Agenda item

The Commissioning Director, Education (CDE), delivered a presentation which covered the following issues:

·  Local Area SEND Inspections - key questions;

·  Local Area SEND Self Evaluation Form (SEF) and Action Plan;

·  Local Area SEND SEF – Priorities;

·  The SEND Local Area Inspection Framework;

·  Local Area Action Plan;

·  Thematic Review of Alternative Provision (Ofsted, Care Quality Commission and Social Care);

·  Priority Actions; and

·  Inspection Preparation.

In response to questions from the Committee, the CDE and the Head of SEND stated that:

·  The Covid-19 pandemic had exacerbated the challenges within SEND services and the system was now clearly seeing some of the impacts, including an unprecedented level of need;

·  The Council works closely with Health partners to deliver services to children and young people with SEND; however, there were significant challenges both in Health and within the Council, including a large number of vacancies which were very difficult to recruit to, and the Borough had been historically underfunded compared to neighbouring boroughs, which meant that budgets were always lagging behind demand;

·  There were two main approaches the Council and its partners were taking to respond to the challenges in recruitment- the first could be described as ‘growing our own’ where those with an interest and a basic level of experience in providing SEND services would be supported to train and qualify as Education Psychologists to then return and provide services in the Borough, and the second was to recruit to more senior positions and think creatively about how these posts could deliver SEND services more widely;

·  There was more the Council and partners could do to include the voices of a wider range of young people and families when evaluating SEND services, and there were actions being taken around this, for example, the person recruited to the new Family Liaison Post would be tasked with creating groups for young people to join from September this year, which would be used for direct feedback. Furthermore, services were required to complete a SEND Self Evaluation Frameworks, which were working documents and regularly updated as a result of new learnings;

·  It was acknowledged that schools were under pressure; however, much of this pressure related to factors such as the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living. Schools received a level of basic SEND funding and this was topped up depending on their individual SEND need levels, which would be evidenced by audits;

·  The development of a fourth special school in the Borough, being funded by the DfE, was in the pipeline and had been delayed. It was expected that the school would be open in 2025 and have places for 100 pupils, including those with profound learning difficulties;

·  The data used to evaluate the SEND service was taken from various sources, including the SEND needs assessment which considered a range of factors such as travel time to get to particular schools, commissioning of arts provision, and the impacts on the family and the outcomes of services;

·  Informal approaches had been made to boroughs with lower levels of need to consider whether they could trade specialist SEND services with the Council; unfortunately, this was a very difficult market and the Council had been unable to purchase services from other boroughs to date;

·  Mayesbrook School and Five Elms School had some very high-quality SEND provision, and the deaf ARP particularly, had been acknowledged by inspectors as excellent;

·  The Council did use unregistered alternative SEND provision; however, it only did so after undertaking quality assurance checks and if any provision was found to be below standard, it would decommission the provision. It was important to note that sometimes unregistered provision can be more flexible and therefore more tailored to the needs of particular children;

·  It was acknowledged that more robust checks needed to be in place to ensure funding allocated to schools for SEND provision was effectively put towards children with SEND to strengthen the trust and confidence held by both the Council and families in the system; and

·  The Council had put in place arrangements which provided schools with additional funding without the need for an Education, Health and Care Plan, the aim being getting resources to schools as rapidly as possible.