Parents and carers have told us that sometimes they feel frustrated with our communication systems, including occasions when a case officer is absent or is reassigned, and previous communication is stuck in personal email inboxes.
We’ve introduced a new system that brings all communication related to an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) request together in one place, and displays it alongside other case information. From Monday 1 July, our colleagues in our SEND Statutory Team are going to use this instead of their individual email mailboxes for communicating with parents and carers.
For parents and carers there will be one practical change. Our email sender will start appearing as “Special Education Communications – Mailbox”. The case officer’s name will appear elsewhere in the email. Using this mailbox means we can automatically redirect your replies to the new system and add them to the case communication record. The case officer will immediately be alerted and can respond appropriately. It means all communication relating to your EHCP request will be accessible in one place, including to any colleagues providing cover.
We’re asking that parents and carers reply directly to a received email, rather than emailing the case officer directly. Using a case officer’s individual email means the system won’t have a record of all messages. To initiate a completely new email about a case, you should also send emails to the new mailbox, which is educate.specialeducationcommunications-mailbox@devon.gov.uk. The SEN Statutory Team will monitor the mailbox and can manually add your new contact to the system, which will notify the case officer. We’d really like to ensure that in future no communication is locked away in individual email inboxes.
After the change is introduced we’ll monitor how things are working. This will include speaking to parents and to our staff to understand the impact. We’ll update with initial feedback in August.
We’re working on other improvements to our communication. We’re currently user-testing changes to our website content and email templates with parents and carers. We’re also carrying out research to see if we can improve people’s experience with Egress. If you’d like to get involved in our research please register your interest with us and one of the team will be in touch.
Thank you for your help in making our communication better.