Central Bedfordshire Case Study

About Central Bedfordshire Council

Central Bedfordshire Council is a local authority based in the heart of Bedfordshire. They have over 3,000 members of staff and work to support the development of both internal and external staff workforces across the children and adults care sector. They also work on behalf of neighbouring local authorities to provide safeguarding training.

What They Wanted to Achieve

Safeguarding training is hugely important to Central Bedfordshire Council. Having already worked with us on a course about online abuse, they asked us to support on their next project – a training course about Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND). It was recognised that there was a lack of understanding of the different levels of SEND across the four local authorities and their partner health agencies in Central Bedfordshire, Bedford Borough, Milton Keynes and Luton – as well as with parents who had children or young people with SEND and did not fully understand what support was available to them across the BLMK (Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes) footprint.

Therefore, a training solution was required that was suitable for both employees and parents and provide a consistent level of understanding that supported everyone, whatever their capacity. Overall, they hoped it would result in improvements in the quality of the SEND assessments; satisfaction from the children and parents in regard to the support mechanisms in place, and a coordinated and improved approach that was consistent and well understood.

The Challenges They Faced

To achieve this, there were big challenges facing them. The biggest was ensuring that the training met the needs of everyone – it needed to be thorough and detailed enough for the practitioners whilst also ensuring that it wasn’t too complex for parents. With four local authorities sharing the commitment of the development, and a potential of over 20,000 learners to go through it, this was no easy feat. There were learners of many different roles and from many different establishments, ranging from school and nursery staff to health staff, volunteers and those in the private sector.

This vast range of learners meant that there were lots of different needs and requirements to be met, and these had to be taken into consideration during the development of the training.

How We Helped Them

Our project managers were on hand to offer support from end to end of the project, ensuring that deadlines and objectives were met. We also created, designed and built four modules. First, there was an introductory module where learners are encouraged to self-assess their understanding of the subject before completing the course, and again after completion of the course to capture the average learning gain.

This was followed by three modules that learners could complete in their own time:

1. Context and legal framework
2. Graduated response and person-centred planning
3. Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs)

To ensure that the content was correct and relevant, a steering group was formed with representation of subject matter experts to define the content and review progress as the content was built. When it came to the technical side of the e-learning, we ensured that all modules included a variety of different media such as challenges, quizzes, and animated videos. It was important that the training was recognisable and accessible to all the learners, so we ensured this happened in a variety of ways.

There was the bespoke graphical design that incorporated a combination of the council’s stakeholder colours; the inclusive design elements to ensure that each module was fully accessible, such as screen reader options, alt-text, keyboard-only navigation and transcripts, and, lastly, the relevant and relatable content, such as council-specific documents and references.

Results

Three months after the training went live across the pan Bedfordshire region, feedback was gathered from the learners. This is how they rated the modules:

97% said the e-learning enhanced their knowledge of skills.

93% said they found the e-learning engaging and interactive.

91% rated the overall experience of the online learning as 'good' or 'excellent'

95% would recommend this e-learning to their colleagues

94% said the training met its objectives 'mostly' or 'completely'