18/11/2024
🌈 What is the Rainbow Guide™?
The Rainbow Guide is an easy, simple, go-to guide designed to be given to individuals who care for or parent children with additional needs, help practitioners in the city know what other services available in city are, and offer clarity between services. We acknowledged that there is a knowledge-gap, a lack of awareness around support options and networks for these individuals and felt we could produce something to fulfil this need.
The guides are made to the page quantity required and aren’t capped at any specific amount. They are a5 size good quality guides that are appealing to the eye and easy to read. They are produced by parent carers, for parent carers with the theme promoting support and community throughout.
🌈 What is the Aim of the Rainbow Guide™?
We worked on a simple model, asking other organisations and services to specify what they do and do not do within five bullet points each and how individuals can access their service. By producing the guide, we wanted to be able to stamp out some of the confusion around services, what they do, or more importantly, what they do not do or offer, with a lot of the waiting lists or referrals being from individuals in the wrong place entirely. The guide is distributed to clients/families/individuals via the Sunderland Royal Hospital, South Tyneside Hospital, Family Hubs, and various organisations across the city.
🌈 Where does the information come from?
All information within the Rainbow Guide was curated by the organisations themselves. No information was researched or presumed by us but gathered by the organisations to ensure accuracy. We did not want to add to the miscommunication or confusion in the city, but to ensure we could eradicate some of the issues with misinformation within the city.
In order to keep the guide up to date, we hold a bi-monthly networking group, The Network 4 All. This group was established last year to bring all groups who work with, or within the SEND community, to share information, have the opportunity to create relationships, and to work together. We know that there isn’t a lot of funding in the City of Sunderland, we wanted to be able to connect organisations, to create working relationships, to deter duplication or events conflicting with one another. The Rainbow Guide has each of the attending organisations within the guide, using the Network 4 All as a space to discuss any possible changes and resources, ensuring the guide is consistent and up to date at all times. Choice has full ownership of the guide and takes full responsibility for its future editions.
🌈 How is it produced and what are the costs?
The Rainbow Guide is produced by a small team within Choice and the persons involved in the creation for each specific area. This could be a local Parent Carer Forum, small charity or organisation. We will always contact persons from the local parent carer forum, Local Authority, and local offer team to consult before we move forward.
The design is very specific and should match all the other Rainbow Guides, for this reason CWS undertake the work of designing it, ensuring the information isn’t jargon filled, and easy to read.
The first 500 copies of the guide are FREE and are no cost to the local authority, organisations, or individuals. CWS cover the cost of the first copies to ensure that there is a need for the guide in the area, that it has worked well, and that all future plans for the upkeep of the guide moving forward can be met.
Have any questions?
Email us at contact@choicewellbeingservice.org for more information on how you can be involved!
