Agenda item

Helean Hughes (Director – Education & Skills) will provide the Forum with an update on the progress of the High Needs Block Recovery Group – the minutes of meeting held on 12 November 2020 are attached for information.

The update will also include an update from Lisa Fryer (Education Officer, SEND Service) on the Independent Special School deep dive being carried out between September to December 2020.

Helean Hughes (Director of Education and Skills) gave a verbal update on the progress of the High Needs Block Recovery Group.  Helean highlighted the following:

·       The High Needs Block Working Group had last met on 12 November 2020 and the minutes of that meeting had been circulated with the Agenda papers;

·       As part of the high needs financial recovery plan the working group were overseeing the implementation and impact of 8 projects;

·       Dyslexia Friendly Schools – The British Dyslexia Association were evaluating the scheme that had been set up and schools were carrying out an audit of their provision.  This would be reviewed at the end of the school year.  The virtual training and this project had not been paused during Covid.  13 primary schools and 5 secondary schools had received 48 hours of training and a parent survey had been created.  Once the audits had been completed, action plans would be put in place and the schools would then work towards the quality mark;

·       The Inclusion and School Effectiveness project continues to be paused;

·       Work on the ELP and Resource Base project had now started, and Officers were looking at the provision across Wiltshire;

·       SEND Assessment and EHCP – Officers were currently collating data to get a clear view of priorities and from January 2021 they would reconfigure panels and needs assessments.  The FACT programme had provided resource for that;

·       Post-16 Transition – Someone from the LA would be leading on this project and again the FACT programme had provided resource for this.  This would start from January so further progress would be reported at the next meeting;

·       SEND Alternative Provision – A specialist provision was being looked at.  There would be a quality assurance process to hold AP providers to account, review provision and consider costs to ensure that there was effective AP with clear entry and exit criteria to get children back into mainstream sooner than previously; and

·       Early years – 2^nd round of HELM, 84 children were discussed, identified that we have improved as we have gone along and are now settling in with the right support at the right time.

Lisa Fryer (Education Officer – Independent Specialist Placements) provided a verbal update on the Independent Special School (ISS) deep dive that had been carried out since September.  Lisa highlighted the following:

·       That Lisa had moved over from being a Locality Officer as from 1 September 2020 into a 2-year secondment post looking at Independent Special School Placements as part of the high need’s recovery work.  Lisa was currently carrying out a deep dive of those children and young people with an EHCP who were currently in ISS’s to try to understand why the LA have a high usage of ISS’s and to look at ways to reduce the placements and become more creative to develop our local offer;

·       From reviewing the ISS cohort, it was highlighted that the greatest number of children was those with a primary need of SEMH.  Consideration would be given to look when they may be able to change placements, which may be when they move to different phases of education, to best meet their needs;

·       The SEND service had renewed its operational focus on ‘value for money’ from all ISS/ISP settings and would go through clear procurement processes and ensure what the costs would be transparent and where , placements would be time limited that there was an appropriate exit strategy;

·       They had optimised attendance at Annual Reviews as this had been easier with virtual meetings – having been trickier for ensuring attendance when held out of the county;

·       Work had been undertaken to understand the potential ‘Bring back’ cohort and what they might need so that this could inform the local offer, commissioning of places and what could be put in place to support local schools with this;

·       Placement sufficiency was a big issue and changes had been made to the Phase Transfer Specialist Panel format to prevent further escalation to ISS placements moving forward;

·       Officers were working with the Virtual School around placement moves and to minimise unnecessary escalation to ISS;

·       Since the start of the financial year c£300k savings had been identified, but there would continue to always be a demand for ISS placements, but these vary in costs; and

·       There was a HNB ISS savings target of £0.5 million savings for 2020-21 and 2021-22 and £1 million in 2022-23.  This would be hard to achieve and would need a sophisticated approach, however, the work was already seeing some benefits of understanding this cohort more deeply.

The Chair expressed how please he was that the secondment had happened, and this previously identified work was now carried out.

Cllr Laura Mayes, Cabinet Member for Children, Education and Skills asked about parent involvement in the discussions about the placements for children and young people and highlighted the importance of involving parents in the discussion.  Parents know what they want for their and they will want to fight for what is best for their children. 

Lisa Fryer responded that all the work was person centred and acknowledged that it was important to engage parents earlier as there is often a lot of anxiety of what is coming next when children move through the education phases.  Cllr Mayes asked what discussions were taking place with the Wiltshire Parent Carer Council around the strategy for this work.  Lisa Fryer confirmed that she had not yet had a deep discussion with the WPCC but that this would be a priority as they moved forward in January.

Helean Hughes confirmed that the WPCC was not currently represented on the High Needs Working Group and would take that as an action to seek representation for the meetings.

A Forum Member questioned asked if access had been denied to the authority for some out of county based annual reviews.  Lisa Fryer confirmed that previously whilst invites had been received to the meetings there had been issues with Officer attendance because of the distances involved, but now with remote working this made participation much easier.

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the updates on the High Needs Block Recovery Group and the Independent Special Schools deep dive.