About SENFSG

The Special Educational Needs Family Support Group was established in 1990 as an independent advice and support network for families, carers and young people. A registered charity 1055954, SEN works in an open accountable education system that supports all children, and promotes the active involvement of parents, carers and young people. The charity not only aims to provide the information support and quality advice that parents need to support their child / family but also to run a family centre where both young and old can gain access to their valuable services. At the centre you will find child and adolescent friendly counseling room with access to adequate equipment, a training room and resource library.

In 2004 The Special Educational Needs Family Support Group advised and supported 762 parents of children with special educational needs to get an appropriate education for their children. This number in 2006 has risen to well over 1000. We hope to improve on this figure for 2007.

Our services and projects are based on needs identified by young people, parents carers and by data collated by local authorities. All of our work is evaluated by our service users and the results of these evaluations are then used to improve the quality of our services and to develop new services and projects.

The Special Educational Needs Family Support Group has traditionally provided one to one support to parents through our telephone help line and through meetings with parents/ carers and their children. Where possible we provide advice, accompany parents to meetings at schools, with local authority staff, health workers and work hand in hand with the Parent Partnership Service. Last year the number of families that received this commitment from ourselves reached over 1,000.

At our family centre we also provide counselling for all ages, stretching from infant to grandparent.