To receive Report No.109/2018 from the Director for People and to receive a presentation from Kevin Quinn, Service Manager: Early Help and Inclusion, Louise Crookenden Johnson, SEND Capital Programme Manager and Lesley Hawkes, Aiming High Lead Officer.

Report No. 109/2018 was received from the Director for People

The purpose of the report was to update the Scrutiny Panel on the developments and performance of the SEND and inclusion service and to note the drivers which required a whole system change.

A presentation on the report was received from Kevin Quinn, Service Manager: Early Help and Inclusion, Louise Crookenden Johnson, SEND Capital Programme Manager and Lesley Hawkes, Aiming High Lead Officer. The presentation has been attached to these minutes.

During the presentation the following points were noted:

·         SEND provision cost the Council in the region of £4 million

·         The Council wanted to grow a more organic Rutland approach with an in county service that offered better detection and early prevention, better trained staff and customized facilities.

·         It was important that a better awareness of the resources and the help available (the Local Offer) was promoted.

·         Learning from others and adopting best practice would help the Council improve.

·         Generally there was a feeling that the service was moving in the right direction although it still faced challenges.

·         It was paramount to ensure that the voice of the child and the parent were influencing the plan.

·         If parents had complaints about the plan they were offered mediation. The mediation was conducted by an external provider, Global Services.

·         If mediation was unsuccessful parents could move to the first tier tribunal process, although every attempt was made to avoid this process and engage with parents.

·         A new service of educational psychology, provided by partners in psychology, had been commissioned and had received excellent feedback from schools. There had been positive parental engagement in the process with a parental panel as part of the interview process who had designed their own questions.

·         The term ‘Local Offer’ referred to all of the provision of services by all partners, including schools, RCC,  and health services, that was available to children with or without an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP)

·         The Council had a statutory duty to publish this information and had developed a Local Offer website that was bolted on to the Rutland Information Service (RIS) website

·         The original format of the site had not been particularly user friendly or accessible and as a result was not well publicized.

·         There had been a considerable amount of consultation in order to get the new format to work and the icons, colours and wording had been developed with parents and carers.

·         Unfortunately due to a technical hitch, a video showcasing young people with SEND talking about their aspirations was unable to be shown. The video had originally been made for a parents’ event to highlight these aspirations as parents often had lower expectations for their children than the children themselves.

During the members’ discussion the following points were noted:

·         There had been a significant increase in the number of children receiving assessments. This was a result of;

a)    Improved medical practices which meant children lived longer and so they were more children going through the system.

b)    Better diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD

c)    Factors around system pressures which resulted in more children being pushed out of mainstream schooling because of the system capacity.

·         Thresholds for what schools thought they could cope with were slightly lower in Rutland compared to other local authorities, which impacted on the children and the finances of the authority.

·         Timescale pressure to deliver plans within the deadlines impacted heavily on the rest of the system.

·         There had been an increase in children whose needs could not be met locally and which were therefore met out of county.

·         Some schools were physically too small to be able to deliver the differentiated curriculum that children needed in that they could not accommodate extra staff or allocate more space.

·         As Rutland was such a small county, the Council was able to keep a close eye on SEND provision within academies as well as Local Authority funded schools.

·         From assessment to a plan, the conversion rate at Rutland was 96%. If the service refused to assess, parents had the right to go to a tribunal which often found in favour of the parents, or the Council settled before the tribunal, both of which meant that assessment took place.

·         Some parents expected plans which were far above what was reasonable or what was needed and so some sort of agreement and compromise had to be reached.

·         Transport was a separate budget but if children needed to go out of County for their education then the Council was responsible for the costs.

·         The change in the Ofsted hierarchy had helped the SEND service.  Previously Ofsted had been very driven by results which might have led to exclusion but this had now changed and generally Ofsted wanted to see an inclusive school offering a good level of education to all.

·         Rutland had 32% of its children with a plan in special schools which was a relatively high percentage. This equated to 60 children, with 49 of them attending special schools out of county.

·         Many of the specialist schools were in short supply and therefore charged accordingly.

·         The service had talked to other authorities to try and get a quid pro quo arrangement for out of county provision and to try and rationalize budgets.

·         Potential areas for development of the service included;

-       The alignment of services to increase capacity

-       An invest to save approach. Special schools received considerably more money than mainstream schools so if funding to mainstream schools was increased this could enable them to support the child whilst saving money eg. instead of £80k being spent in a special school, £50k could be given to a mainstream school to commission services and offer support.

·         The Park School’s early years provision was for 7.5 children at any one time. As an excellent, but high cost provision placement, this was being reviewed and discussions were taking place so that the numbers going through could be increased.

·         School nursing was under a new service provider and was now fully recruited to so mental health issues should be picked up at an early stage.

·         RCC would investigate the American system that Leicester City Council had adopted to deal with children with autism.

·         Alternative options to the UCC site would still be considered but it was hoped that a successful bid would be received from UCC so that the Council could move to the next stage, with a view to opening and taking children from 2020.

·         Many children who attended UCC were from out of county and although it was intended that the SEND provision would be filled with Rutland children, all children at the site would benefit from the upskilling of staff.  The skill base of all staff would be increased so that they could provide support to the specialist staff.

·         The headmaster of UCC was passionate about the project and had been visiting other schools that had this type of provision to learn best practice and also to learn about the type of staff that were needed, where they could be recruited from and the training that they required.

·         The new RIS and Local Offer website had gone live at the end of May so was still only in its first month of operation. Analysis of the number of hits and the time spent on the site would be carried out shortly.

·         Feedback on the site was either via the feedback ‘button’ on the site itself or through the user group that had been set up with parents. All feedback was actively encouraged.

Questions were submitted to the Chair from Councillor Waller who was unable to attend the presentation. The response from officers to these questions are attached to the minutes.

AGREED

1.    The Panel AGREED that a link to the video showcasing young people with SEND talking about their aspirations, would be sent to all panel members.

2.    That the panel NOTED the report.