Public Sector
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) can significantly impact children and their families. A young person is considered to have SEND if they have a disability or additional learning needs, meaning it’s harder for them to learn than other pupils of the same age or if they require special provisions.
Today, many families are turning to Family Hubs for support and working with teachers and educational specialists to ensure that their children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are given the best possible chance to succeed. For families of children with SEND, additional support is necessary to ensure that children can learn and develop alongside their peers. Schools, families, healthcare providers, and community groups can also provide this support.
Family Hubs are centres across the UK designed to serve as a point of contact and community support for families with children aged 0 to 19 or up to 25 if they have SEND. Some Family Hubs are physical buildings while others are virtual access points, but they all exist to help families needing advice, support, and information.
Family Hubs aim to strengthen families across the country by providing access to resources that support children’s cognitive, social and physical development and prevent family breakdowns by providing relationship support to struggling couples and aid to families where parenting is particularly difficult.
The services offered by Family Hubs centres throughout the UK are open to all families with children. While some families may never require the services of Family Hubs centres, for those who do require them, these services can be life-changing.
All of these services are particularly important for families of children with Special Educational Needs and Disability. Not only do children with SEND often require additional support to keep up with their peers in educational settings, but they also create additional challenges for their families and caregivers, which can exacerbate difficulties within the relationship between two parents, whether they are together or separated.
In part, the need for Family Hubs arises from the growing number of children and young people in the UK who require specialist care and the lack of provision for this care in mainstream schools and settings. In the last five years, the number of children and young people in specialist schools and colleges has increased by almost a third in England alone.
The primary focus of Family Hubs is to support families with disadvantaged and vulnerable children, one of the largest groups of which are children with Special Educational Needs and Disability. By using the family services provided in Family Hubs throughout the county, families can ensure that their children have access to the relevant support to aid their development and maximise their chances of staying together as a family.
The purpose of Family Hubs is to provide family support to parents and children across the UK whenever they need it. Family Hubs have been established in 75 local authorities across the country, with the goal of ensuring that access to essential support services is available to all.
Often, this will take the form of signposting to other service providers, which are usually located in the same building as the Family Hub centre. This makes it easier for parents and families to access these services and reduces the risk of families from vulnerable backgrounds, such as those on very low incomes or those who do not speak English as a first language, missing out on support services because of poor signposting.
Family Hub centres provide a wide range of support services to families with children who have Special Educational Needs and Disability, including:
For families of children with SEND, Family Hubs will act as a central location from which they can access guidance and advice on how to care for their children, where to source additional support and resources, and how to manage family relationships and stress during challenging times.
Despite the work done by Family Hubs to make these services accessible to families from all backgrounds, until they’re fully digital, they still favour parents and children who can travel to physical locations outside of their homes. For many families, especially those who may struggle with mobility, money, and mental health, this isn’t always possible.
The Beebot Family Hubs solution is a valuable tool for connecting families with professionals and resources that can help to support their child’s particular needs and support around any disability. At Beebot, we are digitising content and services from Family Hubs to make them accessible to all families across the country.
Our AI solutions make it easy to digitise and consolidate all of the information and support that Family Hubs offer into a single mobile application. Our Beebot Family Hubs solution provides digitised content and signposting to family services within a single mobile app. It connects families with professionals who can offer specialist help to children with Special Educational Needs and Disability and allows families to apply for grants using the app.
