Changes to the way we handle incoming enquiries for the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Statutory Team have led to more calls being answered, more quickly.
Changes to the way we handle incoming enquiries for the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Statutory Team have led to more calls being answered, more quickly.
In April, we introduced a new way of managing dedicated phone lines for the SEN Statutory Team, with calls being answered instead by our Customer Service Centre, enabling the SEN team to focus on casework
It meant that we were able to open dedicated lines from 9am to 5pm each weekday.
After the first month, we’ve seen that calls are being answered more quickly, with wait times reduced and far fewer calls being missed.
We want to know what parents think of the change, so from 24 June, we will be sending a text (SMS) to people after they’ve called, inviting them to provide feedback.
We’ve now also introduced a new system for staff to support the change, that will bring together into one place all communication between the service and a parent for example, relating to an EHCP request.
From Monday 1 July, the SEN Statutory Team will start using the new system.
Email messages between the SEN Statutory Team and parents and carers will come through this new system, and will look a bit different.
Email messages to parents will no longer be sent from team members’ individual email mailboxes. They’ll appear as coming from ‘Special Education Communications – Mailbox‘, with the name of the case officer who is sending the message, in the email.
When replying to the email, we ask parents and carers to reply to that email – through the system, rather than emailing the case officer directly, otherwise the system won’t have a record of all the messages.
To initiate a completely new email about a case, we ask parents and carers to send emails to a new mailbox, (educate.specialeducationcommunications-mailbox@devon.gov.uk). The SEN team will be monitoring that mailbox and will add the new contact to the system before responding.
By corresponding through the system, rather than between team members’ individual mailboxes, we want to ensure that no messages from parents and carers are missed due to staff illness or other factors.
There’ll be no changes regarding use of Egress following this change, but we are investigating ways to make it easier in future.
We’ll monitor the new system to make sure that it is working well, for parents and carers as well as ourselves.
Police urge drivers to take care with yellow warning for ice issued
Devon losing out on at least £25m of public health funding
School Closures
