We have a volunteer project that we would love to have some support with.
The PDA Society’s training and support makes a huge difference to the people who access it. So far, everyone who has accessed our training has found us because they happened upon our website or social media, or because one of our trainers or supporters put us in touch with them directly. While this has worked well, we believe that many more schools, local authorities and commissioners should know that our charity exists and understand the support we offer — so that more families, teachers and professionals can benefit.
To help us widen our reach, we are building an email contact list of professionals / training leads who may benefit from hearing about our training and support. at the following types of organisations. Most of what we are looking for can be found out by simple internet searches:
- Child disability teams – you should be able to get an email contact for this team in the county you are researching for us. If you wish, you could email them or telephone them to find out who co-ordinates training for the team, but if you would feel uncomfortable to do this then a contact address for the team is fine.
- Foster and adoption agencies – there will be at least one adoption agency in each county (some will have more). The fostering team might be a different team or part of the same team. If you could find out the name of the agency and also the contact email address that would be great.
- SEND leads in LA - most local authorities will have a lead person/coordinator for autism and/or SEND support. This might be found by searching for autism support and then the name of the county, or it might need a telephone call to the council to ask for the name of the person.
- School SENCOs – a list of schools in your LA can be found be found by a simple Google search. Once you have the names of each school, take a look at their website and very often you will see the name of the SENCO underneath the ‘meet our staff’ section (or equivalent). Can you record the name of the SENCO and their email address if it is available. If not then the general email address for the school is fine.
- Alternative provisions – depending on how the LA display these on their website, these might be included on the same web page as schools. However you could search for ‘alternate education provisions’ in your county and record as we have suggested for schools
- Social care providers - we are looking for the name or any residential homes/respite centres (for children and adults with disabilities) A list of what is available within the county together with contact email address
If you think you could help with this research, we would love your support — please email Sasha (sasha.butler@pdasociety.org.uk) and we can help get you started.