Our partnership projects

Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group and Sheffield City Council have worked with Sheffield’s Parent Carer Forum to co-produce a citywide strategy that sets out our commitments to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The five overarching commitments made in the strategy are:

To achieve this vision we are making five commitments:

• Assessment - Effective early identification of needs with appropriate assessments across Education, Health and Care
• Provision - A wide range of Education, Health and Care services and opportunities that meet the needs of our young people
• Transition - Smooth transition across Education, Health and Care at every stage of a young person’s life, and particularly to adult life
• Communication - Excellent communication and engagement between young people, families, Education, Health and Care services including schools
• Workforce -  Skilled leader and staff capabilities to deliver the services across Education, Health and Care

Health Needs in Education

‘Early intervention and successful management of healthcare needs in children and young people are instrumental in their longer-term health and wellbeing.’

Section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a duty on schools to support pupils at their school with medical conditions. This means they must ensure that all children with medical conditions (both physical and mental health) are properly supported in school, they can play a full and active role in school life (including school trips and physical education), remain healthy and achieve their academic potential. 

The Health Needs in Education service aim to invest in early intervention of health care needs, by supporting and empowering education provisions to put in place effective support and monitoring required. This will in turn reduce absence and increase inclusion to help prevent the development of longer-term complex conditions, thus improving outcomes, reducing health inequalities supporting children and young people in education to enable them to achieve their full potential.

We are based in the community, rather than individual services or schools, and work as a team in collaboration with education, health professionals, and other services that work with children and young people to improve health and education outcomes. 

We work in partnership with other services and agencies to:

• Help children and young people with believed, identified and evolving health needs by providing support, information, and signposting to other services. 
• We provide advice and support on a range of physical health issues. Supporting children and young people with health needs such as those in need with long term physical conditions, special educational needs, and disabilities (up to the age of 25 years old).
• Working within local guidelines and following the recommendations of ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ to keep children and young people safe and well. 
• We also support referrals for whole-school intervention.

The service is open to any child or young person who is attending or planning to attend an education provision (0-25 years). They must attend or be planning to attend any education provider based within the Sheffield area. This includes Mainstream, state-funded, private and independent, Nurseries, schools, colleges, post 16 services and alternative provisions. 

The service is an ‘open access’ provision which means that parents/carers and young people can self-refer to our service, as well as a professional from any agency/service can refer a child or young person to the service. The parent/carer and when appropriate the young person must consent to the referral. 

Education provisions may also refer to themselves for the whole provision support.

We offer a range of support for education provision, children, young people and their parents/carers. We use a pathway approach to our support. The pathway starts with self-help and signposting, providing information and strategies to the child/young person, their parents and carer and/or the education provision to help manage health needs safely and effectively within the educational setting.  If additional support is required above and beyond this, we offer an individualised assessment. 

We work as part of a multi-disciplinary team with our health colleagues. On receipt of a referral, if the information provided indicates that the child or young person might need support from another health professional then we might request support from these other services. We will inform you and the young person where appropriate and the parent/carer if we decide this is the most appropriate option.

Please contact us at:

scn-tr.healthinschoolnurses@nhs.net.             

Autism in Schools

Development of Speech and language services

Meeting Speech, Language and Communication Needs across Sheffield 

What initiated this programme?

A review of the specialist Speech and Language Therapy Services was conducted which gathered feedback from children and young people, families, school staff and SALT staff. It soon became apparent that a service review would not enable Sheffield to meet the needs of its population, and a wider, system wide perspective was required as Speech, Language and Communication is so embedded within everyday life. 

Feedback from the review identified challenges associated with:

• Lack of integration of services
• Lack of access to support/information
• Lack of early identification
• Expectations are different to what is available
• There is increasing demand and complexity of need
• Lack or ineffective use of resources across the system
• The impact of covid

Developmental Language Delay was identified as a key area requiring attention in Sheffield and a separate review took place which feeds into the programme below.

Programme development

Sheffield developed a system wide vision for supporting children and young people with their communication needs, as outlined below:

“With the family at the heart, all care, support and education work together with parents to support children’s speech, language and communication needs: from pre-birth through to adulthood; reflecting need now and in the future; across Universal, Targeted and Specialist pathways.”

There are four workstreams within the programme which are working towards achieving Sheffield’s vision:

1. Early identification

This workstream focusses on promoting early language and communication, ensuring families are engaged and supported. The work also aims to identify areas of greatest need and facilitate targeted support.

2. Schools SLCN Framework

This workstream is focussed on improving the universal and targeted offer of support in schools. This centres around ensuring a common framework of support is in place and accessible in all educational settings. The workstream strives to develop communication friendly settings and communication champions. 

3. Post-16 and Transitions

This workstream has recently been set up to address the challenges associated with supporting children and young people post-16 in Sheffield. The workstream hopes to to improve access to Speech, Language and Communication support for 16–25-year-olds in education and employment.

4.     Specialist 

The specialist workstream has been established to ensure that the child/ family receive the right level of input at the right time. The workstream focusses on pathway reviews to develop how we can best support children and young people’s needs. 

SEND Ambassador

While there is engagement and co-production in some areas and in some services, our local NHS systems (known as the ICS for South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw) know we don’t always clearly hear the voices of children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND).   We want to recognise them as leaders/experts in their own health, care and support needs, who know better than anyone what good looks like for them. Therefore, we want to work in partnership to ensure they are visible and well represented at all levels.

The plan is to work with children and young people with SEND to identify how they want to be involved to make our processes, services and organisations can work better for you. This could be on your own or as part of a group, to do a specific piece of work or act as an “ambassador” or “champion” for children’s and young people with SEND to our organisations. You will be supported by a voluntary organisation, such as a charity that works with young people, to make sure you are getting what you want out the projects.

If you are interested in getting involved, or know someone who might be please email: sheccg.childrenscommissioning@nhs.net

Neurodevelopment Programme 

What initiated this programme?

Neurodevelopment services were a decided focus for improvement and an area of priority for the city by the Sheffield Children’s Health and Wellbeing Board.

Key reasons for this focus included:

• Feedback from families/carers that changes were needed to improve help and support for their children with neurodevelopmental conditions
• Waiting list for autism had increased due to COVID (was coming down pre COVID)
• Increase in demand and complexity
• Meaning - For CYP, Detrimental impact on school and home life – now and longer term
• Neurodevelopmental services were highlighted both pre and since COVID as an area for priority by the city
• Heightened need to support children and parents when experiencing a neurodevelopmental need with the reopening of schools in September 2020 after a long-term closure due to Covid-19

Programme development

There are five workstreams within the programme:

1. Right identification at the earliest time: ensuring children’s vulnerabilities and needs are picked up and supported as early as possible. We want to support frontline health, care, and educational staff to have the right skills and knowledge in order to successfully support families through informed conversations and signposting confidently.
2. Right support, right time: putting in place the right support for families based on need, not a diagnosis.
3. Integrated care in the community: bringing together professionals from education, health (physical and mental), and care to assess and address the needs of children and young people closer to home e.g., schools.
4. Improving the assessment pathway: co-developing better referral, assessment, and diagnosis pathways for neurodevelopmental conditions to better meet family needs, including improved booking processes and the development of a Sheffield Children’s Single Point of Access (SPA).
5. Improve support to Neuro-diverse children and young people (CYP)  in Schools:working in 10 mainstream secondary schools across Sheffield to improve the response to the needs of neuro-diverse CYP  by developing forums for parents and CYP to receive peer support and by providing co-developed training and resources on sensory, emotional wellbeing and communication areas.