Agenda item

Purpose of the report: to provide the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning and Culture Select Committee with a progress update on the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) transformation programme, including relevant progress updates about the implementation of the recommendations of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Task Group.  This report builds on the Select Committee Report from December 2020 as well as the Cabinet Report from February 2021.

Witnesses:

Denise Turner-Stewart, Cabinet Member for Education and Learning

Liz Mills, Director – Education and Lifelong Learning

Mary Burguieres, Assistant Director – Systems and Transformation

BenedicteSymcox, Chief Executive Officer – Family Voice Surrey

Kate Goode, Participation Manager – Family Voice Surrey

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.    The Cabinet Member explained that the report built upon previous updates to the Committee and Cabinet in December 2020 and February 2021 respectively. It outlined further progress in the year to date and highlighted the next phase of delivery – building system wide momentum and cultural change and securing financial trajectories over the next five years.

2.    The Director added that 290 additional school places for children with SEND had been delivered – a mixture of expansions of existing schools and new specialist units and centres, plus one entirely new school. There was a focus on operational improvements: the Service was seeking to improve the timeliness and quality of Education and Health and Care (EHC) planning and communication with families. They wanted to make sure all children received the right support without necessarily relying on a statutory plan. There had been a reduction in requests for statutory plans, attributed to recent investment in early intervention – Surrey had a high number of statutory plans compared to regional and statistical neighbours. The Service was working with education, health and care partners to ensure children’s needs were met more holistically. From early years, the Service was focused on preparing children for adulthood and was creating additional pathways into adulthood – 70% of young people were on a pathway to independence or employment, a 13% increase on the previous year.

3.    The Vice-Chairman asked what the Programme’s key risks were and asked whether it had been affected by ongoing disruption within the construction industry. The capital programme had delivered 23 schemes in year and there had been a six-week delay to occupying the new school, but temporary provision was accommodating pupils in the meantime. The Land and Property Service’s approach to capital delivery was to secure a longer-term delivery partner to facilitate smoother delivery. The delivery of one free school, Betchwood Vale, had been delayed for a year for planning reasons and the Service was working with partners to ensure delivery and provide interim places. 

4.    A Vice-Chairman asked how the Programme reflected the SEND Code of Practice and Partnership Strategy and the Written Statement of Action’s four key focus areas and would support children to attain better outcomes. The Director explained that the Transformation Programme was outcome focused and everything the Service did was centred on relevant statutory provisions and the SEND Code of Practice. The Strategy reflected local consultation and ran from 2019 to 2022 and the Service was to co-produce a new strategy for 2022 onwards, for which the development of the All-Age Autism Strategy provided an improved model of co-production. The key focus areas were borne out of the original Code of Practice and were reflected in the now more-joined-up SEND system and increasingly holistic approach to SEND support; however, the Director acknowledged that those changes would not have been felt by all families yet. Elements of the Strategy relating to community also reflected the Community Vision for Surrey in 2030 principle of ‘no one is left behind’ by aiming for children to be educated and supported closer to home wherever possible. The SEND Code of Practice required the efficient, effective and equitable use of resources and the Director highlighted this was an area of focus where further work was required; increasing the sufficiency of local provision under the Transformation Programme would support the implementation of that principle as well as better outcomes for children and their families. 

5.    The Vice-Chairman asked what improvements would be achieved through the introduction of an assistant director in each quadrant and why this was an effective use of resource. The Director explained that the posts were funded from the General Fund, rather than the High Needs Block. The appointment of assistant directors to quadrants mirrored the structure used in social care and they were to galvanise cultural change by developing and maintaining relationships with early years providers, schools and health and social care partners. They were also driving cultural change in relation to safeguarding and emotional wellbeing and mental health.

6.    The Vice-Chairman asked whether there had been any significant change to the SEND level of need during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Director explained that children’s mental health needs had been flagged to her and colleagues when they had visited educational settings and the Service was working with the mental health alliance. The Director explained that the Service was concerned that some children with additional needs may have had too little educational input and thus development during the pandemic; however, she cautioned it was too early to know the extent to which this was true, and that increased need would likely occur in relation to specific places or individual children, rather than across the board.

7.    A Member asked how educational support for children with SEND was aligned with social care needs and placements. The Cabinet Member explained that the Service had a close relationship with children’s social care, with which they shared a Director of commissioning, and that the new mental health alliance contract took into account sufficiency planning for social care and education. The Director added that education and social care colleagues worked together closely at all levels and further training and development initiatives were to be provided to new starters on such joined-up working. Joined-up care planning was highly important as few children would have either social or educational needs alone. The introduction of the single view of a child system would further enhance joint working. The implementation of the Early Years and Education Management System (EYES) Liquidlogic module was progressing well and was to be fully implemented by the 2022/23 academic year.

8.    A Member asked why the development and reviews of a significant proportion of EHC plans still took longer than the targeted timescales, how long overdue plans took to complete/review on average, what was being done to address plan lateness and whether timeliness varied between quadrants. The SEND Code of Practice required that EHC plans should be developed within 20 weeks with few, rarely used exceptions, which the Service did not account for in performance reporting. Overdue plans were typically one to two weeks so but could be as late as four weeks. The EHC plan monitoring system enabled strong management oversight of plan timeliness, down to individual plan level. The timeliness of advice from health and care services, which had been under significant pressure during the pandemic, could impact plan timeliness and the Service worked flexibly with families when specific advice was outstanding. Caseworker turnover and vacancies could lead to delays and the Service was taking steps to stabilise the workforce; the Director aimed for the Service to be fully resourced in Autumn 2021. Changes to the irregular pattern of requests for plans could impact timeliness and there had been unusually high demand for plans in the 2021 Summer Term, which was challenging as children’s needs could not be evaluated during the summer. Some quadrants had achieved 100 per cent timeliness in recent months and the quadrants in which poor timeliness periodically arose differed. There was monthly oversight of the reasons for plan lateness at senior officer level.

9.    A Member asked how the council’s ability to effectively support children with SEND was affected by the continuing shortfall of High Needs Block (HNB) funding, how this impacted Directorate and council finances, and how confident the Service was that it would be able to deliver effective SEND support without overspending on the High Needs Block within five years’ time. The Cabinet Member explained that recently, externally reviewed demand modelling and financial analysis confirmed that SEND services would be delivered to budget within five years’ time. The Director explained that the council’s maintenance of a financial reserve to offset HNB overspends presented an opportunity cost as those funds could not be invested in other services. The Service was building capacity in the SEND system through its inclusion agenda and culture and practice improvements to ensure that children’s needs were met at an early stage before they increased. There was a large degree of inconsistency between the size of different school’s cohorts of children with SEND and EHC plans, and an objective of ongoing schools-led work was to increase the number of children with SEND educated at their local schools.

10.A Member asked how children with SEND who were not eligible for EHC plans were supported, how often their support was reviewed, and who was involved in those reviews. The Director explained that ‘SEND Support Arrangements’ were set out in the SEND Code of Practice and schools, which published the SEND support they provide on their websites, were responsible for documenting needs and agreeing support plans with parents/carers, and were expected to regularly review support, usually on a termly or half-termly basis. All the help and support available to children with SEND was recorded in the Graduated Response and the Service was providing relevant training and support to staff. The Service was piloting a ‘team around the school’ model which brought council and partnership resources together around individual schools and was focused on providing non-statutory SEND support, a benefit of which was that council would be aware of children with additional needs and the support they had been receiving if  requests for ECH plans were made for them.

11.A Member asked how funding for early intervention made available to early years settings from April 2020 had been utilised and what its impact was. The Director explained that following a series of termly evaluations which showed a positive impact, the Schools Forum had agreed to extend the provision of that funding.  The funding was often used to deliver skills training, capacity building and SEND support planning and arrangements in early years settings, enabling young children with SEND to be included in settings closer to home. Meeting young children’s needs earlier also enabled settings to close gaps in respect of speech, learning and communication development and better prepare them for school.

12.The Member asked for an overview of the post-18 destinations for young people with SEND. Seventy per cent of young people with SEND were in education, employment or training (EET), and approximately 11 per cent of the cohort would move into adult social care. The Service was exploring how to provide pathways into EET for the remaining nine per cent of young people with SEND; the Service was delivering informative events outlining the wide range of options available to young people and supported similar work by Family Voice Surrey. Six apprenticeships had been provided for young people with SEND and the Service was to provide a further 25 going forward; the Service was encouraging employers to consider how they could provide apprenticeships for young people with SEND. The Cabinet Member added that, in connection with the council’s strategy for economic growth, the Service was exploring further employment opportunities for young people with SEND with the council, partners and industry.

13.The Chairman invited the representatives of Family Voice Surrey (FVS) to introduce themselves and the organisation. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) explained that FVS was the official parent carer forum for Surrey, which provided a voice for parent carers of children with additional needs aged 0-25. The CEO welcomed improvements made in recent years, particularly the shift to coproduction and partnership working, but highlighted that those improvements were not reflected in the experiences of all families yet.

14.The Chairman invited the CEO to outline FVS’s key focus areas. The CEO emphasised that the work of FVS was grounded in listening to the lived experience of children and parent carers. The feedback shared with FVS was both positive and negative. The CEO said that FVS repeatedly heard that communication needed to improve. The CEO welcomed the council’s work to improve post-16 outcomes for children with additional needs. There was a focus on the Preparation for Adulthood Programme and FVS was promoting the council’s message that preparation for adulthood starts from the beginning of children’s lives. FVS had received highly positive feedback regarding supported internships. However, feedback from those who attended college was less consistent – the transition into the second year of college could be particularly challenging. The CEO noted the increase in co-production within the system; however, there was a desire for more co-production at individual level and at transitions into post-16 education and adulthood – the CEO shared the view of the Director that greater consistency at school level was required. The biggest problem parents raised with FVS was that they were not heard or believed by professionals such as, GPs, school staff and health visitors.

15.The Director recognised that the council’s relationship with FVS was vitally important and highlighted that the council had invested in how it worked with the organisation. She agreed it was important that improvements were apparent at, and coproduction conducted, at individual level. 

16.Improving communication remained a focus and the Director submitted that the Service had a good understanding of where improvement was required. The Service was to continue providing training and development initiatives to staff in a number of areas, including ensuring families were aware of handovers in advance and handovers were managed well, avoiding vacancies within teams, and improving the culture and ethos of collaborative working.

17.The Cabinet Member thanked the CEO for FVS’s advocacy and collaboration with the council.

18.A Vice-Chairman asked about the challenges that children, young people, and their families experienced when seeking SEND support and at the transition from primary to secondary school, and how the placement of SEND children within or outside of the county affected them. The CEO explained that FVS worked closely with Surrey’s User Voice and Participation team, which ensured that young people’s voices were heard. She reiterated that the biggest challenge faced was for professionals to believe parent carers when they sought support. There were also challenges getting the different parts of the system to communicate with one another and services still seemed to families to be siloed. Finding the right information was often challenging for parents due to the number of single points of access available; the CEO described the Learner’s and Children’s Single Points of Access as helpful, and the Director later confirmed they were being merged. The CEO described how professionals would sometimes recommend certain support for children and then decision-making panels in the EHC plan process would take a different view – this could be confusing and upsetting for families and was described as potentially harmful to codesign/collaboration.

19.The CEO explained that it was difficult to see the improvement of in-county residential placements currently, but FVS had received positive feedback from parents whose children were receiving specialist provision close to home. FVS heard that families whose adolescent children could not live at home full time due to their highly complex needs would prefer their children to receive a residential placement close to home, rather than receive packages of respite care, which were described as less stable. The CEO highlighted a gap in local provision for girls and young women with autism who had experienced trauma and had learning needs.

20.The CEO explained that, in respect of transitions from primary to secondary school, schools and families often believed children needed additional hours of support but, in her view, the focus should instead be on how schools and families communicate, why transitions are difficult and what can be done to make a them easier, such as making support plans clearer and ensuring teachers had strong understandings of children’s needs.

21.The Director highlighted the importance of FVS as a constructive and critical friend to the council.

Actions:

i.              Director – Education and Lifelong Learning to share average times for overdue EHC plan development and reviews by quadrant; and any actions taken to respond to increase demand for EHC plans in the 2021 Summer Term.

Recommendations:

1. At an appropriate time, the Select Committee visit educational settings supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities.

2. The Director – Education and Lifelong Learning share the findings of the SEND Self-Evaluation and any actions to be taken in response to it with the Chairman of the Select Committee for circulation to the Committee once available.  

3. The Cabinet Member for Education and Learning provide an update on the SEND Transformation Programme and other work relating to the support for children and young people with additional needs, including support at transitions, at the April 2022 meeting of the Select Committee.