Skip to main content

Meet the team

{{ root_page.title }}

Meet the team

SENDIASS Officers

When you contact us, your enquiry is likely to be passed on to a SENDIASS Officer. They might call or email you, and sometimes they give support at meetings, mediation or appeals.

SENDIASS Officers are trained to give you accurate, useful and relevant information and advice about special educational needs, as well as supporting you to make decisions about your child’s education.

All SENDIASS Officers have SEND legal training run by the national Information Advice and Support Service. That means they can give you legally based information about your rights and responsibilities and those of schools, colleges, the Local Authority and education professionals.

All SENDIASS Officers also attend regular training on SEND issues and are fully Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checked. This means a check has been done to make sure they can work with vulnerable groups, such as young people.

What do SENDIASS Officers do?

These are the kind of things your SENDIASS Officer can help you with:

  • Understanding legal processes, such as Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessments and plans, and knowing what you need to do and when.
  • Preparing for meetings.
  • Developing a good working relationship with your child’s nursery, school or college.
  • Making decisions, by talking about what all your options are and the pros and cons of each.
  • Knowing how to do practical tasks, such as asking for an EHC needs assessment, checking a draft EHC plan or getting your child referred to a specialist.
  • Understanding how to deal with conflict in relationships with professionals, or move forward when things have gone wrong.
  • Seeing the wood for the trees – we can help you work out what’s important and to decide what to focus on.
  • Feeling understood and listened to.

Meet the team

Dayo Williams

SENDIAS Service Manager

Mandeep Gill

Senior SENDIASS Co-ordinator

AbdiRahman Osman

Senior SENDIASS Co-ordinator

 

The team is headed up by Dayo Williams, SENDIAS Service Manager and supported by Senior Co-ordinators, who provide administrative support and answers the SENDIASS enquiry line, manages the information resources that the service produces, including the website.