Agenda item

To note the SEND Strategy 2022-2025 (agreed by Cabinet 21/11/22) and update on the development of a partnership action plan.

6.1  Hackney Education has developed a new SEND Strategy for the period 2022-25 which was approved by Cabinet on November 21st 2022.  The objectives for the Commission for this item is to note the contents and underpinning principles of the SEND Strategy, and to question officers on their plans to deliver key objectives detailed within it.

6.2   The Commission understands that an Action Plan is being developed with partners to support the delivery of the key aims of the SEND strategy, and which itself is being presented to this Commission in February 2023.  It is envisaged that through the ongoing scrutiny of the SEND Action Plan, the Commission will retain oversight of the delivery of key service developments and improvements for SEND services.

Questions from the Commission

6.3  In relation to Priority 4 - Joined Up Services - The strategy indicates that there are currently no jointly commissioned services in Hackney. What are the barriers to jointly commissioned services and how will the SEND Strategy help overcome these?  How will the Joint Agency Plan be progressed in 2023?

·  Much of the resources of local services are tied up in delivery through schools, specialist provision and commissioned services.  The barriers to working together were financial in that there was a limited pot of money available.  Investment in special schools and mainstream schools was important to ensure that they can provide the SEND services needed for local children.  Rising demand and the pressures these places on local services also stifles the ability of services to work together effectively; in Hackney the number of children with an EHCP has increased by 65%.  Finding specialist placements for children with SEND is difficult, which in turn has an impact on schools and other educational settings. 5.3% of all local children now have an EHCP.  This demand has an impact on education, social care and health services.  The SEND strategy is a partnership strategy which agrees priorities across the EHCP system and aligns funding to support those priorities.

·  The JAP is a multi-agency panel which meets to discuss and plan for children with multiple and complex SEND needs.  This group assesses what the best placement would be for the child and agrees funding splits between agencies.  This was a relatively new process and would be evaluating this in the coming months.

6.4  Developing accompanied lines of finance to support the ambitions of the SEND Strategy will be challenging, especially in relation to capital requirements needed for estate redevelopment which underpins a major part of this strategy. Can officers provide some reassurance around capital funding secured thus far?  In addition, there are other financial uncertainties (whether the government will cover the accumulated £18.5m SEND deficit) and ongoing financial pressures (overspend forecast to be £4.6m) for SEND provision in Hackney.  Can officers set out the funding to support the implementation of the SEND strategy thus far and additional funding needed to support the SEND Strategy but yet to be identified?

·  The SEND Green paper was currently working its way through the political system which would hopefully address some of the underlying issues for SEND funding.  Schools were at the front end of this issue, and the Green Paper would help to direct more resources to support them.  It was also clear that the borough needed to reduce the number of children who were supported by non-maintained provision out of the borough as this was a significant financial pressure.  Nationally, the budget pressure was estimated to be £1.5 billion, so it was clear that Hackney was not alone in facing these pressures.

6.5  How will the new SEND Strategy ensure that the voice of parents is heard and that they are meaningfully engaged and involved in key decisions about their child? Will there be any future provision for parent advocacy given the complexity of SEND landscape?

·  Parental engagement was critical and there were a number of local parental engagement groups that the service worked with to support service delivery.  The Parent Carer Forum plays an important role in this and has a dedicated work programme to connect parents to local services, and it is hoped that a new PCF will be in place in the New Year in Hackney.  This would ensure that the voice of local parents is heard locally and that there is a mechanism to provide challenge to local SEND services.  The SEND team believes in the principle of co-production and will seek to engage and involve parents as well as young people themselves in developing SEND services.

6.6    Will the SEND strategy address the issue of parental support and engagement in relation to children on SEND support?

·  This local authority is very generous when it comes to the issuing of EHCPs which is illustrated by the proportion of children and young people who have an EHCP in Hackney (5.3%) compared to London (4.4%) and national (4.2%) averages.  Based on the needs and evidence they provide, local children are reaching these thresholds for EHCP provision and the LA does issue plans in response to these needs.  Parents are engaged as part of this statutory assessment process to develop and review all EHCPs and other SEND plans.

·  Priority 2 focused on the earlier response to special needs.  The graduated response is important to this approach so that schools can identify and support more children with SEND earlier.  Alongside this is that the SEND team also recognised the need to work around schools more to ensure that there is a multidisciplinary team offer to support them (e.g. SLT, Ed Psych, and School Nurses).  These professionals are working around clusters of schools and there is a multi-agency planning meeting every term to discuss, agree and plan for the needs for children with SEND support.  This enables the group to review and monitor the progress of children on SEND support.  There is an also an expectation that there will be discussion as to which SEND pathways children might be best to be supported through (e.g. SEND support, EHCP or some further additional support to the school).  This system was in early development as it was only established in September 2022, and it was hoped  by the summer term of 2023 more robust data would be available to review oversight of children on SEND support.

6.7  The Commission was aware that Barnet Parent Carer Forum  was very active as too was the Camden Parents Advisory Board, which was not only a consultative body but also offered advocacy and support to parents not only with children with SEND, but also to parents whose children were looked after by the authority or similarly supported by children’s social care.  The Commission noted that this was a broader parent and family support offer across education, social care and health which should be considered locally.

·  The local authority constantly sought to engage with other authorities to compare and contrast service provision, to help identify and support the extension of good practice.

6.8  The Commission also noted the role of the community and voluntary sector in supporting children with SEND and their families, particularly where there may be language or culture differences which may present barriers to service accessibility.  It was noted that advocates from such community groups (such as YouTube workers) sometimes found it difficult to access SEND meetings with parents (and young people).

·  Officers reassured the Commission that local Community Centres and community groups should be an integral part of the local SEND response and help to shape and deliver local provision.

6.9  In relation to Priority 3, the Commission completed a review of Post 16 SEND back in 2020 and made a number of recommendations which have helped to inform this strategy.  Critically, the Commission’s work highlighted the paucity of Post 16 options currently available for young people with SEND, so how will the SEND strategy improve the volume and range of Post 16 options available to young people with SEND?

·  It is the responsibility of the local authority to assess needs and ensure that there are appropriate services available to meet the needs of children with SEND, including post 16 provision. The SEND Strategy is an ambition setting out the high level objectives for services, and the SEND Action Plan will provide further detail on how these priorities will be delivered.

·  Supported Internships had some real success where 90% of young people had been successful in gaining employment afterward.  Further support would be needed to scale existing provision up and extend support to young people with SEND post 16.  Success is important in encouraging more investment and expansion of provision for young people in Hackney.

6.10  The Commission was of the view that the SEND Strategy should contain a stronger commitment to anti-racism and to ensure that services were inclusive. There was however a commitment to working closely with the Orthodox Jewish community to develop services, and the Commission would welcome further information on what was planned.

·  The strategy was needs based including assessments of the needs of different ethnic groups in the borough, and it was hoped that the key principles and objectives set out within it would help to address all the SEND needs of children and young people across Hackney.  The borough has recently gone through a self-assessment to help identify areas of strength and areas where improvement is necessary. 

·  Hackney Education was also developing an Inclusion Charter which would also include children with SEND as well race and ethnicity.  This will link to work in the SEND Action Plan.

6.11  In relation to data and analytics, what do we know about local children who are on SEND Support and children with an EHCP; what demographic data is captured and what is driving demand for services which can assist in future service planning and delivery?

·  Data was a critical part of the local approach to ensure that local services were evidence based and delivered real tangible results for children with SEND.  An outcomes based approach was likely to be increasingly important in the context of declining resources, as it might be the case in the future that there may not be sufficient resources to continue to support less effective services or non-statutory services.  The service was pulling together a data scorecard to help assess performance and progress across SEND provision which can be brought to the Commission at a future meeting.  This data will inform Commissioning.

6.12  The Cabinet member responsible for SEND emphasised the following points in relation to supporting the Orthodox Jewish community and the overriding issue of the SEND budget deficit. 

·  There is an explicit goal to have more SEND provision within the borough.  The SEND team were working with Side by Side, a special educational provision for the Orthodox Jewish community, to further extend provision.

·  From the early years perspective there were already very good working relationships with the Orthodox Jewish community with good links to children’s centres and other early years provision.

·  Whilst there still is a deficit, this was projected to be £18m by the end of 2022/23, the service had been successful in securing additional capital funding to expand school place provision.  In excess of £12m had been committed to develop new provision.  It was positive that new ARP’s had been agreed for local schools which could now be established and begin to support more young people with SEND in local schools.

·  It was also noted that additional resources were being committed to extending pupil forums to support the voice of young people in service design and delivery.

6.13  How will the SEND partnership measure the success of this SEND Strategy?  Whilst the SEND Strategy sets out some of the outcomes and measures, it does not provide for any targets which might provide a measure of success (e.g. decreased exclusions for children with SEND, more young people transferring to adult social care).  Are any targets envisioned to support the development of this strategy? Will associated targets be included within the Action Plan (e.g. the proportion of children with SEND receiving their education as settings within the borough)?

·  There were a number of ways in which the strategy would be monitored and reviewed.  As well as statutory requirements (e.g. exclusion data, timeframe for completion of assessments) there will be greater emphasis on obtaining feedback from parents and children within the EHCP review process (e.g. are children happy and making good progress).  This data will be regularly reviewed by the SEND Partnership Board.  Acknowledging that development was an organic process, service was also keen to set up family groups which can be consulted at certain points to help with delivery on certain aspects of the strategy. 

·  The Cabinet member noted that a new independent chair of the Hackney Schools Group Board had been appointed, but that the focus on race and SEND and would retain an intersectional approach.

6.14  Priority 2 - Earlier Response - If New Regents College (NRC) and the Re-engagement Unit are to work preventatively and support children in need earlier - how will the SEND Strategy ensure that all local schools (maintained and academies) are equally engaged and committed to this agenda?

·  For the first time in 2022, the Re-engagement Unit (REU) is a universal offer available to all settings which will extend the reach to all schools.  It was acknowledged that there was a difference in engagement and take up of the REU, which was also the case for the Councils SEND offer. Some schools do not accept the free offer and want to do something different for their pupils which was fine to a degree as schools were autonomous.  The SEND team was however focusing on developing its training offer for local schools with a broad universal free training offer to ensure widest possible reach into local schools.  If schools do not take on board the Universal offer, then there will need to be a rethink as to how SEND services work with them.

·  Proposals for NRC were still in development, but the plan is for alternative provision to become more inward reaching to support local schools to support children to maintain places in mainstream education.

6.15  The Chair thanked officers for attending and responding to questions raised from members of the Commission.  The Commission was looking forward to the publication of the SEND Action Plan ahead of the meeting in February 2023.  Noting that this was a partnership plan, the Commission would welcome the lead officers from partner agencies so that they could be invited to co-present this item.