back the same day.’

‘Just respond alot quicker I have some stuff to send off ASAP for a tribunal I rang over a week ago to help explained the situation said I need a call back ASAP it’s now been 8 days.’

SENDIASS response – Thank you for your honesty here and we appreciate your patience around our current response times. We are aware and are currently making changes to our ways of working so we can be in the best position to meet the needs of families. As well as getting back to people more quickly, we are reviewing and developing quality assurance practice (to ensure we continue to provide accurate and consistent information, advice and support).

February 2025

‘I think it’s great. I can’t do this section of my life alone. Thank you so much.’

SENDIASS response – Thank you for your kind comments.

‘I was disappointed after contacting you. I had already done a lot of reading and looked through your website for advice. You offered to look over my application for an ECH needs assessment, but as this was just to see if I had missed any sections, there was no point. I needed help to look over the content as I felt that I had written War and Peace and was concerned that I had included information that was not relevant.’

‘More isolated and realise that there isn’t any real help but links.’

SENDIASS response – Thank-you for taking the time to complete our survey. Our development plans include a focus around our Quality Assurance including being clear about what people can expect and we hope this will improve the experience of families using our service.

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]