Sheffield has introduced new travel budgets for families that have children with SEN to aid transport fees in post-16 education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sheffield City Council’s Freedom to Travel, Skills for Life programme will bring in Personal Travel Budgets – PTBs – that aim to empower students to develop essential travel skills which will ‘foster greater independence’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officer Mark Sheikh, Head of Service, Resourcing, and Business Planning, spoke at a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s Education, Children and Families Policy Committee on May 7. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said: “It is preparing them for adulthood and making sure they have the necessary skills ready for when they are going out into the wider world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PTBs will be provided as an extra optional choice for existing post-16 SEN students or Year 11 students currently accessing SEN support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gaynor Stevenson, a parent who was invited by the council to speak, has a 20-year old son Robert who before travel and transport training had never been on public transport on his own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said: “For Robert, if you asked him, it has improved his confidence, its given him a sense of self worth and its enabled him to go to university.\u00a0“<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The council proposed that families will have the flexibility to either opt for PTBs or transport and that Independent Travel Training may also be offered if appropriate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will become the first offer for students not currently accessing SEN travel support, with alternative transport options if necessary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gaynor said: “Its going to open Robert’s life up socially, it going to enable him to have those job opportunities, those further education opportunities that would have been very difficult to access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“This scheme has made a huge difference to his life, its a win for us, its a win for him and its a win for the council.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Transport budgets will include fuel or mileage costs, public transport fares, paying a family member or friend, or any other travel related costs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This programme is expected to equip young people with the ‘confidence, skills and knowledge required to travel independently on public transport, supporting their transition into adulthood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The council have discussed with the South Yorkshire Combined Mayoral Authority – SYMCA – for funding to recruit 12 Travel Training and Assessment Officers for a two-year period, which will enable the council to test how effective the model is at preventing the need for individual travel packages to get to school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sheffield has introduced new travel budgets for families that have children with SEN to aid transport fees in post-16 education. Sheffield City Council’s Freedom to Travel, Skills for Life programme will bring in Personal Travel Budgets – PTBs – that aim to empower students to develop essential travel skills which will ‘foster greater independence’. Officer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":55899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[137,8],"tags":[116,176,917,12,55],"class_list":["post-56801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-council","category-health","tag-council","tag-education","tag-send","tag-sheffield","tag-sheffield-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56801"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56850,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56801\/revisions\/56850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shef-live.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}