About SN-IP
What can you expect from our service?
We are the Northamptonshire Parent Partnership Service and, although we are employed by the county council, we are there to provide impartial information and support for parents and carers who have a child or young person with special educational needs.
If you would prefer to have somebody completely independent, we can provide an independent parental supporter for you.
What we offer to help you:
- Express your views about your child’s education
- Help you with paperwork
- Prepare for meetings
- Arrange for someone to attend meetings with you if you wish
- Try to resolve disagreements about your child’s special educational needs
We are available during office hours and have an answer phone for calls received outside office hours.
We aim to return your call within two working days.
We provide telephone advice and information.
We will do our best to put you in touch with support groups and voluntary organisations when appropriate.
You can make an appointment to visit us at our office or ask us to visit you.
When you first contact us, we will ask you for details such as your name, address and your child’s name and date of birth. We will keep these details on a secure database that is only seen by SN-IP staff unless you ask us not to.
We promise that:
- Any information you give is confidential and will not be passed on to other organisations including other sections of Northamptonshire County Council
- The personal contact details we take and any notes made during our involvement with you will only be seen by your parental supporter or another member of SN-IP staff
- We will only contact other people on your behalf when you have given your consent
- We will only have access to any information about your child or family if you ask us to
- We will return any documents when you ask us to
- We will contact you if we have not heard from you for six months to check whether you need further help. Although we would like to keep in touch with you even when you no longer need our service, we do not have the capacity to do this
- You can contact us again if you need further help at any time
It would help us if you:
- Contact us when you need help
- Keep us informed about matters relating to the situation you have asked us to help you with
- Sign the Family Agreement Form or telephone the local Children and Young People’s base to give permission for us to have copies of paperwork sent to us.
- Tell your child’s school if you would like us to attend a meeting with you
- Let us know if you cannot keep an appointment we have arranged
- Complete a short evaluation of our support when you let us know you no longer need our help.
We hope that you will find that we provide a high quality information and support service but if you have a complaint about our service please tell us about it.
What to do if you have a complaint about our service
Please discuss it with the Area Parent Partnership Officer or the Principal Parent Partnership Officer who will do all they can to help you (see our Contact page).The Principal Parent Partnership Officer is based at our Northampton office.
If you are not satisfied, you can take your complaint to :
Head of Children‘s Services
John Dryden House
8-10 The Lakes
Northampton
NN4 7DF
