Education: Text service offers special needs help
Cathy Wallace
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A text messaging service that provides advice for parents of children with special educational needs has been launched by the Advisory Centre for Education (ACE).
From June, the centre will expand its remit to offer text advice on other education issues, such as exclusions and bullying.
The service, called AskACE, will be funded through the Department for Children, Schools and Families' Parent Know-How programme.
Parents can ask for advice on subjects such as getting extra help for children with special educational needs, disability discrimination, obtaining a statement and exclusion issues.
Project manager Margaret Richardson said the service came off the back of ACE's text message service giving advice on admissions and appeals.
"In June, we are going to broaden the service out even further to deal with all sorts of education issues, such as advice on exclusions," she said.
The service is free for parents and Richardson said the medium of text messages could help to engage people who don't use services such as helplines.
"Often people find they can't get through to helplines, especially single working parents who may not be able to call during opening hours," she said. "With this service, they can text any time and get a reply the next day between 10am and 5pm."
She added: "This is particularly aimed at the kind of people we want to reach, such as single parent families, fathers and ethnic minorities. Quite a lot of these people might be more comfortable with text messages than picking up the phone."
Answers to questions can be up to three text messages long, Richardson said, and ACE can also follow up with information in other ways such as leaflets.
"We will respond to the way people get in touch with us," Richardson said. "If someone uses text speak and abbreviations, we can reply in text speak. Many parents of teenagers are more used to text speak."
The service, including the cost of texts, is free to users. To access the service a message saying "AskACE" should be sent to 68808.
Simon Hepburn, chief executive of ACE, said: "Special educational needs affect around 1.5m children in England. They might need extra help and coping can be very difficult for families."
