SEND Local Offer information pages

Hierarchical web pages are essential if your SEND Local Offer is going to be comprehensive, without being overwhelming.

People should be able to click through to find the information they need, and easily find their way around.

We give you the page types you need to allow everyone to get to where they need to be.

a full hierarchy, including breadcrumbs
general pages
guide pages
step by steps

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is the order and relationship of one page to another.

You'll have seen breadcrumb trails (yes, just like Hansel and Gretal, we don't want people to get lost).

Home > Education > EHC Plans > Apply for an EHC Plan

Let's look at how you might create this hierarchy for the Education, Health, and Care Plans information.

A hierarchy for Education, Health, and Care Plans

EHC Plans sit in the Education section of the SEND Local Offer. You then decide how to break down the information you need to share.

You can create whatever structure you like. As an example, we've got an EHCP info page, with introductions to

What is an EHCP
Process timeline
Support services
Rights and appeals
Forms and leaflets

Each of those pages link to lower levels, always showing the most important information first. There are different styles of pages you can use in the poppop SEND Local Offer.

a site map of the EHC Plan section of a website, created in octopus

Creating site maps with Octopus.do

We usually use octopus.do to plan a new site. It's a nice way to think about the structure of your content, and you can start planning immediately.

You can see our EHC Plan structure and then make your own copy to think how you would make these pages.

General pages

These are for introductions or general information. They are just simple webpages, where you can add your written content with

headings
paragraphs
lists
images
any content you choose

You can learn more about writing accessible content in our free Readability and the SEND Local Offer course.

screenshot of general information page about EHC Plans

Guide pages

With the pop pop SEND Local Offer, you can create guide pages. These give a permanent "sub-menu" or navigation blocks.

They are used to show related information, all of which might be useful to a parent carer at some time.

It's a great way for people to find information that they don't know exists, or haven't thought of.

Step by Step pages

Where a process is linear, and people have to do things in a particular order, we can use step by steps.

Many EHC Plan teams have created lovely PDFs with roads or other graphics to show this process. But as you know, PDFs aren't accessible to everyone. They are also difficult to update.

With a step by step page, people who use screen readers can access the information, and you can update the information whenever you need.

screenshot of step by step page for EHC Plans