The Communications and Relationship Standard for Devon County Council’s SEND Operations team is a commitment to open, respectful, and clear communication with every family. Since its launch, the team has been working hard to increase the timeliness and quality of their responses. This is an ongoing process of improvement.
Since May 2026, the SEND Operations team have been using a new digital system which provides a central place to receive, send and store communications about individual children and young people. This new system also means the team are able, for the first time, to provide and scrutinise data related to communications, including timeliness.
In July 2026, there were around 10,000 communications items processed by the team. That includes phone calls as well as emails. The messages are from families and schools about individual children and young people. The numbers do not include when a school responds to a consultation about a placement or issues a report. Of those 10,000 messages, 90 per cent were responded to within five working days.
Families’ feedback continues to tell us that not all those responses are good enough. They are not clear, or do not answer questions asked.
Part of the commitment in the communications and relationship standard is that information will be provided in a form that will be understood. So the team are looking at how to improve the quality of responses as well as the timeliness. How we respond matters, as well as how quickly we respond.
The team are doing this by:
- improving the induction process
- setting development goals around communications,
- including communications as part of supervision and case discussions.
Starting with a conversation
EHCP partners are responsible for managing EHCP assessments and agreed changes to EHCPs through the EHCP review process.
Through these processes they work with children and young people, their families, education settings and professionals to gather information, consider advice, and make sure statutory EHCP processes are completed. They are a critical contact for everyone.
EHCP partners are organised by locality, so they become familiar with the services, schools and support in that part of Devon. For example, an EHCP partner based in the North and Mid Devon team will have relationships with families, schools and services across that area.
Now, when it’s agreed a child or young person should have a statutory assessment, an EHCP partner will make an initial call to talk with the child’s parent-carers. On this call they outline the assessment process and how they will work with the family, school and healthcare providers to complete it. The EHCP partner then follows that up with a short email summary of the conversation and agreed next steps.
Early feedback from families and EHCP Partners suggests this change in approach is supporting the development of positive relationships with families early, providing clear information about a complicated process and reducing frustration when problems do arise.
Have you had recent contact with the SEND Operations team at Devon County Council? If so, you can share your feedback through Devon’s Four Cornerstones survey.