The Early Years SEND (EYSEND) Partnership commissioned researchers at the University of Nottingham Trent to carry out an evaluation of the strategic support provided by Partners to local areas, a key strand of the programme. An overview of the findings:
- The EYSEND Partnership offer strengthened multi-agency working and relationships between practitioners and parent/carers.
- Multi-agency working associated with the family hubs enabled knowledge transfer, facilitated tailored provision, and promoted a shared understanding of provision.
- Engaging with the EYSEND offer gave a participant “an increased rationale” for changes that they wanted to make and attributed this to the flexibility and the responsiveness of the offer that they had received.
- Participants described how it is difficult to “quantify” impact for parents and families with an acknowledgement that it was sometimes difficult to get actionable feedback from families.
- Focusing on the national level, participants described how they found receiving examples of what had been developed in other regions particularly useful as it gave them concrete examples, provided new ideas that had not previously been considered, and allowed them to reflect on what would work in their area.
- Facilitated conversations offered by an external provider were seen as something that had a positive impact through providing reassurance and validation of their ideas and plans, ultimately enabling practice to be enhanced.