Cov AmbasSENDors

"Strong Voices Coventry" started off in 2019 as the "SEND Shadow Board" and is made up of a group of young people who attend specialist secondary schools and college settings in Coventry. This includes young people from:

• Baginton Fields
• Corley Centre
• Coventry College
• Hereward College
• Riverbank Academy
• Sherbourne Fields
• Woodfield  

It offers a direct link for children and young people with SEND to contribute into the local "SEND Board" - a meeting that brings together professionals from education, health and social care. 

The group meets together normally 4 times per year - each time in a different location. The "host" organises the meeting, sets the agenda, and provides feedback about what was discussed. This is to try and make sure that it remains the young people in control of the group - the adults are just there to guide and support where needed! 

Past Meetings

March 2025

We once again met Limbrick Wood Centre, with reps from Baginton Fields, Hereward College, RIverbank and Woodfield. We finished off our "Guide to Recruitment" by looking at what we thought the benefits would be of including Children and Young people in the process. This was in three parts;

• benefits for the young people themselves
• benefits to the candidates
• benefits for the setting

The hope is that the guide will help make clear to organisations working with children and young people, that it is important to involve them in the recruitment process.

The guide is available to download and has been sent out to settings across Coventry.

Towards the end of the session, we also considered a couple of concerns that had been raised by the group. One of these was around the changes being made to support for those with disabilities through the benefit system, and another was about long waiting times for some health services. These were raised at the following SEND Board meeting.

November 2024

The meeting was held at Limbrick Wood Centre, a council-owned building, in the west of the city. Unfortunately there were a number of the group unable to make it on the day due to staffing issues, so the group was a lot smaller than usual. As the building was just around the corner, we were able to get a few more students from Woodfield to swell our numbers, and after a short icebreaker to get us moving, we started with an activity centred on how young people can be involved in recruitment. Some of the group had previously been involved in recruiting staff at their schools, but we wanted to be able to see if we could advise all settings on some common ways to include young people - after all, most of the staff that schools/colleges employ are going tobe directly working with us!

We started, in 3 groups,  by drawing a "person" and giving them visual descriptions of qualities that we would want to see in an adult supporting children and young people, for example: big ears to represent good listening skills; a big heart to represent empathy (this word was described to us by one young person from Woodfield) and support.

 

After we'd done our own group discussions, everyone got back together to talk about them - and each group had at least one unique quality to share. 

Following a quick break for the usual drinks and biscuits, we then discussed different ways that children and young people could be involved in recruitment processes in school. This ranged from helping with job descriptions, to active involvement in recruitment panels and observation/engagement activities for candidates. 

The message was clear: "young people are able to ask better questions than adults!"

We put together all of our ideas into a "help sheet" for schools and colleges which they could use to ensure children and young people can be part of the recruitment process and help get the right staff for the job!  

May 2024

Hosting our meeting in the summer term were students from Baginton Fields. Prior to the meeting, they talked with Chris from SENDIASS about some ideas for the meeting. It was decided that there would be two "icebreakers"; the first would be to tell some jokes, with each setting contacted beforehand to prepare. Each setting had at least one student who performed the jokes, and all of them were suitable for the audience!

The second involved each setting making a design based on the name (and connections to) of another. Each setting was asked to outline some key features of the school/college, including any colours, objects or places. Once completed, these were given to the setting to take back to base.

We were also joined by Anne Kelly from the local Sahw Trust/Prospects service, who talked through what they do to support young people as they are getting older. This was followed by a discussion about what young people were worried about as they got older. 

March 2024

After a slightly longer break than usual, the Strong Voices Coventry group were hosted by students from Sherbourne Fields school, and were joined by young people representing the Coventry Youth Activists (CYA). They came along to inform the group about their involvement in a number of initiatives, mainly around their campaign to make sure online spaces are safer places for young disabled people. They had taken part in a number of meetings with both Meta and OFCOM to raise the issue of online disability discrimination, with a view to getting more support in identifying and removing it from these communication platforms. To find out more about the campaign, check out their website at https://www.covactivists.co.uk/ourcampaigns

As CYA are made up of young people slightly older than those in the Strong Voices group, they were also on a recruitment drive to encourage more members; and where better to start than the Strong Voices group!

Our hosts from Sherbourne were keen to start the meeting off with a bit of fun, and had suggested a game of "Heads Up!" where teams nominated one person to guess an object, character or film from the rest of the team's verbal clues. Despite some excellent competition, the Hereward College team scored an impressive 10 in their 90 seconds to carry off a prize of an easter egg, kindly provided by the school. 

We then looked at the rough version of the new Digital Family Hubs offer, which includes the new SEND Local Offer, on some tablets. This was to gain some understanding of how to access the new site. It was felt that the way of getting to information seemed to be quite easy, but that it was difficult to search for information using the search bar as it didn't really come up with the information requested. Most young people agreed that the information contained on the site would be useful, although some of it was not really what they would use it for; the question of finding local activities was still very clearly a priority in responses. 

We also discussed how the new site could be advertised so as many people as possible were aware of it. Some of the suggestions were a little above the potential marketing budget - an advertising campaign on the TV/cinemas being a popular one! - but many felt that they would be happy to talk about it in their own settings. It was agreed that any communications/marketing could be developed by members of the group, alongside anything produced by the main city council.    

October 2023

For our first meeting of the new academic year, the group met in the Council Chamber at Coventry's Council House. The young people were all given the opportunity to bang the gavel in the Council speaker's chair during the course of the morning, and all got to vote "for" or "against" on a series of "motions" - some a bit more silly than others.

The motions were:

• Should we have 4 days per week at school? Agreed
• Should we have a shorter summer holiday? Not Agreed
• I’d rather eat chocolate than ice cream? Agreed
• We should stop using gas and coal to generate electricity? Agreed
• We should make sure that all children and young people are consulted about the support they are getting at school at least once per year? Agreed
• Coventry City should be allowed a one-goal headstart in every game they play? Not agreed
• Cars should not be allowed in the city centre? No majority
• Children under 14 should not be allowed mobile phones? Not agreed

It must be noted that one young person (who shall remain nameless) was very keen on a shorter summer holiday and a LONGER school week (6 days!) The other young people (and the staff from the schools and college supporting them) listened to his point of view, but were not convinced! 

We were also joined by Kam Kaur and Rosie Nailor from the Local Authority's children's joint commissioning team. They were interested in following up some of the young people's thoughts on access to short breaks provision (which we'd discussed in some previous meetings). Unfortunately, none of the young people attending had accessed Coventry's short break provision, so some of the questions were a bit harder to answer. 

As well as identifying the sorts of activities they wanted to take part in, the young people were able to identify some of the barriers to participating. These were:

• transport in getting to and from activities
• No access to accessible toilets at some facilities
• the age ranges which are offered (not available to under 5's and over 17's). 

June 2023

June's Strong Voices meeting took place at Riverbank school. The hosts were well-prepared for the visiting young people, with a welcome committee in the car park and a well attended refreshments bar! The meeting started with a surprise announcement that Ofsted were going to be arriving the following day to carry out a school inspection!*

The students had decided upon an icebreaker in which groups were required to build a "Malteaser" run, in which they would escort a single chocolate Malteaser as far as possible without touching the floor using just paper, scissors and sellotape. It was quite a warm day, so some of the Malteasers did not make it very far and got stuck! However, there was also suspicion that some were being lost in other ways - mainly into people's stomachs. 

The main item on the agenda was to look at whether Coventry was a good place to live for young people with SEND, in line with the Child Friendly Cov campaign. We looked at a number of questions to see what was good about living in Coventry and what might be improved. 

* Some of the young people from Riverbank were asked by the OFSTED inspectors about how they are able to contribute to school life - the inspectors were very impressed that not only were they able to be involved on a school level, but also contributed their voice to subjects across the city too! Go AmbasSENDors! 

March 2023

The March meeting was held at Coventry College, and was principally led by some of the students there (Amy, Dregun and Danny). It was also the last one coordinated by SENDIASS's children and young person's worker Nimmi Johal - we will miss you Nimmi! 

The students decided that the icebreaker would be a crafting game to see who could build the biggest paper chain. This proved to be a real strong challenge and ended up with the students from Riverbank just taking the honours. 

We then started to think about young people's voices and how they could be involved in decisions relating to their support. Everyone was invited to create an "interest flower" with different coloured petals to show what their interests were. This was a creative way of getting this information recorded, and it was felt to be a bit more interesting than answering questions (especially writing them!) 

This was followed by a post-it activity about support that young people received which centred around three questions:

- What support looks like to me?

The main themes of the answers were what young people identified as ways in which support was offered to help them, such as the importance of knowing and building relationships with the people that would be supporting them; being in a comfortable environment (small, quiet areas with simple layouts); and feeling like they were listened to when decisions are being made. 

- What is in-class support like for me?

General themes suggested that the young people felt supported when they had someone that they could talk to about their work, their feelings and being able to do this on a 1:1 basis. It was also felt that having access to a range of subjects was important, and presented in a less formal way - one young person said that they were able to focus better if they had music they could listen to. Some young people also commented that the atmosphere in the classroom - supportive between teachers/assistants and through their own friendships, helped to make a big difference in learning.  

How do you get supported at home or in the community? 

All mentioned that it was important for children and young people to have people to talk to - parents/family, PA support, therapists and friends were examples of who young people felt supported by. There was also several references to young people having some control over what type of support they received e.g "being able to explain to people how you would like things to be". There was also mention of using technology at home to find out what was happening - access to things like the internet, leaflets and libraries were helpful in identifying support in the community.