School to School Support Service update

We commission the School to School (S2S) Support Service as part of a range of services we offer to schools and early years settings to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)

The service provides mainstream schools with support from colleagues in specialist schools, to help them better meet the needs of their children.

The current contract was due to come to an end in July and we are currently working with our special schools to look at how we can improve the offer and ensure it is having the greatest impact for our children and young people.

We want to develop a new partnership model that can offer more support to settings over longer periods of time and offer advice and training in a bespoke and flexible way, so more people can receive the support and impact from the service. We plan to pilot this in the first two terms of the next school year, before launching in summer 2025.

In the meantime, we have extended the current S2S contract to March 2025, while we work to develop and pilot the new model.

Changes to the service from September

We are making some changes to the service for September, to ensure S2S resource is targeted where it is most needed:

• The service has always been free for early years settings but, from September, it will also be fully funded for mainstream schools. Mainstream schools previously had to pay £100 for the service.
• Although we are extending the service for the next two terms, no new requests for support will be accepted after 13 December to allow S2S the spring term to provide the support. The new service will be up and running after the spring term, so there won't be any gaps in the support on offer.
• The number of commissioned requests for this two term period is 50 for early years settings and 85 for mainstream schools, this reflects the proportion of referrals usually actioned by the S2S team across this period.

Mainstream settings will continue to benefit from the support of our school and community teams and the extra speech and language support we have developed. We are also developing new ways of working in zones, so that schools can work better together to support children with SEND in their communities.

How to access the service from September

For mainstream schools

• SEND Advisers will deploy S2S resource in a targeted way to support schools around cohorts of high needs children, completing any referrals on individual schools' behalf.

For early years settings

• Early Years Advisers will submit a request following a conversation with the setting. Any setting wishing to discuss a request should contact the Early Years Team by emailing csearlyyearsadviceline@norfolk.gov.uk.

On receiving a request for support, S2S will contact the early years setting or mainstream school as usual to arrange an observation.