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Our partnership projects

Sheffield Clinical Commissioning Group and Sheffield City Council have worked with Sheffield’s Parent Carer Forum to co-produce a citywide strategy that sets out our commitments to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The five overarching commitments made in the strategy are:

To achieve this vision we are making five commitments:

  • Assessment - Effective early identification of needs with appropriate assessments across Education, Health and Care
  • Provision - A wide range of Education, Health and Care services and opportunities that meet the needs of our young people
  • Transition - Smooth transition across Education, Health and Care at every stage of a young person’s life, and particularly to adult life
  • Communication - Excellent communication and engagement between young people, families, Education, Health and Care services including schools
  • Workforce -  Skilled leader and staff capabilities to deliver the services across Education, Health and Care

Here are some of our key projects at for the CCG team to support the strategy commitments:

  • HNIE – (Workforce, Assessment and Provision)
  • Autism in Schools – (Workforce and Provision)
  • Neurodevelopment Programme (Assessment, Provision, Communication, Workforce)
Neurodevelopment Programme 
What initiated this programme?

Neurodevelopment services were a decided focus for improvement and an area of priority for the city by the Sheffield Children’s Health and Wellbeing Board.

Key reasons for this focus included:

  • Feedback from families/carers that changes were needed to improve help and support for their children with neurodevelopmental conditions
  • Waiting list for autism had increased due to COVID (was coming down pre COVID)
  • Increase in demand and complexity
  • Meaning - For CYP, Detrimental impact on school and home life – now and longer term
  • Neurodevelopmental services were highlighted both pre and since COVID as an area for priority by the city
  • Heightened need to support children and parents when experiencing a neurodevelopmental need with the reopening of schools in September 2020 after a long-term closure due to Covid-19
Programme development

There are  five workstreams within the programme:

  1. Right identification at the earliest time: ensuring children’s vulnerabilities and needs are picked up and supported as early as possible. We want to support frontline health, care, and educational staff to have the right skills and knowledge in order to successfully support families through informed conversations and signposting confidently.
  2. Right support, right time: putting in place the right support for families based on need, not a diagnosis.
  3. Integrated care in the community: bringing together professionals from education, health (physical and mental), and care to assess and address the needs of children and young people closer to home e.g., schools.
  4. Improving the assessment pathway: co-developing better referral, assessment, and diagnosis pathways for neurodevelopmental conditions to better meet family needs, including improved booking processes and the development of a Sheffield Children’s Single Point of Access (SPA).
  5. Improve support to Neuro-diverse children and young people (CYP)  in Schools:working in 10 mainstream secondary schools across Sheffield to improve the response to the needs of neuro-diverse CYP  by developing forums for parents and CYP to receive peer support and by providing co-developed training and resources on sensory, emotional wellbeing and communication areas.