We want to improve the services we provide to better meet the needs of children and young people who have conditions that affect their brain or neurological system.

To achieve this we want to involve families, carers as well as young people themselves to work with us and the other key health organisation in the city who are part of this transformation work.

The CCG, Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield City Council, Parent Carer Forum are undertaking this work with crucial input from Healthwatch and Education.

You can be part of this programme by attending workshops and giving us your views as well as letting us know what you think of our plans.

What do we mean by neurodevelopmental services?

These meet the needs of children and young people who have conditions that affect the functioning of the neurological system and brain. They can have difficulties with language, speech, communication, motor skills, behaviour, memory, learning and other neurological functions.

Examples of neurodevelopmental conditions include:

• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Communication, speech and language disorders
• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

We are currently focusing on autism, however in time we will broaden it out into other areas.

You may be thinking why this is a priority for us in Sheffield. We have identified a range of challenges with autism in Sheffield which we knew about before COVID-19 started. The impact of COVID-19 has made those challenges worse. 

The aims of our transforming programme are explained here:

 

 

We are really keen to involve people in our programme in three ways:

1. To help us make sure we are focusing on the right challenges through workshops
2. To help us with more focused work within our programme
3. To help us understand the needs in specific communities in Sheffield and make sure we address those needs.

We have had one workshop so far in March and we plan to have more over the next 8 months and we want to make sure we share the information from our workshops. We will share workshop materials here.

The first workshop took place on the 23^rd March. The main aims of the workshop were to learn about the programme so far and about each task what they have been doing and input into what we do next. 

Click here to see the presentation that gives an overview of the overall programme.

This second presentation contains slides describing each area of work, what has been done so far in those areas, and the questions and feedback on what we should do next.

 

Second workshop on 2 July 2021 

On behalf of all our partners in Sheffield, many thanks for your contributions to the neurodevelopmental workshop we held on Tuesday 2 July 2021. The experiences you shared will help inform the future direction of our projects. You can download the presentation from that workshop here.

Your thoughts on the parent/carer survey we are developing were invaluable. We will be adding the new questions you suggested and changing the wording and ordering of the questions. Once we have done this we will send it to a small group of parents/carers to test it out and, if necessary, make further amendments. You can read the comments and ideas that came from this session here.

The session on when, and how do we start conversations with parents about very early developmental vulnerabilities was equally insightful. Please see all the ideas from that session here.

 

Third workshop 9 November 2021

This workshop’s main theme was to share and analyse the  results from the parent carer questionnaire we opened to Sheffield’s residents on neurodevelopmental needs in October/November 2021 We had over 690 responses, and parents carers and staff attending the workshop, analysed the results to help pin point the key themes from the rich information we received.

Click here for the presentation which opened up the workshop, which contains the results of the questionnaire at that point. We also asked workshop attendees which 3 questions would they want to see the most positive improvement in responses when we repeat the survey at the end of this year. The results can also be found in the presentation.

Below is the Jamboard which was used on the day to capture everyone’s discussions.

https://jamboard.google.com/d/15XktAqID_fzbvtxiAdDUk_zmPG5EUqQszD8sCL9-GS8/viewer?f=0

 

Mini Fourth Workshop 7 December 2021

This mini workshop was for parents and carers and staff who volunteered to analyse further responses to the Parent Carer Survey which weren’t covered in the November workshop.

Click here for the presentation which opened up the workshop.

Below is the Jamboard which was used on the day to capture everyone’s discussions.

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1rNfWkx9cSd_jzTZtgj4TK3k1Tydb-XpNGQ2-WWbehNw/viewer?f=0