A coalition of social care charities has launched a TripAdvisor-style website, designed to help families with children who have special education needs and disabilities decide which services to pick. 

SENDirect, the brainchild of a nine-strong consortium of charities including Mencap and Scope, allows visitors to search and review services listed on the website by postcode, price range and age suitability. Services available include everything from health and wellbeing, to specialised equipment and even babysitting.

The project has received grants from both the Department of Health and the Department of Education. It did not reveal how much this amounted to.  

Jolanta Lasota, chair of the consortium and chief executive of Ambitious about Autism, said bringing together the various charities made tackling the complexities of the issues they faced easier. She said: “We developed SENDirect in response to families telling us that finding vital local services for any child with additional needs is over-complicated… it was clear to us that trying to work individually to solve this problem was counter-productive.”

Hundreds of families were consulted during the development of the website pilot about the kinds of information they would find useful when researching services for their child.

“We’ve worked with thousands of families, dozens of service providers and ten local authorities to develop SENDirect,” said project director Elizabeth Archer. “We want SENDirect to be full of activities, support and services that families love.”

The website’s launch comes a year after the Children and Families Act was introduced, creating a single education, health and care plan for children with special education needs and disabilities, as well as personal budgets for carers. 

The research behind SENDirect

According to a survey conducted by the consortium in December of 2014, 75 per cent of the 300 families surveyed said it was difficult to find relevant information about services in their area.

Indeed, when it came to finding social activities for their children, more than 80 per cent of families said they had few or no choices available to them locally. Almost one-third of families said they rarely or never found any services that they needed locally at all.

Just over 250 organisations have so far registered for a full membership with SENDirect, and 2,000 have signed up for a free listing.