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:

‘Thanks so much for this, you have answered every question I had, its been super helpful.’

‘Thanks so much for explaining it, its much clearer.’

‘This has been great, thank you I just needed to talk it over because there were lots of ideas put out there and it was confusing, I really appreciate the help to clear things up.’

‘Thank you for letting me know what my options are. Your advice has been very helpful.’

‘I now know my next steps which is sometimes the hardest thing to figure out, thank you for calling.’

‘Thank you for your support with these families. You have a gift with people…..’

‘Thanks so much for going through this, listening to me and helping me understand.’

‘I will take all the help I can get and am so grateful for this, thank you so much.’

‘I really appreciate having the chance to ask my questions, its always after I speak to someone that things come up so this is really helpful.’

‘Thank you very much for coming along to the meeting. I felt they listened to what I was saying because you were there.’

‘Thank you for calling me…I don’t know who else to turn to to give me support.’

‘Thank you – you have made everything much clearer in my head now.’

‘I’ve not had the chance to ask any of these questions, so thank you so much for listening and going through them with me.’

‘Thanks so much, I’m so grateful for some support, its been a really difficult time.’

‘Thank you so much….I usually leave feeling very frustrated because they don’t listen to me. That was the most productive meeting I have ever had.’

‘I’ve felt really overwhelmed and that I can’t ask anyone these questions, thank you so much for talking to me about it.’

‘Thank you so much for your time today, I have found this really helpful and feel much much better about what my options are.’

‘This is brilliant, thank you so much, this is what I need to prepare for my meeting.’

‘I never knew support like this existed until I spoke with the paediatrician and she gave me your details. Apart from my Health Visitor this is the most information and advice I have been given about my child’s Autism and ADHD so thank you very much again.’

‘Thank you, all of this is so helpful. What a wonderful service you provide!’

‘Thanks for your time, I really appreciate this, its made it feel much less complicated.’

‘Thank you so much. You have given me options that I would not have considered.’

‘Thank you so much for your call. Thank you for listening to me and for understanding my situation. That’s all I have ever wanted.’

‘Its really good to speak to someone who isn’t in the school and is more neutral.’

‘I honestly can’t tell you what a massive relief it’s been to speak to you today. Thank you so much. I have been so stressed.’

‘It feels like such a minefield, you have been so helpful talking me through it, I’m so grateful.’

‘thank you so much for your call especially so close to Christmas – i feel much more reassured now.’

Service feedback, December 2024

Training feedback

‘Thank you so much. I’ve just emailed the school to discuss options.’

‘Thank you its been helpful. I will take some of the ideas away to share with families I work with (I’m a health visitor).’

‘I have already started scribbling over a photocopy (of our EHCP), thank u!’

‘Thank you, good to know about the extra transition support – don’t feel so worried about my son moving up now.’

‘Very clear and helpful, thank you.’

‘I think it has been great, thank you! Not sure I have any questions currently but I will probably have loads when I start creating (a social story).’

‘thank you so much a really useful session – already drafting an email to the school SENCo!!!’

‘Thank you very much for all the useful advice & information – really good presentation and opportunity for discussion.’

‘Thank you, really useful session with lots of helpful info!’

‘Brilliant training, very useful – thank you :)’

‘Really helpful overview thank you, lots covered in a short time.’

‘Thank you. Lots to take in. Very informative and great session.’

‘Thank you theres alot of information given.’

‘Thanks for a very useful session.’

‘Thankyou some good information and ideas.’

‘Thank you! Very useful, It would be great to have a more in depth session on developing emotional regulation skills if possible as seems a very important part in building resilience :)’
Training feedback, November & December 2024

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).

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]