Issue - meetings

      Report of the Chief Executive

Councillor Jane Davies, Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, SEND, and Inclusion, presented a report highlighting the challenges associated with the renewal of the Wiltshire SEND&I Strategy within the previously agreed timeframe from 2020 to 2023.

The report sought an extension for the current Strategy of one year, with a renewed strategy to be produced by the summer of 2024. This was due to delays in implementing some activities due to Covid-19, and to await further details on potential changes coming from government.

There being no further comments, it was then,

Resolved:

1)    That an extension of a year is agreed for the current Wiltshire SEND&I strategy, due to the delay from COVID in adopting the current strategy document, the associated delay in undertaking some elements of identified activity and the developments associated with the Government Green Paper (published for consultation Summer 2022).

2)    Co-production activity for the next Wiltshire SEND&I strategy to commence in Autumn 2023 with a finalised strategy available in Summer 2024 and shared with Health and Wellbeing Board for approval as soon after completion as possible.

Reasons for Decision:

The process of writing a SEND&I strategy has a requirement for all elements to be co-produced with key stakeholders including partners in health and social care and local community representatives. A key tenet of a SEND strategy is also co-production from the very earliest stage with families and children and young people.

The COVID pandemic resulted in a delay to the SEND&I Strategy being presented to the Health and Wellbeing Board for approval. It was shared and discussed with this group on 24th September 2020. The pandemic did not result in a delay in all priority areas of the strategy but there are activities which have had to be amended to take account of challenges relevant to the pandemic.

A Green Paper ‘Right Support, Right Place, Right Time’ was published for consultation in the summer of 2022 which detailed proposed change to local area arrangements for SEND, including the formation of a local area board. Consultation on this paper has now closed and we await further detail on the shape of these proposals in the future. This means that there are some key areas about which at the current time we remain unclear.