All
Members present are required to declare, at this point in the
meeting or as soon as possible thereafter:
I.Any disclosable pecuniary interests; or
II.Other interests arising under the Code of Conduct in
respect of any item(s) of business being considered at this
meeting.
NOTES:
·Members are reminded that they must not participate
in any item where they have a disclosable pecuniary
interest
·As well as an interest of the Member, this includes
any interest, of which the Member is aware, that relates to the
Member’s spouse or civil partner (or any person with whom the
Member is living as a spouse or civil partner)
·Members with a significant personal interest may
participate in the discussion and vote on that matter unless that
interest could be reasonably regarded as prejudicial.
1.The deadline for Member’s questions is 12.00pm
four working days before the meeting (6 September 2024).
2.The deadline for public questions is seven days
before the meeting (5 September 2024).
3.The deadline for petitions was 14 days before the
meeting, and no petitions have been received.
The
public retain their right to submit questions for written response,
with such answers recorded in the minutes of the meeting;
questioners may participate in meetings to ask a supplementary
question. Petitioners may address the Committee on their petition
for up to three minutes. Guidance will be made available to any
member of the public wishing to speak at a meeting.
There was oneMemberquestion received
fromCllr Davidson aboutthebudget for SEND play provision.Thequestionand answer werepublished as
asupplementary agenda.
To receive the findings and recommendations of
the Additional Needs and Disabilities:
Parent/Carer Experience Task Group, tasked with considering
what changes couldimprove the Council’s support of
parents and carers of Children and Young People with Additional
Needs and Disabilities.
Clare Curran, Cabinet
Member for Children,FamiliesandLifelong
?Learning
RachaelWardell, Executive DirectorforChildren, Families and
?Lifelong Learning
Julia Katherine,
DirectorforEducationandLifelong Learning
Liz Bone, SEND County
Service Planning & Performance Leader
Key
points made in the discussion:
The Chair thanked the
Task Group for an insightful and sobering report. While recognising
that Education Health and Care Plans (EHCP) were an issue
nationally, she said the Task Group’s recommendations
addressed long-standing local issues that were within the
Council’s control.
The Task Group
Chairman said they had been moved by meeting parents, carers and
staff, but despite this they had kept the report proportionate. He
stressed the need for better support and tools for frontline staff
to improve customer engagement and expressed frustration with slow
progress in improving staff career paths. He praised good practice
observed at the Learners’ Single Point of Access (L-SPA) and
was very hopeful about the Partnerships for Inclusion of
Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme.
The Scrutiny Officer
thanked the parents and carers who took part, having to relive
difficult experiences. She also gave thanks to the case officers
who contributed.
A Member questioned
why response times could not be monitored. The SEND County Service
Planning & Performance Leader explained that currently there
was no way of monitoring communications to and from the case
officers’ individual email addresses and mobile phones. A new
phone system using Microsoft Teams would enable monitoring, but the
technology had to be set up first. To enable oversight of emails,
they were looking at a group email option and, more long-term,
building a parent portal. The Chair voiced her frustration that
improving communication had not been made a higher
priority.
A Member commended a
powerful report and asked if the team agreed with its substance.
The Cabinet Member said she was concerned that there were many
families across Surrey that were not getting the support and the
service that their children need, and she apologised for that. She
mentioned Surrey County Council had invested £15 million over
three years to both address the backlog of overdue EHCPs and ensure
children were getting some support in school while waiting. The
Cabinet Member was glad the report acknowledged there were pockets
of good practice but affirmed that there was more work to be
urgently done.
The Executive
Director for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning said the
report’s findings could be used to strengthen work already
underway. The Service had made progress but, because demand
continued to increase, proportionately, problems remained. She said
the recommended increase in case officers had not been fully costed
but would probably mean a £3.5 million pressure. They would
take the suggestion seriously, but it would need to be balanced
against other requirements in budget planning. The Chair commented
that improvement to date was not of the scale necessary to meet
need.
To progress check if Recovery
Plan is bringing timeliness in line with statutory obligations and
understand lessons learned from a review of the EHCP statutory
process.
The Chair said Surrey
County Council was required to manage demand and review the
Education, Health and Care processes as part of the Safety Valve
Agreement with the Department for Education (DfE), which provided
£100 million additional funding to offset the cumulative
deficit on special educational needs. Part of the Recovery Plan
aimed to help reduce the number of EHCP requests by strengthening
Ordinarily Available Provision in schools. The End-to-End Review
focused on improving the 20-week statutory process from the initial
request to the issue of the EHCP, as well as annual
reviews.
The Chair said the
review showed clear progress in completing more EHCPs on time, with
rates improving from 9% in December 2022 to 71% in July 2023. The
Cabinet Member said the level of timeliness achieved was
commendable and ultimately the ambition was 100% wherever feasible.
She noted the Council must report to the DfE three times a year on
the Safety Valve Agreement.
The headteacher,
invited to report on progress observed in her school, described
more EHCPs being completed and the increased stability and improved
communication from having the same case officer for the last four
months. The Specialist Teachers for Inclusive Practice (STIP) team
had provided a good service with mental health support. She added
that the challenge remained of the school not being able to refer
to MindWorks. She also had concerns about the reduction in the
number of specialist places planned, anticipating requests for
EHCPs would continue to grow. Consultation with the Council was
also problematic, with three pupils allocated to the school despite
them stating at consultation that they could not meet their
needs.
The SEND County
Service Planning & Performance Leader responded that schools
had the opportunity to voice concerns about their ability to meet
need. There should then be a conversation about what reasonable
adjustments could be put in place, and she was sorry that had not
happened in Carrington School’s experience. There were plans
to streamline the consultation process.* The Chair said
this highlighted the need for better communication with schools.
The Executive Director for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning
said the Service would follow up on the status of all cases where
schools directed to take a student had expressed a view that they
could not meet need .
The Chair asked what
was being done to support disappointed parents after only 16% of a
sample of recovery plan EHCPs in July 2024 were rated good or
outstanding, down from 22% in May 2024. She had been notified by
parents of wrong or missing information and not being able to reach
their case officers. The SEND County Service Planning &
Performance Leader said the review has identified issues
...
view the full minutes text for item 38/
To explore how many children of
statutory school age are not registered at school or suitably
electively home educated, the range of reasons and the
impact.
A Member asked how
Surrey compares with others in this area. The Assistant Director
said Surrey had a lower than national number of children missing
education, of severely absent children and of permanent exclusions,
although the latter was rising nationwide. The number of children
accessing Alternative Provision commissioned by the Council (0.18%)
was slightly higher than the national average (0.12%). The
Assistant Director said they would request comparative data from
neighbouring regions in the Southeast regional group.
A Member questioned
how many of the 2,783 Surrey students who were severely absent
(i.e. missing 50% or more of school time) had additional needs, and
how many were on the waiting list for MindWorks. 723 had an EHCP
(26%) and 429 had SEN support (15%). The Service Manager recognised
these children were more vulnerable to exploitation and said they
were closely monitored. Persistent absence comes under the category
of neglect and would trigger an assessment and potential referrals.
Being at school is seen as a protective factor and there may be
safeguarding concerns when a child is not in school. Attendance is
considered a multi-agency responsibility and education meet with
police, health and social care every halfterm.
The Assistant
Director said that more parents had chosen to educate at home since
the pandemic. Asked about reasons for this trend, the Committee
heard this was primarily due to dissatisfaction with the school or
not getting the family’s preferred placement. Of the 2,185
Surrey young people who were electively home educated, 146 had an
EHCP (7%) and 602 had SEN support (28%).
A Member asked for
reasons for the 87 children missing education in Surrey, the
primary reasons given were that elective home education had been
deemed unsuitable; or children with an EHCP had moved into the
county and a suitable place not found, with AP yet to be put in
place. There was one instance of a child waiting over 500 days for
a school place, though the average wait time was about six weeks.
Pupils moving into the county were tracked to ensure they register
for school within 28 days; if not, the Inclusion Service would
intervene.
A Member said they
were concerned about children receiving too few hours of education
and asked that a future report on Alternative Provision (AP)
detailed how many young people were receiving less than the 15-hour
minimum a week set by the Department for Education, currently 173
in Surrey. Some children were seriously medically unwell, and some
were too anxious to spend more than an hour at school each day.
Increased student anxiety since Covid had led schools to offer
flexible teaching approaches. Case workers were actively working to
build their ...
view the full minutes text for item 39/
Clare Curran, Cabinet
Member for Children,FamiliesandLifelong
?Learning
RachaelWardell, Executive DirectorforChildren, Families and
?Learning
Tina Benjamin,
DirectorforCorporate Parenting
Key
points made in the discussion:
1.
The Chair thanked the staff of a children’s home for their
efforts in retaining its ‘Good’ status and praised
their dedication, stressing the importance of maintaining these
high standards.
Clare Curran, Cabinet
Member for Children,FamiliesandLifelong
?Learning
RachaelWardell, Executive DirectorforChildren, Families and
?Learning
Patricia Denney,
Directorfor Quality and
Performance
Key
points made in the discussion:
The Chair noted that
EHCP tribunals had doubled over the past year. She expressed
concern about MindWorks, which saw a 49% increase in workload and
had a 266-day wait time for appointments.
The Chair further
said that theproportionof permanent social workers was only 56%, below the 80-85%
target, and suggested comparing this with neighbouring
areas.She added that the declining
recruitment of foster carers must be noted.
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