Issue - meetings

To receive and consider the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy and Action Plan report.

Sal Thirlway present the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy report.

Some of the points made by Sal Thirlway are listed below:

·           The SEND inspection had identified six areas for development, these were listed in the report;

·           The work timeframe was as laid out in the report;

·           The SEND Strategy was one of the key areas that had been identified;

·           Task and Finish Groups had been set up to address each of the six areas for development and improvement;

·           It was recognised that the SEND Strategy needed to be developed in conjunction with the stakeholders; this strategy was being co-produced with stakeholders and it was a working document;

·           Five key strands of work had been identified within the strategy: improving data, improved engagement with partners, improved transition arrangements (in particular from childhood to adulthood), improved provision and co-production activity;

·           There was an aspiration and commitment to move towards partnership work with stakeholders;

·           An action plan had been developed to deliver the strategy.

During the discussion of the item the following points were made:

·           Members wished to receive an update on the Strategy and Task and Finish Groups at the September meeting;

·           In response to a question Sal Thirlway stated that some families decided to get private reports because of the timeliness issue, others because they were in disagreement with the report results;

·           With regards to the timeliness of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCP), Members asked if parents who could afford private reports for therapy were jumping the queue.  Sal Thirlway stated the service was trying to avoid that from happening.  However, it was important to be careful to not ignore those reports and increase parents’ frustration;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that addressing the issue of timeliness of reports would reduce parents propensity to seek private assessments;

·           In response to a question Sal Thirlway stated that it was necessary to base decisions on evidence, that was the reason why the strategy was investigating this issue further;

·           In response to a question Sal Thirlway stated that SEND Voices Wokingham was involved in the development of the strategy, this was one example of collaborative work;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that the service had facilitated half-day sessions with partners, and also a national speaker had been invited to present to the service and partners;

·           In response to a question about engagement with parents, Sal Thirlway stated that parents would receive a post planning questionnaire, which would help the service to understand how the parents were feeling and this information would be fed back to the task and finish group;

·           In response to a question Sal Thirlway stated that the service was benchmarking against other local authorities as well as looking into the Council’s own key performance indicators; the service also used the Personal Outcome Evaluation Tool (POET) to measure its performance;

·           Councillor Kerr was interested to know how schools, colleges and academies were held into account.  Sal Thirlway stated that SEND was a challenge for many schools.  It was important to support schools and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 48