DIASS provides information, advice and support to parents and carers of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
The information relates to matters around education and ensuring that they also have access to information and advice about a child or young person’s health and social care in relation to education.
The information, advice and support service offered is free, confidential and impartial. It aims to support children, young people and parents by working together with schools and services to achieve positive outcomes.
Contacting DIASS
Parents, carers, children and young people can contact the service initially by:
The service advice line is the first point of contact and is staffed five days a week from 9.30am to 3pm to respond to enquiries, arrangements can be made to contact outside these hours. The aim of the service is to reply to initial enquires within 2 working days. This may be longer when the service is experiencing a high volume of calls and enquiries.
The DIASS service provides telephone or email advice and can provide face to face support and further involvement when it is needed and in discussion and agreement with families.
Referrals
Referrals are encouraged directly from parents, carers, children and young people. We can only take referrals on parents’ behalf with their knowledge and permission. Professionals could support parents or carers to fill in the website contact form.
The DIASS remit does not include advice and guidance to schools and other agencies on, for example, EHCP paperwork and processes. We will signpost to other services such as the SEND locality teams or Early Years SEN helpline.
For further information please see the DIASS website. Alternatively, you can also visit the Derbyshire Information Advice and Support Service for SEND Facebook page.