The HoSS Forum

The HoSS Forum is moderated by Lindsey Rousseau of NatSIP.

What is the HoSS Forum?
The HoSS (Heads of Sensory Services for Children and Young People) Forum is an e-mail discussion list for Heads of VI, HI and MSI Support Services for Children and Young People, and others with senior management responsibilities in this aspect of specialist work.  Messages posted to the forum, via email, are automatically sent to all members.

The purpose is to share ideas and information. It is not appropriate that every team member of a SI service is a member of the HoSS forum. The Head of Service can circulate the information as required.

The value of the forum lies in the ease and openness with which individual Heads of Service can ask questions about working practice, developments in the field etc. and share information and experience.  The forum should inform strategic planning and development for SI services.  This is something that forum members have generally been good at, and a strong professional group has developed over the years and, in times of ever increasing change and challenge, this is especially important and helpful now.

There are presently about 260 members of the forum and many participate in the discussions.

The forum is not intended to advertise job vacancies or other commercial publicity. Please continue to avoid this.

Members of the forum also need to be aware of the public nature of exchanges and ensure that they are not compromising their organisations when they reply, as replies are sent to the forum list (not the indivdual who sent the original message) by default. .

Who can join the HoSS forum?
Heads of VI, HI and MSI Support Services for Children and Young People, and others with senior management responsibilities in this aspect of specialist work.  Membership applications are reviewed by the moderator before access is granted.

How to join the forum:

Complete the on-line form you can find here.

About the SI Forums

The SI Community Forums were originally provided by BECTA, and then hosted by the DfE, until July 2019, when the DfE finally withdrew their servers.

NatSIP provided an interim solution during extended DfE server downtime during 2018-19 for the HoSS Forum, to keep communication flowing to Heads of SI Services.  In October 2019 NatSIP offered a permanent solution to the wider SI community, with four forums live on the new platform in November 2019, initially supported by DfE through Whole School SEND/nasen.

There are now five forums in the family, with the addition of the Lead QToD (Resource Provisions) Forum in February 2022.

Subscription to any of the five SI Community Forums is free. Colleagues, who meet the eligibility criteria, are encouraged to subscribe to more than one of the five forums.

The SI Community Forums project was founded, created and is powered by NatSIP, which has taken on the running and technical management of the SI Forums Platform.