How we can help

You can contact York SENDIASS in a number of ways; we aim to respond to all referrals within 5 working days. During busier periods this may be extended to 10 working days.

Information, advice and support (IAS)

At York SENDIASS we offer parents, carers, children, young people and professionals information and advice, that is clear and accurate, to enable you to make choices and informed decisions about what you want to do next.

Every young person that contacts our service is offered additional support to take action and plan their next steps, and in some cases where families agree, we may offer additional support to parent carers too.

By law our information, advice and support (IAS) must be:

  • Free: we will never ask you for money
  • Confidential: we will never share your details outside of York SENDIASS unless we have safeguarding concerns - sometimes we will agree to contact others with your consent if this could be helpful
  • Impartial: we will never take sides and will always use SEN Law to inform our advice to you. You can choose whether to follow our advice or not

We're available to discuss topics relating to education, health and social care where the child or young person is aged between 0 to 25 year and has special educational needs (SEN).

The types of things we might be contacted about include:

  • SEN Support in schools with and without diagnoses
  • barriers to education including attendance concerns
  • Education, Health and Care (EHC) Assessment and planning
  • what to do if you are unhappy with a local authority decision
  • suspensions and exclusions
  • mediation, appeals and tribunals
  • preparing for  meetings

 

Signposting to helpful resources

Sometimes we provide signposting to other helpful resources, which might help you find information which is useful to your situation. We will often mention the York SEND Local Offer and Raise York as places to find information relevant to York.

Our resources include links and videos, as well as details of local and national organisations who can provide further support and advice.