Please note that between 15th January and 12th February 2025 we are consulting about potential changes to Post-16 SEND home to school travel support. Find out more Post-16 SEND home to school travel consultation | Have Your Say Sheffield
Travel training helps children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) learn how to travel on their own.
Benefits of Travel Training:
The Children's Society, along with Camden Council, have made a video. This will give you an idea what independent travel training is and how it helps.
Our Travel Trainers work one-on-one with children and young people. They give all the support and information needed. The training includes:
"It helped our son become more independent and confident in getting to school and other places. It also gave us the confidence to let him do it.”
You will get a travel plan made just for you. It helps you get to and from school or college using public transport. Your plan is made with a Travel Assessment Training Officer based on your needs.
Steps of the training:
Top-up training is available to support young people when moving school or college.
Travel training is free of charge for children and young people who qualify for travel support.
If you have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), this can be up to 25 years old.
Applications can be made by young people, parents, carers, schools, settings and other professionals. We encourage people to talk about this in EHC Plan reviews.
Find out more from the Travel Assessment and Training Team.
Email: indetravel@sheffield.gov.uk
Phone: 0114 205 3542
A parent’s experience:
“I would absolutely recommend travel training, as someone who has been on the receiving end as a parent, it brought our son’s independence forward and gave him the confidence to be able to navigate to school and also elsewhere as well. And it gave us the confidence to allow this as well.”
Our son, who has Autism, did travel training before starting at secondary school. Our main concern was getting to school safely across a busy traffic junction. He was offered travel training, which happened over the summer holidays before school started.
The trainer did a superb job – they worked with him over a number of sessions that gradually increased his independence. At the end of the training, he got a certificate which said he was safe to travel by himself.
This was reassuring for us as parents as much as for him.
The training helped him to be more independent, firstly to go to school and back and then to do other things like going to the shops to buy milk. Before he did the travel training, we were not confident to allow that.
