NHS Report advocating more co-production with children and young people with SEND

A joint report from NHS Health Education England and Council for Disabled Children, of which nasen is a member, has been released looking into the experience of children and young people accessing healthcare services from NHS settings to personal care. 

The report focuses on the need for all NHS services to engage with and learn from the ideas and experiences of children and young people with SEND and how they want the services to respond to their needs. Six focus group sessions, tailored to support the communication preferences of a broad range of children and young people, took place where forty children and young people shared their views. The resulting report highlights ways that services can understand and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, including:

• Taking participation out of traditional settings and into communities.
• Using creative technologies, resources and tools to support participation.
• Working with existing support networks to engage with children and young people who face additional challenges.
• Extending the timeframe of participation projects for some groups of children and young people to help them develop the necessary tools to effectively engage and share their experiences.

At nasen we fully endorse the findings of the report and the detailed Appendix provides a good example of how to better enable children and young people to express their views elements of which could well be used within school settings too.