4 April (Part 1) - The SEND inquest
The Council Leader tried to spin the recent calamitous OFSTED Report into some sort of Good News story - because it wasn’t all bad - but “His Majesty’s Chief Inspector requires the local area partnership to prepare and submit a priority action plan (area SEND) to address the identified areas for priority action” so she couldn’t ignore it totally.
As
is always the case when Bexley Council gets into trouble it set up a
sub-Committee; a larger one than usual. It comprised
Councillors Zainab Asunramu, Bola Carew, John Davey, Geraldene Lucia-Hennis,
Lisa Moore, Chris Taylor, Nicola Taylor and Janice Ward-Wilson. The following
is a very small extract from their report which neatly summarises the problem Bexley is facing.
It is only just over a month since the OFSTED report was published
(first report on BiB 26th February) but last
Tuesday the sub-Committee and their partners were ready to talk about their recommendations
in public and they were subjected to a two hour examination by Councillors.
The ad-hoc Committee first had to go through the
pretence of selecting a Chairman and Chris Taylor (Conservative, Crook Log) was
chosen. No other name was put forward and quite obviously it was all planned in
advance. How could anyone do a half decent job of being Chairman if they hadn’t
been given notice and made suitable preparations? Councillor Taylor was
obviously well equipped to handle the situation and opened by welcoming the
Council’s SEND partners to the meeting and reminded everyone that it was not
just the Council that was criticised by OFSTED but the whole of the SEND operation.
Seven or eight people from those outside organisations told of what they do
without saying anything that might be of great interest to anyone other than
themselves. Children are a priority especially around transitioning (†), building
relationships, on the journey, plans going forward, scoping with; all the buzz words one expects from bureaucrats. A sole GP was a
little critical. The time taken to process autism and ADHD cases is far too
long. The School Nursing and Assessment Services are failing.
There are only six nurses to cover 86 schools. “The budget doesn’t provide for the sort of service offered ten years ago.”
The same applies in other boroughs.
Councillor Janice Ward-Wilson (Conservative, Crook Log) read out was was
effectively an apology for the failures “but Bexley’s learning and changing
ethos will ensure the required improvements will be enthusiastically pursued. Unfavourable inspections are deeply disappointing but they are an opportunity to
improve. However we cannot overstate that detrimental outcomes for young people
with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are deeply regrettable and impact young lives for a long time”.
Councillor Peter Reader (Conservative, West Heath) asked how much the
improvement plan would cost to implement but a three and a half minute response
by the Acting Chief Executive and former Finance Director failed to provide an answer.
He also asked if there were any examples of children not properly prepared for
adulthood and where partners should have been preparing them for Year 9 onwards.
There were some, young adults who were “not known by Adults’ Services until they
went into crisis”. Often they are picked up by Mental Health Services and others
might be autistic who had few needs while at school but did so after leaving.
Cabinet Member for Adult’s Services, Melvin Seymour, said he was “enthused” by the plan accepting that “we don’t always get it right”.
Caroline Newton, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services
spoke for much longer than Melvin but I have failed to find anything that requires a mention here.
The formal submission to OFSTED will not be publicly available until it is signed off by them but a summary of planned improvements follows…
• Finalise and publish the Local Area SEND and Preparing for Adulthood Strategy.
• Finalise and publish the Local Area Strategic Action Plan.
• Review the information and advice available to young people as they prepare
for Adulthood.
• Identify areas of good practice we can learn from.
• Review and Improve the Preparing for Adulthood process.
• Review the format of the Post 14 Education, Health and Care Plan.
• Implement an enhanced quality assurance program to ensure Post 14 EHCP’s are
of good quality and include a clear plan of PfA support.
• Improve the identification of young people with less complex SEN who may need
advice and/or support to prepare them for adulthood and the offer we have for them.
• Review and enhance our monitoring of the completion of timely annual reviews.
• Ensure health and social care colleagues have notice of the annual review dates of
the children and young people they are working with and are able to provide timely
advice/reports to inform the review.
• Provide refresher training to SEN Case Officer and all professionals who provide
advice for EHCP’s.
• Review Health and Social Care advice templates.
• Review capacity of teams to ensure the annual review process and any amended
EHCP’s required are completed within timescales.
• Review and improve data and systems to ensure that the quality and timeliness of
EHCPs and Annual reviews is monitored and available for scrutiny by SEND Board.
• Implement an enhanced and comprehensive quality assurance process to ensure the
quality of EHCP’s is consistently good or better.
• Identify the current gaps and pressures on Occupational Therapy and Speech and
Language Therapy provision.
• Identify and implement a commissioning model that ensures effective joint
commissioning of Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy provision.
• Develop an electronic tracker that allows us to quickly identify any gaps in the
provision of EHCP Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy
provision to take affirmative action.
• Further develop the joint workforce strategy to address the national shortage of
Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists.
• Co-produce a Local Area SEND Co-production Strategy.
• Review the capacity of our engagement function.
• Set up a Children and Young Persons with SEN and Disabilities Group.
• Review and re-launch the “Voice of the Child SEN Toolkit”.
• Review the SEND Improvement Board Data Set.
• Better capture data to inform impact and key health data.
• Review the SEND IT System and processes.
† I think this refers to transitioning to adulthood and not what some might think.