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 promote inclusion; schools were held into account through the schools improvement service;

·           In response to a question Sal Thirlway stated that most schools wanted to be inclusive of SEND; some of the challenges was the growth of SEND and complex needs and greater expectations from parents and carers;

·           Sal Thirlway stated that the Council had a good relationship with the Regional Schools Commissioner, they were working in tandem to achieve the best results for the children;

·           Members asked for an update on the proposal to build a new special school.  Sal Thirlway stated that this would be a joint venture with Reading and West Berkshire local authorities.  The site for the school was in the process of being identified within Wokingham, the school would have 150 places.  This bid had not yet been signed by the Department for Education (DfE), therefore he could not give the timeframe yet;

·           Members asked if there was any documentation about the bid which was public available that they could receive.  Sal Thirlway agreed to investigate and report back;

·           The Chairman referred to the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) report which was presented to the previous meeting, which stated that the numbers for SEND were decreasing in Wokingham.  Sal Thirlway stated that the information contained the JSNA report looked at a five year trend, there was no breakdown year by year and this masked the information.  The numbers had gone up in the last 18 months, but were not as high as they were five years ago;

·           Members asked if there were any signs of hard to reach groups.  Carol Cammiss, Director of Children’s Services stated that girls with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) were more difficult to diagnose and were probably under represented; and

·           In response to a question Sal Thirlway stated that a lot of work was undertaken in Early Years to identify traits early. 

RESOLVED That:

1)     The Committee would receive an update on the SEND Strategy and Task and Finish Groups in September;

2)     The report be noted.