Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) area ... - LGiU

Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) area inspections – written statements of action Date

6 October 2017

Author

Tom Simon LGiU/CSN Associate

Summary This is the second briefing on the Ofsted outcome letters following a local area’s inspection of Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) provision. The first, published in July, was an overview of the inspection arrangements. It can be read here and looks at the general themes and trends that have emerged from the inspections. This briefing looks at why some local areas have been required to submit a ‘Written Statements of Action’ (WSA) as the outcome of their inspection. It also reports examples of good and bad practice, which may help local areas that are yet to be inspected to improve their own performance. Finally, it looks at how some of the local areas that have been inspected have responded to the outcome of their inspections. This briefing will be of interest to local government elected members and officers, as well as those working in healthcare, with responsibility for implementing the new assessment arrangements and/or ensuring high quality outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

Update The inspections are an ongoing, expected to take five years to cover all local areas. Since the publication of the first briefing eight more inspection outcome letters have been published bringing the total to 39. The links below to the inspection outcome letters for the eight additional areas. Brent (15-19 May 2017)* Telford and Wrekin (22-26 May 2017) Bury (12-16 June 2017)* Wakefield (12-16 June)* Cornwall (3-7 July 2017) Windsor and Maidenhead (3-7 July)* Greenwich (10-14 July 2017) © Local Government Information Unit/Children’s Services Network www.lgiu.org.uk 251 Pentonville Road, London N1 9NG. Reg Charity 1113495. This briefing available free of charge to LGiU/CSN subscribing members. Members welcome to circulate internally in full or in part; please credit LGiU/CSN as appropriate. You can find us on Twitter at @LGiU

Rutland (10-14 July 2017) *local areas that were required to submit a Written Statement of Action

Briefing in full A note on process Information on the inspection process is found in the Ofsted framework and inspection handbook. Draft inspection outcome letters are sent to the Director of Children’s Services (DCS) and the CEOs of the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) covering the local area. The outcome letter is published on the Ofsted website, usually within 33 working days of the end of the inspection. Where a Written Statement of Action is required, the local area has 70 working days from receiving the report to submit an action plan.

Written Statements of Action A Written Statement of Action (WSA) is what inspectors require local areas with the most serious failings to submit. The WSA should set out how specific failings will be remedied. Of the 39 local areas inspected so far, 13 have been required to submit one. It is important to note that all local areas inspected, even the strongest ones, have multiple significant faults, identified by the inspection outcome letters as ‘areas for development’. Almost every local area required to submit a WSA has had at least three points the WSA is required to address in relation to their performance. While there are many different points raised across the thirteen local areas with WSA requirements, some areas had specific problems identified and other areas more general ones. Nonetheless, there are some points that arose across all or most of the WSA requirements. Except for Wakefield (see below), which had only one very specific requirement to meet through its WSA, all local areas had at least one of the following problems, and frequently all three. Broadly speaking these issues are: Leadership, Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans, and the Local Offer and engagement with parents.

Leadership Most local areas required to write a WSA have had significant problems with leadership. Given the complex and multi-faceted nature of SEND provision generally, and the implementation of the reforms specifically, it is also unsurprising that these problems come in many different forms. ‘Leadership’ is a broad headline that covers a wide range of weaknesses. For example, Middlesbrough was criticised for having a ‘fundamental weakness in the strategic leadership, governance and implementation of… the reforms’, as well as leaders having an ‘inaccurate view of the local area’s effectiveness’ and ‘no strategy for jointly commissioning services’. This is a general criticism of leadership in that local area, as well as specific criticism regarding the level of awareness leaders have and a lack of a strategy in a key area. By contrast, Brent was also criticised for its leadership arrangements, but the criticism was limited, highlighting a ‘lack of capacity at senior level’ and the failure to appoint a Designated Medical Officer (DMO). For Waltham Forest, the criticism was even more specific – the DMO role, while filled, ‘lacked sufficient capacity to address the areas for improvement that have been identified’. © Local Government Information Unit/Children’s Services Network www.lgiu.org.uk 251 Pentonville Road, London N1 9NG. Reg Charity 1113495. This briefing available free of charge to LGiU/CSN subscribing members. Members welcome to circulate internally in full or in part; please credit LGiU/CSN as appropriate. You can find us on Twitter at @LGiU

The types of leadership problems found by Ofsted include: 1. Lack of awareness – where leaders have a weak grasp of their local area, they also have a poor understanding of the effectiveness of the services required to meet local need. For example, Windsor and Maidenhead was criticised for its ‘poor use of management information to secure a robust overview of the local area’s effectiveness’. 2. Joint Commissioning – in some cases problems derive from the lack of awareness: if you do not understand the problem, how are you going to solve it? In other cases, local areas suffered from poor arrangements for carrying out joint commissioning, such as Sefton and Bury, the latter being told ‘there is no clear process by which partners across education, health and social care agree at a strategic level what is needed for improvement and how they will work towards achieving it’.

Education Health and Care (EHC) Plans Problems with EHC plans is another feature for local areas required to submit a WSA, just as it is for local areas generally (see the first briefing on this subject). Dorset is required to address the low conversion rates from statements to EHC plans. Surrey has similar issues and Suffolk is also the same, but with the added problems of poor quality Plans and issues with the delivery of the support required to implement the Plans. Waltham Forest must address a problem with ensuring health providers contribute properly to its EHC plans. Weaknesses in these areas then feed in to problems with joint commissioning as they undermine awareness of the actual requirements of Children and Young People (CYP) with SEND. (Local areas should note that the transitional period for transferring existing statements into EHC plans ends on 31st March 2018.)

The local offer/engagement with parents and carers Of the thirteen areas required to submit a WSA, all of them apart from Wakefield, Waltham Forest and Sandwell have significant problems of some kind with the local offer and/or communicating or working with parents/carers. (Both Wakefield and Waltham Forest were required to submit a WSA for unusually specific reasons.) There are five problems that emerge in this category: 1. Poor communication with parents – a general criticism of the local area’s effectiveness at communicating with parents about the SEND provision: Dorset, Hartlepool and Sefton 2. Ineffective promotion of the local offer – a more specific communication problem relating to the local offer: Bury, Middlesbrough, Rochdale and Surrey 3. Lack of understanding/awareness of the local offer – this relates to points (1) and (2): Bury, Rochdale and Suffolk 4. Poor quality of the local offer – the services available are either insufficient in quantity or range, and/or the quality of the services available is poor: Middlesbrough and Suffolk 5. Weakness of co-production – local areas must involve parents and carers in developing the local offer through a ‘co-production’ process: Brent, Sefton, Surrey and Windsor and Maidenhead.

© Local Government Information Unit/Children’s Services Network www.lgiu.org.uk 251 Pentonville Road, London N1 9NG. Reg Charity 1113495. This briefing available free of charge to LGiU/CSN subscribing members. Members welcome to circulate internally in full or in part; please credit LGiU/CSN as appropriate. You can find us on Twitter at @LGiU

If a local area did not receive a WSA requirement, or that, among those that did, the WSA doesn’t refer to a particular point, then it does not necessarily mean that there is no room for improvement on that point. The specific points included in a WSA requirement identify a serious area of concern that the inspectors concluded was particularly problematic. In other words, just because only Middlesbrough and Suffolk have received a WSA requirement with the ‘poor quality of the local offer’ issue, this doesn’t mean all other areas have high quality local offers. A closer look at inspection letters is needed.

A note on Wakefield It is also important to realise that some local areas inspected, but not required to submit a WSA, nonetheless had problems in these areas. The experience of Wakefield also shows that a local area could be judged well on these issues but still be required to submit a WSA, if they have a specific serious fault. In Wakefield’s case it was a weakness in arrangements for completing specialist diagnostic assessments of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and a lack of assurance that the weakness was being addressed with sufficient urgency or robustness

Good practice Every local area inspected has at least some strong points, even those that have been very heavily criticised in their inspection outcome letters. This briefing does not categorise or summarise them as there are too many and they are too varied. However, it might be helpful to highlight a few key examples that stood out from the inspection outcome letters as good practice that other areas might learn from. •

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A ‘Tell it once’ approach – A common weakness in multi-agency work relating to SEND is that parents/carers and children find they must provide the same information multiple times, to different agencies. Some local areas were praised for putting systems in place that seek to bring together the relevant professionals from different agencies to hold one meeting with the parents/carers and children and avoid this problem. Leeds is one good example of this. Bexley’s ‘My Black Book’ approach was also praised as it provides children with SEND with a comprehensive record that can be used across agencies. Early identification of SEND - inspectors were very positive about areas that do this well, such as Nottinghamshire, Leeds and North Yorkshire. Getting this right early on not only helps children get off to a good start and enables more effective commissioning of services, but it also helps minimise the number of cases that parents/carers take to the SEND tribunal. Herefordshire’s Single Point of Referral Team (SPORT) was highlighted as a success in this area, as was Southampton, in particular it’s Every Child a Talker (ECAT) scheme to identify and help young children with mild speech and language issues. Support for schools – schools play a very important role in identifying children with SEND. Providing the schools with the right support to do this effectively is an area that inspectors felt both Bexley and Southampton did particularly well. Bexley was praised for the effective SEND guidance provided to schools by the local area. Teaching School Alliances, working through the Southampton Advisory Outreach Service (SAOS), has been a success for the local area.


There are many other examples of good practice. The support given in Gloucestershire and Hillingdon (Project Search) to school leavers with SEND to find employment is worthy of note. Another interesting and effective example is the partnership in Southampton between the Youth Offending Service with speech and language therapists. There are many more.

Bad practice Almost all ‘bad practice’ identified in the inspection outcomes takes the form of failing to do something that should be done, or doing it badly. Suffolk, one of the areas required to produce a WSA, is an example of ‘positive’ bad practice. The inspection highlighted something to guard against – its Great Yarmouth and Waveney Clinical Commissioning Group jointly commissioned services on a joint area basis with Norfolk. This sounds like a reasonable thing to do, but it meant that key performance indicators for the parts of Suffolk covered are not available as the information was not kept distinct.

Local area responses to the inspections The Ofsted framework and the inspection handbook state the process which follows an inspection given a WSA requirement. There is no requirement on local areas without the WSA requirement to produce or publish a response/plan although many have done so. Brighton and Hove was one of the earliest local areas to be inspected and had a largely positive outcome to its inspection. The linked document is Brighton and Hove’s response to the inspection and is a useful summary of the local area’s experience. It outlines the steps taken to prepare once Ofsted had notified the Council about the inspection, and explains how the inspection process took place over two weeks, with the first week spent preparing the ground with the local area. The inspection proper took place in the second week. It also explains how they managed the inspection and their thoughts/feedback on the experience and the outcome. The document is useful for any yet-to-be inspected local area, but as it was one of the first inspections carried out, some processes may have been refined subsequently. Some other examples of responses of local areas to their inspection outcome letters can be found below. These other examples are different to the Brighton and Hove one as they are all project management documents, setting out objectives, timescales, responsibilities and so forth. Bexley Hartlepool* Hertfordshire Sandwell* Sefton* Surrey* *Denotes a local area with the WSA requirement © Local Government Information Unit/Children’s Services Network www.lgiu.org.uk 251 Pentonville Road, London N1 9NG. Reg Charity 1113495. This briefing available free of charge to LGiU/CSN subscribing members. Members welcome to circulate internally in full or in part; please credit LGiU/CSN as appropriate. You can find us on Twitter at @LGiU

Comment Council members and professionals involved in this area of work will be well know of its complexity and multi-faceted nature. The inspection outcome letters refer to a huge range of areas of work, both as strong points and as areas for development for local areas. The complexity of this field is shown by fact that local areas all have strengths and areas for development and that every local area has a very different profile. The outcome letters show that just having many weaknesses or a shortage of strengths does not necessarily mean a local area will receive the WSA requirement. It depends on the type of weaknesses, i.e. how fundamental the weaknesses are to the work of the local area and to the implementation of the reforms. Dorset’s inspection identified many strong points, such as its residential care provision for children with complex needs and a high-quality careers advice service, but was given the WSA requirement because of failings at a strategic level. It is also worth remembering that a local area might receive the WSA requirement for very limited, but important, reasons, such as with Wakefield. Overall, there are some clear indicators that local areas seeking to achieve highly in relation to their SEND work and the inspections should look to have. They are: • • • • • •

Strong strategic leadership, based on a high level of organisational self-awareness and realism Effective joint commissioning and inter-agency working arrangements, both for sharing information and for commissioning services Systems that enable children’s SEND to be identified early and accurately Effective and timely issuing of EHC plans, including new EHC plans, as well as transferring existing statements; and the avoidance of weak input from health and social care. A strong local offer that is well communicated to parents, carers and children. Effective parental engagement so that parents, carers and children feel listened to and are able to contribute to the work programmes where appropriate.

The one area that stands out as being very challenging for local areas to get right is the Local Offer, and parental engagement generally. Local areas without the WSA requirement that received praise for their work in this field still had aspects of it where the inspectors felt they fell short. Southampton is a good example of this – it was one of the best performers, but still had weaknesses. Almost all areas with the WSA requirement were pulled up for some reason on this front. This point is perhaps unsurprising, given that parental choice and engagement are central themes of the reforms. Given the current attention on mental health generally, it is also worthwhile for local areas to think about the quality of their Children and Adult Mental Health Service (CAMHS). Although it is not something that has been at the root of local areas being given the WSA requirement, the inspection outcome letters frequently refer to it. Finally, for local areas that receive the WSA requirement, the best way to respond seems to be to acknowledge the problems identified, to start work quickly and to develop a detailed plan of action with clear objectives, including ‘end dates’ for when the issues identified are expected to be resolved to a satisfactory level. © Local Government Information Unit/Children’s Services Network www.lgiu.org.uk 251 Pentonville Road, London N1 9NG. Reg Charity 1113495. This briefing available free of charge to LGiU/CSN subscribing members. Members welcome to circulate internally in full or in part; please credit LGiU/CSN as appropriate. You can find us on Twitter at @LGiU

External Links Ofsted guidance on the inspection process Ofsted framework: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-area-send-inspectionframework Ofsted Inspection handbook: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-area-sendinspection-guidance-for-inspectors

Related Briefings Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) area inspections – overview (July 2017) DfE consultation - High needs funding formula and other reforms (March 2016) Joining the Dots: Have recent reforms worked for those with SEND? – policy research (Nov 2015) Ofsted and CQC consultation: inspection of local area SEND arrangements (October 2015) Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Pathfinder Programme: Final Report (August 2015) Special educational needs and disability – implementation reports (January 2015) SEN and Disability transitional arrangements – draft DfE guidance: (June 2014) SEN and Disability Reform: readiness – DfE research: (May 2014) Children and Families Act 2014 (No.2): (April 2014)

For further information, please visit www.lgiu.org.uk or email [email protected]
