Published Thursday 6 June 2019

Alongside the work we’re doing improving the Local Offer online, the customer service team are looking at ways to make it quicker for parents of children or young people with SEND to contact their key workers by telephone. In this blog post, Steve Basta, Customer Service Development Manager, shares the work that’s going into the ‘Contacting Workers’ project.

Currently...

...when a parent of a child or young person with SEND wants to contact their key worker, most will have to go through our contact centre.

They'll need to explain:

  • who they are
  • who they want to speak to
  • what they're calling about.

And after all that, if the worker isn't available, the call might end up in a voicemail message. It's more long-winded than we'd like.

What we're doing

We're working on getting people in direct contact with their key workers.

The project is currently in the initial research phase. The team is gathering parent feedback and holding workshops with the Herts Parent Carer Involvement group (HPCI).

We're asking about typical experiences when contacting key workers and ideas for how we can improve things.

We’ve used what we've learnt to develop an empathy map – a useful tool to illustrate how people feel when contacting their key workers.

Next steps

We will:

  • continue talking to parents and SEND teams
  • share everything we’ve learnt so far with service leads
  • consider options such as automated switchboards and opening up more direct routes to key workers.

 

Guest Blog Steve Basta HCC

 

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