Solihull’s inclusion charter

The draft inclusion charter is now out for sign off to parents groups, schools through collaborative groups, early years settings, local authority, health and social care colleagues. It will be finalised and published in December 2019. Work on Solihull’s SEND strategy will be based on the values of the inclusion charter and will commence in November 2019.

Speech and language strategy

Six schools have just completed the first year of the ELKLAN pilot. This is a joint project delivered by SISS and the speech and language therapy service (SALT) aimed at supporting schools to gain communication friendly status.

A huge well done to the 27 school and SISS ARC support staff who have worked hard to achieve their level 3 award in speech and language support for 5-11 year olds. Five of the six schools are now beginning their level 4 award to become accredited communication friendly schools by the end of this academic year.

In addition, for 2019/20 we are running a pilot with SALT for early years ELKLAN, supporting eight settings to become communication friendly.

The ELKLAN projects are the next phase of delivering Solihull’s speech and language strategy. Language link continues to be used successfully in most schools, with particular successes for the language link training with parents.

Policy work

We are working alongside colleagues form adult services and schools to produce a draft policy for provision of equipment and a corporate manual handling policy. Policies will be finalised by Easter 2020.