SEND Co-production Toolkit
5. Incorporating co-production
A good way to start with incorporating co-production is to start on a smaller scale with work activities such as annual reviews, that make an impact on children and young people with SEND.
Some practical ideas from SENCos in Buckinghamshire schools for planning and holding annual reviews include:
- encourage the child or young person to help plan their annual review meeting – personalise it as much as possible
- arrange the annual review meeting for a date and time that the child or young person can attend
- ask the child or young person to decide, within reason, which professional should lead the annual review and which professional/s they may not want to be at the meeting
- adapt the annual review meeting as far as possible to meet the wishes and needs of the child or young person.
It is then easier to build up to co-producing bigger activities or projects, for example school information events for parents/carers of children and young people with SEND.
Some ideas on co-producing information events for parents/carers of children and young people with SEND include:
- consider offering virtual meetings as well as face to face
- give as much advance notice as possible to support parents/carers who may need to find childcare
- incorporate additional time to ensure that children and young people with SEND have enough time to participate
- make sure any required communication tools are available for children with a learning disability or communication need to use. These can include talking mats, simplifying language, differentiating the use of questions, using visuals and visual rating scales like the Incredible 5 Point Scale and using practical voting tools like voting tubes.
There is more useful advice from Buckinghamshire SENDCos on working collaboratively with children, young people and their families on Buckinghamshire Council’s SchoolsWeb site.
This video shares tips from some of Buckinghamshire’s children and young people with SEND on how to fully involve them in things that affect their future.
A young person shares below some ways of fully involving children and young people in co-production.
Read the full blog post on the Council for Disabled Children’s website.
Professionals need to hear directly from young people more often! They could make it easier for children and young people to get their voices heard by letting us communicate in a way that is most comfortable for us. I think having information made more accessible and making opportunities to engage in co-production better known would help too.
Feedback is really important too, we want to know how we are (or aren’t) making a difference. It is also key to make sure that young people’s voices are included at every stage of co-production, right from the beginning to the very end.