.

• Webinar: Understanding home to school/college transport

  Tue 12 Mar 2024

  IPSEA free webinar delivered by a member of their legal team, and will explain:

  • where to find the law and guidance regarding home-to-school transport
  • Who is eligible for home-to-school transport
  • The different entitlement for children and young people of different ages
  • Key points from the latest guidance
  • Where to fins further support and challenge decisions

  Date: Monday 18 March

  Time: 12.30pm to 1.30pm

  Format: Virtual, via Zoom webinar

  Details: https://www.ipsea.org.uk/webinar-understanding-home-to-schoolcollege-transport

• Children's Autism Outreach Team (CAOT) Coffee Morning Dates for 2024

  Fri 15 Dec 2023

  CAOT are running a series of coffee mornings throughout the county to give parents/carers an opportunity to catch up with the team and meet other families.

  

• Free workshops for kinship carers

  Thu 20 Jul 2023

  Sometimes you don’t know where to start in your caring role. Kinship Compass provide free, short online workshops for kinship carers to help you get the information you need.

  https://compass.kinship.org.uk/training-and-events/ 

• School Uniform

  Mon 22 May 2023

  Dear parents and carers

  We are now two thirds of the way through our school year and I would like to take the opportunity to remind you to send your young person to school wearing the correct school uniform.

  School uniform is an important part of our school’s identity; it reinforces who we are as a community and helps allow our students to feel pride in themselves and their school. It sets a standard which supports our expectations of work and behaviour

  The uniform policy is available on the website for further reference, but please see the additional guidance below:

  School uniform is compulsory for everyone. This excludes the wearing of denims, leisurewear, hoodies or items of clothing with bold designs/slogans etc. On the days when your young person has PE they should come to school wearing the correct PE kit for the weather (see website) – this also excludes the wearing of hoodies or items of clothing with bold designs/slogans etc.

  We will be enforcing the school uniform policy and staff will be checking the uniform of all students as they arrive at school. Any students not in the correct uniform will be asked to remove the clothing. If a student refuses to comply with the request a telephone call will be made to their parent/carer inviting them into school to meet with a member of the senior leadership team.

  We look forward to your support in ensuring all students wear our school uniform every day.

  Kind regards

  Tracy Felstead (Headteacher)

• Somerset Speech and Language Therapy

  Fri 03 Mar 2023

  Letter received from Children and Young People's Therapy Service:

  We are writing to inform you of the current status of the Speech Language Therapy provision in the Children and Young People’s Therapy Service. 

   

  At the present time we have a significantly reduced workforce with many vacancies across the county, meaning that our teams are working at below half capacity. This is clearly causing difficulties for the remaining staff to cover existing mainstream caseloads, to fulfil initial assessment and EHCP responsibilities, and to maintain presence in Specialist Education settings.  We would like to reassure you that as a service we are doing our utmost to continue to provide support for the children in your school but would ask that you remain patient with our staff.

   

   As a service we are taking the following steps within specialist provision settings

  • Continuing to see new referrals to identify needs
  • Focussing on Key stage 1 children to underpin our commitment to early intervention
  • Prioritising those children without functional communication and urgent cases where communication systems are not already established
  • Once a communication system is in place, the child’s case will be closed with ongoing advice in place to support their needs.

   

  We would ask that you support your staff to follow the advice on the intervention plans and also to utilise the advice sheets in the Fact Files, please see our website Fact Files - Children and Young People's Therapy Service - Somerset NHS Foundation Trust (somersetft.nhs.uk)

   

  We will be monitoring this situation over the next few months and hope that we can see improvements in staffing levels later this year.  If you have any feedback, or any questions, please email CYPTherapyService@somersetft.nhs.uk  so we can continue to monitor the impact of these vacancies.

   

  Yours faithfully

   

                                     

   

  Ruth Wood                                                      Natasha Smith

  Operational Service Manager                        Operational Service Manager

   

   

  Children and Young People’s Therapy Service

  Somerset Foundation Trust