Dr John Oates, The Open University

As I discussed in my previous post, the aim of our ‘key working’ project was to identify the different ways of co-ordinating support for families with children or young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and to produce a guidance booklet, primarily for practitioners and managers, to enable them to better meet the requirements of the Children and Families Act 2014.

Although we had been briefed to produce a short guide to developing key working as a printed booklet for wide distribution among local authorities and practitioners, after we had delivered our final product in April 2014, there were several weeks during which we heard nothing about progress.

We enquired about the printing of the booklet and discovered that a decision had been made not to print. This, and the lack of any extensive promotion of the Guide, meant that we were soon thinking of ways to disseminate it ourselves, and started to promote it through national websites of organisations involved with children and young people with SEND. Since the original brief included national publicity, printing and distribution by the Council for Disabled Children (CDC), the Catalyst project had suffered quite a blow in losing a crucial element in the public engagement with the outputs of the research.

It took a while for me to re- orientate and to realise that there was no reason why I could not produce printed copies, using the OU’s excellent printing services, and distribute them from the OU. So, to fill the gap in the project timeline, that is what we are actively engaged in just now.