Bin collections

Residents who are due to have brown bins emptied on Friday 22 November should leave these out for collection as normal. If we are unable to empty your brown bin, we will attempt to return next week. For more information, visit our Missed bins page.

Derby SEND Advice Line

About the Derby SEND Advice Line

The Derby SEND Advice Line (DSAL) is an early advice service for SENCos, inclusion leaders and other frontline professionals such as GPs and family workers.

It can help you to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND as early as possible.

DSAL supports settings with an early conversation to help guide them through the graduated approach and signpost to next steps and resources to support meeting needs.

The advice line helps professionals to talk through the main worries or difficulties for a child or young person including:

academic development and progress
social and emotional development
transition concerns
social and communication difficulties
behaviour concerns.

You can also contact DSAL if you are thinking about requesting an EHC needs assessment, to talk about your worries and to help you to decide whether a statutory assessment is the most appropriate route to support a child or young person.

Parent and carers should contact SENDIASS for advice.

What DSAL will do

DSAL will give you time to discuss concerns at an individual or whole school level. In most cases they will contact you within 48 hours from when your request is received.

A DSAL advisor will:

signpost you to resources and links to support meeting a child’s needs
direct you to the most appropriate services for a child’s needs
if appropriate, arrange for contact back from an experienced professional such as an educational psychologist or early years specialist teacher
talk through your DIT setting readiness (where appropriate) to look for further opportunities to support you
coordinate a ‘Moving Forwards’ meeting to bring relevant people together to resolve an issue
bring together a 'Team Around the School' planning meeting.

How to get help

DSAL and other Inclusion Services have created lots of resources on the School's Information Portal to help you.

However, if you are concerned about an individual pupil or whole school issues, you can request a call from DSAL. Please consider which staff member knows the child best and would be most suitable to have the discussion with the DSAL Advisor.

Request a call

Alternatively, you can call us directly on 01332 956956 from Monday to Friday between 1pm to 4pm.