The Educational Psychology Service has been under increasing pressure to meet the statutory timeframes of the EHCP process for children with SEND. There has been a recovery plan in place to address the backlog whilst managing the rising numbers of requests, but this has not been successful in addressing the challenge due to the limited ability to recruit educational psychologists.
The current SCC EP staffing (internal) is at 50% despite being the focus of corporate support for recruitment and retention.
The internal team providing these assessments can offer 27 assessments per week but with the use of locums and associate EPs this rises to 38 assessments per week.
The predicted demand for assessments until December 2023 is 1886 advice required over 43 weeks which suggests that there will be 44 assessments required per week.
Therefore, the core team and locums require additional support to manage business as usual and to address the backlog of 729.
To address the majority of the backlog, the service has identified a provider able to deliver immediately on the current backlog of assessments over next 13 months from 1st April 2023 – 30th April 2024.
Decision type: Non-key
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Notice of proposed decision first published: 03/04/2023
Decision due: 31 Mar 2023 by Director for Education, Lifelong Learning & Culture