Agenda item

Following the publication of the Hackney SEND Strategy in 2022, members are invited to scrutinise plans to deliver services in line with agreed priorities as set out in the SEND Partnership Action Plan.

4.1 The SEND Strategy for Hackney was agreed by Cabinet in October 2022.  To support the delivery of key priorities within this strategy a SEND Partnership Action Plan has been developed by local Education, Health and Social Care services.  Members were invited to scrutinise delivery plans and to question officers present.

 

4.2 The Chair invited respective leads from education, health and social care to set out key aspects of the plan for their services and the opportunities and challenges that they foresee.

·  Education - The Director of Education indicated that the strategy and action plan was a partnership approach that would help those with additional needs get the support that they needed for their education and development.  The Assistant Director for High Needs noted that the action plan not only responded to the strategy, but also the peer-review of SEND services which was conducted in 2022.  The peer review noted that whilst there was lots of good activity across SEND services, these would benefit from greater coordination across the local partnership.  It was noted that the 10 priority areas identified in the peer review are mirrored in the action plan (as work streams).  It was also noted that this remained a draft plan until finalised and ratified by the local area SEND Partnership Board.

·  Health - The Strategic Lead reiterated the support from health agencies for the action plan, noting that health was contributing to every work stream.  Health partners noted that the inclusion of the voice of young people and parental engagement, together with a commitment to co-production, were important aspects of the action plan.  Demand and capacity issues were having an impact on waiting times across the SEND system, and it was hoped that the action plan would develop a system wide response to this issue.

·  Social Care - The Head of Disabled Children's Service indicated that the action plan would help to streamline the way that local services work together to support children with SEND.  From a social care perspective, the establishment of the Early Help Hub (where key statutory partners work together) has helped to support local joint working relationships.

 

Questions from the Commission

 

4.3 What are the governance arrangements for overseeing the action plan? How inclusive is the SEND Partnership Board and how does it relate to the SEND Transformation Team?

·  The Board is not only made up of local commissioners but also of providers within the local SEND system.  There is also representation from local parents via the Parent Governor Forum.  Attendance at the meeting was around 20 people which provided a good assessment of the level of local engagement.  A new Executive Board has been established to bring greater clarity to decision making and to improve oversight of the local SEND system to ensure that resources are being spent in line with local priorities and that executive leads are aware of strategic risks.

·  In terms of transformation there were a number of boards which needed to have oversight of the SEND system which included City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership, Hackney Schools Group Board and the Health and Wellbeing Board.  The Council accountability structure was mapped into the governance arrangements, and there were plans to do this for health service provision.  The parent carer steering groups and the voice of young people were embedded within the 10 work streams.

 

4.4 Can officers update the Commission on waiting times for SEND services and for those specialist health services which are required to support local assessments of children?

·  The Strategic Lead for Health (SLH) noted that there was an Emotional Wellbeing and Health Partnership Board which works closely with the SEND Partnership Board. This Board is looking at pressures across the system such as waiting times for CAMHS and other services.  It was acknowledged that there was not a robust waiting times dashboard across the system at present but a number of developments were in the system to bring improvements.  As part of work stream 3, the wider partnership was committed to establishing a partnership-wide SEND dashboard which will provide additional transparency around waiting times. The SLH also indicated that there were no current concerns around waiting times for speech and language therapies (SLT) but there were long waiting times for autism assessments where there was a waiting time of 12-13 months for the under 5 and over 5 pathways.  Whilst accepting that more needed to be done to reduce this, it was noted that Hackney was not an outlier and that many other services in other areas were recording similar waiting times.  Critically, services were working together to identify what support can be put in place once needs had been identified rather than waiting for a formal diagnosis (pre-diagnostic support).

 

4.5 What support is available for children and families whose first language is not English?

·  Omitted.

 

4.6 How are children and families supported to transition through services on their journey to adulthood?

·  A monthly meeting is held with all local partners (education, health and social care) with the addition of CAMHS and CAMHS disability to review the needs of young people aged 16+.  This collective system ensures that the needs of young people are identified and that there is a pathway of services which can support their journey to adulthood.  The Adults Social Care Team also contributes to this process as they also support young people aged 18-25 years as well as some 16 and 17 year olds.

·  From a health perspective, there were a number of well-established pathways in the community to support young people's journey into adulthood (e.g. CAMHS).  It was now important to map all the pathways of provision and to identify where there gaps and how local services could work in partnership to address these.

 

4.7 How are different SEND programmes that support young people to transition to adulthood promoted to young people?  Are there any plans to work with Hackney Youth Parliament?

·  The Strategic Lead for Health acknowledged that services must rely on a range of ways in which to reach out and communicate to young people about the SEND support that was available. The Local Offer website listed all services available through SEND and the Parent Carer Forums were also used to promote awareness to the local community.  There has been a great deal of work undertaken in developing pupil voice which was centred in local schools.

·  The Head of SEND also emphasised the importance of work to develop pupil voice and had established a local pupil forum which was made up of about 30 young people (though further recruitment was anticipated).  It was hoped that these young people could report back issues to their own schools and also help to set up student councils for SEND in their own school which would be a good way to promote awareness of local services.  There have also been employment and preparation for adulthood fairs for local children in  a number of schools and there are plans to make this borough wide.  The Head of SEND agreed that it would beneficial work with HYP to further promote the work

 

4.8 From the Commission's previous work on SEND, there was a broad consensus among partners that service planning was not sufficiently data driven, and that a more developed and critical understanding of local data was needed to better assess local needs and to inform commissioning, particularly for post 16 SEND options. Is the SEND team and wider partnership confident that local SEND data systems and processes can deliver the information needed to develop and improve SEND provision as set out in the Action Plan?

·  The only national indicator was the 20 week time limit to process EHCP’s for which the local performance was 60% against a national average of 54%.  With 5.4% of local children applying for an EHCP it was a significant challenge to improve performance, understanding that the regional average is 4.4%.  It was suggested that if the action plan comes back to the Commission, that this could include a local SEND performance scorecard.  This will be important to ensure that there is progress against the action plan.

 

4.9 How do you ensure that children who do not have an EHCP or receive support from social care services (but are on SEND support) do not fall through the gaps in the preparation for adulthood?

·  There is a statutory requirement for a year 9 assessment for children with an EHCP to assess preparations for adulthood.  Whilst there is no such requirement for children on SEND support, the local SEND service does encourage schools to undertake the same assessment at this juncture.  Further work was needed to ensure that this was routinely undertaken by all local schools.

 

4.10 What is being done to increase the voice of young people and parental engagement and involvement in SEND provision?

·  A new Parent Carer Forum was currently being commissioned to ensure that local parents of children with SEND were engaged in all aspects of the action plan.

·  There were also plans to recruit young people to the SEND Partnership Board to ensure that the voice of young people was being heard at the very highest level.

·  The SEND service was committed to the principle of co-production and would ensure that both young people and their families are meaningfully involved in the decision making process and development of local services.

·  From a  health perspective, young people were involved in Youth Hubs which has been integral to the establishment of local neighbourhood areas.

 

4.11 There is little mention of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in the strategy or action plan.  Are there plans to address given the rising incidence of this both locally and nationally?

·  Alongside other local stakeholders, parents have played an important role in shaping the SEND strategy and action plan to help take its current form.  This process was ongoing to ensure that local plans respond to local needs, and will ensure that conditions such as FASD will be identified.  All these needs have to be assessed in the context of clinical needs and priorities.  FASD was not currently on the radar locally, but partners agreed to reassess this position if the current needs assessment reflected a need to do so.

 

4.12 Are there plans to further promote SEND services through local HCVS, community and youth groups?

·  The Cabinet member flagged a number of school and community events to which would further promote local awareness of SEND Services which included, Autism Awareness Week, Year 6 Transition Event  and a Big Summer SEND Forum. Details would be sent to HYP and other community partners.

 

4.13 Ensuring that local services respond to the needs of the Orthodox Jewish Community, which comprise around 20% of young people locally, will be an important part of local service transformation, but there is very little mention of the community in the Action Plan. What is the overarching strategy for engaging and involving the Orthodox Jewish Community to support the implementation of the Action Plan? Is there any specific data on the needs of this community?

·  There were targeted conversations with the Orthodox Jewish Community to progress SEND services locally, it was noted that the DoE  had a forthcoming meeting with Interlink and officers regularly met representatives from Side by Side, a local specialist provision for the community.  Many children with SEND needs within the Orthodox Jewish Community are supported within schools within the independent sector, and the SEND team was liaising with 32 such schools to ensure that local needs were reflected in local plans and strategies.  The SEND service was also liaising with other authorities who had similar populations to compare and contrast services and identify how support can be provided better.

·  The AD for High Needs did emphasise however there was a need to develop the voice of the child from the Orthodox Jewish Community as this was currently under-represented.  Whilst there was evidently positive work that was happening with young people from this community (facilitated by a local SENCO network into local independent schools) further work was needed to help improve consistency and coordination of this.

·  The SEND team had recently had its annual inspection meeting with the regional Ofsted Director and provision for the Orthodox Jewish Community was a line of local service challenge.  Whilst it was recognised that engagement was a challenge with the Orthodox Jewish Community, Ofsted reported that the authority went further than many others in this respect.  The Schools Bill had been expected to support further engagement with further powers to identify unregistered settings but this had recently been dropped from the legislative programme.  On the assurance of the regulator, however, the authority was confident that local systems were robust.

 

4.14 With central government allocations not reflecting the growing demand for SEND, local services (and budgets) will come under increasing pressure.  Are partners satisfied that there are fair and transparent structures in place for apportioning costs / investments to meet the often complex needs of children with SEND? 

·  The DoE noted that there is a significant overspend in the SEND budget of the region of £5.5m this current financial year, which reflects nationwide concerns around the level of funding where there was an estimated £2.5billion funding gap.  It was noted that 144 of the 151 local authorities were currently overspent in their SEND budget with some authorities having a cumulative overspend in the region of £250m.  The SEND green paper currently progressing through parliament would also help to bring greater clarity and control to local SEND provision and how these were funded.  Locally more had to be done to ensure that greater numbers of children were supported within the local maintained school settings to reduce pressures on local specialist schools and non-maintained sector schools (where annual costs for a single provision could cost up to £250k).

·  The SHL for Health noted that the partnership was committed to ensuring that children with SEND were supported in settings as close to home as possible (and not external to the borough).  Early identification of support needs was also critical in reducing reliance on EHCPs as this would ensure that children got the help they needed earlier.  This early help will also therefore help to reduce costs.  Investment in prevention and early help will reduce the need for more specialist interventions, which are of course more expensive to resource. 

 

4.15 The School Estates Strategy aims to deliver an additional 300 places at maintained schools in hackney for children with SEND.  Given the current level of new EHCPs issued each year, are partners confident the School Estate Strategy - and Action Plan - deliver the additional internal capacity for maintained provision in Hackney?

·  Every year a needs analysis is undertaken to identify if there is enough capacity in the SEND system to meet the needs of local children, and the current planned increase in places would respond to expected increased demand.  There were two key factors which would impact the supply and demand for EHCPs; firstly lower school rolls was expected to reduce demand for EHCPs in the system and secondly, a more balanced approach to referral and assessment for EHCP was also likely to reduce the number of EHCPs approved.  Phase 1a and 1b of the School Estates Strategy were progressing with developments at St Marks and Nightingale Schools approved and land for a potential annex for a local specialist school had been scoped.  The service believed the number of new places was appropriate for expected demand, though this was reviewed on an annual basis.

 

4.16 How will the SEND team ensure that Additional Resource Provision (ARP) are developed where they are most needed?  As the Action Plan is linked to the School Estates Strategy, is there not a concern that those schools experiencing falling school rolls, are more likely to take up this offer?  How is the SEND team actively targeting those schools/ areas where APR provision may be beneficial? 

·  ARPs have traditionally evolved organically across Hackney, where schools themselves have nominated themselves for ARP services.  The SEND team were now trying to create a more even and planned spread of ARPs across the borough to meet local needs, this will help to improve accessibility and reduce associated travel costs.

 

4.17 In relation to additional provision within the specialist maintained sector, what extra capacity will be delivered in what areas of SEND provision and over what timeframe?  How will ARPs be developed in secondary schools and what are the challenges to this process?

·  There is a statutory duty for the authority to provide sufficient provision and a range of settings are deployed to ensure the needs of local children are met.  The data indicated that there will be challenges for secondary provision and the service was working with locally maintained settings to understand capacity and how this might be increased further.  A plan was currently being developed to help inform what education should look like in 2030 to further help track and plan for future needs of children and the implications for local services.

·  Commissioning was reviewed annually to ensure sufficiency of supply and the service was always seeking ways to improve additional provision within maintained secondary settings.  It was acknowledged that there needed to be a rebalance of SEND provision between primary and secondary schools, as the former had one of the highest rates of children with an EHCP in London and service demand would eventually transfer to the latter.  The most recent priorities from that audit noted deficits in ASD and SEMH provision which was being addressed.

 

4.18  Understanding that there were waiting times of approximately 13 months for ASD reviews which was a very long time for young people and their families to wait. This was concerning because a significant number of these children struggle with school which can be an influence in school exclusions.  Given that young people are waiting a long time, can help from other sources be diverted (i.e. REU) to support these children's pre-diagnosis or help to reduce waiting times?

·  SHL for Health noted that services were very much alive to the challenge of waiting times for ASD as this had a significant impact on children and their families.  Additional recurrent funding had been invested in the ASD diagnosis to increase capacity across all pathways.  In terms of pre-diagnostic support, the broader partnership was aware of the potential impact that this was having, particularly around emotionally based school avoidance, and were working to address this.  There were a number of ways in which young people were being supported whilst on a waiting list including the graduated response in school and the additional holistic support which can be drawn upon via the team around the child / school.  Termly school based meetings were multi-disciplinary and were focused on providing early help support to children with SEND in education.  It was noted that CAMHS now had an integrated single point of access from November 2022.

·  In terms of children’s social care, needs (rather than diagnosis) drove support and often a care package would be put in place irrespectively.

 

4.19 A full Ofsted inspection of the SEND Partnership is expected within the next 6 months or so.  After the recent completion of the Local Area SEND service self-assessment (page 17), what do partners feel are the top priorities for action and improvement within this Action Plan ahead of the imminent Ofsted Inspection? 

·  A joint SEND area inspection by Ofsted and CQC was expected this year (2023).  The SEND Partnership Board is very active in its preparation for this, including ongoing self-assessment.  The service is currently collating 60 documents in readiness for the inspection by Ofsted.  A new system of inspection will focus on 6 randomly selected children whose cases will be reviewed by Ofsted in relation to the effectiveness of all services involved in that young person's journey.  This is a significant shift in format from previous inspection processes.  The peer review and self-assessment process identified those priority areas for improvement which correlated with the work streams in the action plan.  Through the self-assessment the service was pre-empting what the key lines of enquiry might be, these included the need for more jointly commissioned services, the rate of secondary expulsions/exclusions for those children with EHCPs and planning for parenthood.

 

4.20 The success of this Action Plan will, to a large degree, depend on the effectiveness of local partnership working among statutory partners and other stakeholders.  Noting that there were no representatives present from Adult Social Care, what assurance can officers from Education, Health and Social Care provide that the proposed governance structures adequately support and promote further partnership working across the sector?

·  This was acknowledged to be an area where further work was needed, but in part it depended on definition.  In many ways local services were working together effectively as service commissioners were holding a singular joint contract which was held by one part of the SEND system on behalf of the whole.  The whole approach locally was driven by strong commitment to joint commissioning and although there were services which were not held by a singular contract, these were reviewed together across the partnership.  There is a plan across the partnership to move toward a single integrated commissioned service and progress has already been made in respect of OT, SLT and ASD.  The parent carer forum was being re-commissioned as a jointly commissioned service across partner agencies.  Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools (WAMHS) was also a good example of good jointly commissioned programmes.  It was also noted that Public Health colleagues were re-commissioning a number of their services to reframe these as 0-25 years to acknowledge local SEND need.

 

4.21 The Cabinet member indicated that a recent summit of all services connected with SEND was very helpful in identifying which services were working well, and which were not and where action needed to be prioritised.  The Cabinet member welcomed the input of scrutiny into this process, noting that any additional recommendations would be welcome.

 

4.22 It was agreed that the Action Plan should also come back to the Commission next municipal year when it had been finalised and ratified by the partnership.  The Commission would be keen to see the development of a performance dashboard to support the implementation of the Action Plan to assist in future review and monitoring.  The Chair also agreed that the Commission would review key issues arising from previous scrutiny of SEND provision and forward these on to the Cabinet member and senior officers.

 

Agreed: SEND Area Action Plan to be included within the 2023/24 work programme.

 

Agreed: That SEND partnership should develop a performance dashboard to support service monitoring.

 

Agreed: That the Commission would review previous scrutiny of SEND services to identify priority areas for improvement and support preparations for the expected Ofsted inspection.

 

4.23  The Chair thanked officers for attending and responding to questions from members of the Commission.