Agenda item

The Committee received a report of the Corporate Director for Children and Young People’s Services which presented an update following the inspection of Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND) of Durham’s local area partnership and subsequent action plan (for copy see file of minutes).

Martyn Stenton, Head of Early Help, Inclusion and Vulnerable Children introduced the presentation that outlined the key inspection findings and strengths that the inspection had recognised. The presentation outlined the key milestones for the next 12 months. These milestones would see support with progressing priority neurodevelopmental assessments and reducing assessment waiting times back in line with national guidance, quality improvement work and more timeliness with completing new EHPs, additional specialist education provision, updated SEND webpage to improve signposting and refreshed workforce training. He went on to invite the SEND management leads who would be delivering the partnership action plan for their subsequent areas to give an overview.

Paul Shadforth, Strategic Manager SEND Strategy and Assessment shared plans to intensify work to further improve Education, Health and Care Plans (EHC) quality and assessment timeliness. Ensuring that EHC plans consistently and accurately reflected the child’s voice and direction of travel. Ensuring all multi-agency partners contributed comprehensively with high-quality information, and that all plans and annual reviews detailed children and young people’s needs, aspirations and next steps effectively. There would be on-going quality assurance work of EHCs looking at advice which informed the plan from Schools, social care professionals and Education Phycologists.

Director of Children and Young People’s Services County Durham Care Partnership, Jen Illingworth outlined plans to further strengthen work to reduce delayed access to CAMHS and neurodevelopmental pathways across the age range of children and young people. Further on-going work had been completed outside of the 4 identified areas to strengthen the board with decision making powers. The work had commenced in October 2024 including the appointment of a new Chair that would support the board to make decisions collectively ensuring the system worked efficiently for families, children and young people (CYP). The Consett pilot looked at YP and what help was need from Neurological development and general health and wellbeing. This work with schools and parents in the Consett area had been identified as valuable work by inspectors. The appointment of a task and finish group had worked on the process by which vulnerable priory cases were expedited to the relevant service quickly and a process was now in place. There was work on-going to produce a comprehensive data report which monitored assessment waiting time data across all services to inform the areas of the pathway which still required improvement.

Peter Mulholland, Strategic Manager Special Inclusion and Support highlighted work which ensured that CYP, their families and supporting practitioners had access to information regarding needs-led services that provided support, guidance and intervention at the earliest opportunity. Reporting data collection was under review and findings would be shared with the strategy group with the aim of ensuring that information collected was comprehensive in supporting informed decisions. Community health teams, there was on-going work focused around developing better value in education settings through identifying CYPs needs earlier with the aim of supporting inclusion partnerships and resources that kept CYP in mainstream education.

Councillor Deinali commented that the additional needs of CYP who were home educated would not be identified by school professionals and there was potential that extra support would not be directed to these families. Officers clarified that there was a panel which reviewed the needs of home educated CYP and EHC reviews were undertaken with parents to agree and support additional needs.

The Head of Early Help, Inclusion and Vulnerable Children responded to a question from Councillor B Coult regarding the need to communicate with school support staff who had daily contact with the child before a EHC was in place. He highlighted that the service did not directly employ school support staff but recognised them as key to supporting CYP by delivering the better value programme. The programme was an exciting career opportunity that supported the workforce and inclusion in being part of a child’s succusses.

Councillor Anderson noted the CQC report had seen improvements in the wating times to complete assessment and enquired what factors impacted on waiting times when there was a high number of SEND Children in schools awaiting assessment. The Head of Early Help, Inclusion and Vulnerable Children responded that an increased number of assessment requests had been received post-Covid which had been worked through by the same staffing levels, this had created a backlog in Education Phycology (EP) advice.  Additional advice services such as locum EPs had been brought in to support the 20-week assessment requirements. Priority cases were coming through within 20 weeks and plans are in place for the current level of work to be back in line with national averages by spring 2026. It was hoped that the government would offer support with funding and strategy to meet the national backlog.  However, demand in 2024 was 6% higher than the previous year, this was not an issue unique to County Durham and Government were aware of the issues.

Mrs Gunn commented that the processes of assessment and support were in place however the cost of the spend should not be the focus but the value of the spend on the outcomes for the child. There was a need to promote a culture of staff looking at the customer needs rather than the cost of interventions. There were constrains on finances and staff were being asked to look at other opportunities to support rather than the cost versus the benefit to the child impact. An example of this was the decision-making process based on the cost of an intervention e.g a £75 decision takes a much time to approve as £75k decision. The Head of Early Help, Inclusion and Vulnerable Children responded that inspection frameworks do not look at resources, but there were reports that go through cabinet such as the high need block report. The service had done a lot of work on resources, culture and processes.

It was agreed that Mrs Gunn would outline her question in an email to the Overview and Scrutiny Officer, Ann Whitton which would be shared with Head of Early Help, Inclusion and Vulnerable Children for a response.

Mrs Wilson highlighted that parents of children who were going through legal proceeding were being turned away from services such as CAMHS. This breakdown in the support of the child was impacting on the good work done by schools, parents and CYPS.  Would it be possible to get CAFCASS onto the board so they could have an input into processes that ensure better outcomes for the child.

The Head of Early Help, Inclusion and Vulnerable Children respond that children with a Social Worker who require a EHC would be picked up as a priority. Individual cases can’t be discussed through the Committee but outside of this meeting a discussion can be arranged.

Resolved: That the contents of the report and presentation be noted by the Committee.