Searching the West Berkshire Local Offer website

“Jump” to topics further down this document by clicking on the links below:

Introduction: / Website Layout: / Search by Subject:
Quick Tips: / Website breakdown: / View all services:
Feedback: / My Shortlist: / A to Z
WB Local offer flag:

Introduction:

“The Children & Families Act 2014 set out in law that local authorities across England must publish a “Local Offer”, setting out in one place information about provision the local authority expects to be available across education, health and social care for children and young people in their area who have SEN or are disabled, including those who do not have Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. The Children & Families Act 2014 also states that the local offer should not simply be a directory of existing services.

“Its success depends as much upon full engagement with children, young people and their parents as on the information it contains.”

The Local Offer must include the provision described above in the local authority’s area. It must also include provision outside the local area that the local authority expects is likely to be used by children and young people with SEN for whom they are responsible and disabled children and young people. This could, for example, be provision in a further education college in a neighbouring area or support services for children and young people with particular types of SEN that are provided jointly by local authorities. It should include relevant regional and national specialist provision, such as provision for children and young people with low-incidence and more complex SEN.”

The above paragraphs were taken from the Code of Practice for the Children & Families Act 2014, published as guidance for local authorities to use when implementing this Act of parliament.

West Berkshire Council consulted with parents, schools and other agencies when building the Local Offer website and in agreeing what the website would contain and in how the information would be laid out.

West Berkshire joined with the five other Berkshire authorities (Slough Borough, Wokingham Borough Council, Bracknell Forest Council, The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead and Reading Borough Council) in attempting to standardise the software and how we could best share information across unitary boundaries. We settled on Open Objects (the web provider) as the platform we would use as most of the involved local authorities, including West Berkshire, already had a website hosted by them. In our case, it was the Family Information Service (FIS).

Website Layout

The website, like all websites, is built around a series of electronic pages. These pages, or files, will act as “filters” allowing you to see the information that is on them that will be relevant to you without showing you everything we have about SEN.

We have thousands of electronic files that we have “tagged” to the relevant pages so that when you open a page, the information you see is what you are looking for and not something that is not of interest, or relevant to your search.

The term “Tagging” is used to denote that a certain file will be attached to a page when you call it up and will be able to be opened by you.

The website is configured to be searched (interrogated) in four main ways. They are:

  • By the search bar at the top
  • By age range
  • By subject
  • Pressing the “View all services in this Category” button

Search bar:(jump to Local Offer)

The search bar is broken down into three types of search function:

  • Categories
  • Key words
  • Location

By age range:(jump to Local Offer)

The search by age range function is located at the left hand side of the screen on the main page. This function breaks down all the provision on the offer into age ranges. These are:

  • Early years 0 – 4 years
  • Primary 4 – 10 years
  • Secondary11 – 16 years
  • Becoming an adult16 – 25 years

By subject:(jump to Local Offer)

We also have a search by subject bar located toward the mid-centre of the first page and set out in different colours, each colour denoting a subject. They are colour coded to try and differentiate them. Also, these are “umbrella” categories and will encompass everything we, and you, think is relevant to the category – so some things will appear in more than one category. This repetition is deliberate and is so that should make finding something on our site easier; especially if you may not know exactly what you are looking for. The categories are as follows:

  • Care and Support for Families
  • The topics under this section are
  • Children’s Social Care(jump to Local Offer)
  • Adult social care
  • Voluntary organisations
  • Benefits advice
  • Children’s services
  • Childcare, Leisure and Recreation
  • The topics under this section are
  • Preschools(jump to Local Offer)
  • Day nurseries
  • Child minders
  • Sitting services
  • Afterschool / out of school clubs
  • Holiday clubs
  • Holidays
  • Weekend activities
  • Leisure centres
  • Youth clubs
  • Buddying / befriending services
  • West Berks Activity Team
  • Sports & Activities
  • Dingley Early Years Centre
  • Education & Learning
  • The topics under this section are
  • Early years provision(jump to Local Offer)
  • Mainstream schools
  • Special Schools
  • FE colleges
  • Higher Education
  • Education, Health & Care Plans
  • Education other than at school (EOTAS)

Additionally, we have links to our independent support and advice services

  • SEND Information, Advice & support (SENDIASS)
  • ADVIZA – Independent support service
  • Health & Wellbeing
  • The topics under this section are
  • Therapies(jump to Local Offer)
  • Clinical Services
  • Aids & Adaptations
  • Respite services
  • Continuing health care & Health Personal Budgets
  • Adolescent Health Services
  • (Special Educational Needs) SEN Support services
  • The topics under this section are
  • Educational Psychology(jump to Local Offer)
  • Cognition & Learning Team
  • Autism Adviser for families
  • Autism Advisory teachers
  • Pre-School Teacher Counsellor Service
  • Berkshire Sensory Consortium Service
  • Language & Literacy (LAL)
  • Behaviour Support Team
  • Education Welfare Service
  • Ethnic Minority & Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS)
  • ADVIZA – Careers Support
  • SEND Information Advice and Support Service (SENDIASS)
  • ADVIZA – Independent Support Service
  • Becoming an Adult
  • The topics under this section are
  • Further education(jump to Local Offer)
  • Employment
  • Health
  • Independent Living
  • Social Services
  • Leisure
  • Transportation
  • The topics under this section are
  • Travel Training(jump to Local Offer)

The (Top of page) “view all services in this category” (jump to local offer) button

On all the web pages on our site, there is a “View all services in this category” button. This button is usually located on the right-hand side of the screen and toward the top. Pressing this button will give you everything on that page. This is a very useful button once you have filtered through the main categories. Using this button too early in your search will yield a huge amount of results and may be overwhelming.

Quick tips:

  • Searching on the search bar:

All Categories:

Click on the down arrow on the search “All Categories” drop box. There are over 65 different categories here and this list will grow in time when other types of services come into being. Choose the closest category to what you are looking for. The search will return all of the things “tagged”to that particular category

Keywords:

This box allows you to enter words you may want to search for. This will bring up anything we have tagged as a key word and will deliver back the results. This search option will return only exact match results, so it may be frustrating at times if you solely rely on this search function. (e.g. if you search for “colour” and your computer autocorrects to “color”, it will come back with no results to show)

Location:

If you know where you need (or are looking for) a service – e.g. Lambourn or know the post code of a service that you want to use (e.g. RG14 1BZ), you can type in the location and search. This can be a good way to search if you want to know what’s available near you or somewhere you will need a service. This function is dependent on the provider telling us where they are when they fill in our record. Some providers may not have filled in their address so they will not be returned as part of your search. Also, a peripatetic (mobile) service, like a health visitor, may not come up as part of your search, or may come up with their base (RBH, etc.) instead.

Searching by age range

All of the providers on the local offer have been asked to tell us who they are set up to serve. Most providers will do so if this is a primary function of their service (e.g. child minders, day nurseries, etc.). However, it may not be effective if you are looking for universal provider such as a health service as they will either say they are for everyone, or may not fill this in as they are a provision for all ages. Also, if a provider has forgotten to fill in an age range, they will not be returned on a search.

  • Searching by subject

This way of searching is probably the most accurate if you do not know the name of a service or do not know precisely what you want. The search by subject section works like a series of filters. Everything tagged with that subject heading will come up on your search.

  • Searching by the “view all services” button.

The “View all services in this category” will return just that – everything tagged in that category. This is a good “last step” tool which will show you everything in a category. Once you’ve “filtered out” a lot of the results you may not want to see through the search options above, hit the View all services button and the site will show you a list of everything that’s left.

As we’ve mentioned above, this is a great last step to see the results of the search you’ve just done, but if you start with this option, you will get back literally hundreds of results, which will probably prove frustrating.

Feedback:

We have a dedicated feedback page on our local offer. There is a “Give your feedback” button on every page that will direct you to our feedback page. On the page, we have two buttons that will take you to our feedback forms;

  • one is our standard feedback form
  • and the second is an easy readform.

Below this, we will publish all the feedback we receive and the action we’ve taken to rectify any issue, if possible to do so.

In order to maintain people’s anonymity and ensure that people do not feel inhibited by having their feedback published, we will be publishing in a “you said, we did” format.

All feedback will be taken and paraphrased into a statement of what was said by the sender, but all identifying information will be removed – this will be done for all feedback regardless if it is positive, neutral or negative in nature. This will be titled “You said”.

Directly below this, we will put in any action we have taken to put right the issue(s) raised. This will be titled “We did”

Website breakdown:

We have linked in the structure charts for the categories, as we used these to set the structure of the website. If you would like to see how the pages “look”in a flowchart format, please see the links below.

Care and Support for Families

Childcare, Leisure and Recreation

Education & Learning

Health & Wellbeing

SEN Support services(Special Educational Needs)

Becoming an Adult

Transportation

My shortlist:

Using shortlists

As you browse around this website you can build up your own personal shortlist of services and activities to display here. Using shortlists is a bit like using the shopping basket function on online shopping sites. Shortlists provide a good way of collecting together information about services which may be of interest to you. When you are viewing your shortlist, you can display a summary version or a detailed version of the shortlist by selecting the appropriate link. You can also send the shortlist to your printer to get a printed version of your list.

You can add items to your shortlist by clicking the 'Add to shortlist' button displayed alongside each item on your search hit lists or when viewing the details of an item. Items are removed by selecting 'Remove from shortlist' alongside that item.

Your shortlist information is stored in a temporary part of your browser, so if you close down your browser the shortlist will be cleared. You can also clear the shortlist at anytime by going to the shortlist and selecting 'Clear shortlist' from the onscreen options.

A to Z search function:

At the bottom of every page, there is an “A to Z of Services”. This search function will bring up every service that begins with the letter you’ve chosen. In theory, this is a good way to bring up a service if you know what it’s called. However, if you are not sure of the name, this can be misleading. For example, looking for the Berkshire Autistic Society under A for autism, will not give you a hit.

Registration / signing in:

The Sign in and register buttons above are intended for providers of services on the local offer. This allows anyone providing services who are listed on the local offer to easily log in and keep their information up to date.

This is not a function relevant to searching or using the site as a person looking at what is available.

West Berks Local Offer Flag:

Where you see the green West Berkshire Local Offer flag, on the top, right corner of a record in this directory, you will know that the service or provider has submitted information on what they can offer a child or young person who has SEND. This kite-mark means that the service displaying it has answered questions on what they provide, how they provide it, who their “client group” is and other information other services may not have provided. This information is available on their record here and will give you in depth information, which will help you compare two similar services such as schools. This information is mandatory for all schools in West Berkshire.