Agenda item

Officers will present the outcome of the recent Ofsted Joint Area SEND Inspection and the action plan that came from it.

Mandy Lawson, Assistant Director for SEND, presented the report with Alison Markwell, Designated Clinical Officer, who was working across the CCG and the Council to improve partnership and pathways.

Alison Markwell informed the Committee that there were three key lines of enquiry:

·       Effective identification

·       Assessing and meeting needs

·       Improving outcomes - i.e. 'are we making a difference?'

The inspection took place in December 2018 and inspectors commended H&F on how strong the inspection was. The borough was sent a letter from the minister and he even tweeted his congratulations. The report was clear that 'outcomes had improved' and there had been a 'sea change' since the creation of sovereign arrangements.

Mandy Lawson and Alison Markwell discussed some of the key positive elements that were highlighted by the inspection:

·       One of the reasons the borough did well was its honest approach - the self-evaluation element was very strong.

·       Moving away from the shared services arrangements enabled the service to be redesigned based on feedback from parents.

·       Joint-commissioning was a fundamental tenant and that was done well in Hammersmith & Fulham.

·       Educational outcomes for SEND were very strong, the borough had good special schools and SEND pupils were well supported in mainstream schools.

·       Mandy Lawson reported that they had great support from Councillors during the inspection too which was a key priority for them.

The borough also had a strong partnership with Parentsactive - they have been very effectively holding the Council and the CCG to account. Co-production of services with parents was very strong, and officers wanted to develop that further with young people too. The SEND team were working closely with the Strategic Leads for Co-production to take that forward.

The main areas for development highlighted by the inspection were:

·       Integrating pathways - officers were working with health providers and children's centres to move this forward.

·       Improving SEND support for children without EHCPs.

·       Therapy - officers were looking to redesign speech and language therapy services.

·       Improving the Local Offer website.

·       Fixed-term exclusions in the secondary phase - an AP review had taken place and officers were doing behaviour work with schools to address this.

·       Inconsistently written ECHP - the bulk of EHCPs were transferred during shared services and were not done to the quality officers would have liked.

·       Reducing the waiting time for an ASD diagnosis.

An action plan had been written to address these issues and monitoring and governance processes had been put in place. There was a SEND inclusion board with the Managing Director of the CCG and the Director for Children's Services - and a SEND transformation group focussed on implementation.

Councillor Mark Loveday asked officers to talk through the 'red' action on the tracker - action 15 that related to identification, assessment and early intervention. Mandy Lawson said this was a universal service for all children involving health visits that could pick up on delays in communication, socialisation, and motor development. The service should have been delivered jointly between early years and health visitors but that hadn't happened - it was delivered solely by health visitors at present.

Councillor Loveday asked what plans were in place to integrate the service. Officers said Public Health colleagues could provide an answer outside the meeting. The Chair asked for Public Health to provide an update on this at the next meeting.

ACTION: Anita Parkin

Councillor Lucy Richardson asked if there were holiday activities for looked after children - she noted that Camden had a theatre group for children in care for example. Jan Parnell said H&F worked with the Lyric theatre and commissioned them to do theatre and film projects with looked after children. Bev Sharpe added that Children's Services put together specialist packages for children based on their interests - and put on a wide range of residential retreats.

Councillor Larry Culhane took a moment to formally give the Council's thanks to Mandy Lawson, Nandini Ganesh and Parentsactive for the huge effort they had put into SEND services in the borough. Nandini Ganesh noted the inspection had been a challenge but said it had been a valuable experience.