Bath & North East Somerset - SEND reform – outline project plan
1. Objectives
Implement Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) reforms – i.e. the
SEND requirements in the Children and Families Bill 2013 and a revised code of
practice for SEN.
We do not intend to pay lip service to this reform, but to be aspirational. Our
aspiration therefore is to make our education, health and social care service delivery
for disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs up
to 25 truly integrated and family centred. This is intended to improve long term
outcomes for all disabled children and young people, with or without SEN, and all
children and young people with SEN, whether or not they are disabled.
This means –
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Establish sustainable arrangements for meaningful co-production of the ‘local
offer’ with disabled young people, parents and other key stakeholders and
producing the first ‘local offer’
Establish integrated arrangements for education, health and care (EHC)
assessment, planning and review, 0-25, based on co-production with children,
young people and their families
Establish arrangements for personal budgets linked to EHC plans.
Underpinned by –
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Full engagement of children, young people and parents both strategically in
developing the local offer and individually in assessment, planning and review
Full engagement of all partners including early years settings, schools and
16+ providers in developing the local offer and delivering integrated early help
alongside participation in integrated EHC assessment, planning and review
Joint commissioning of services to achieve integration of delivery
Culture change – a family (child/young person and parent carer) centred,
integrated approach rooted in people’s thinking and behaviour across the
workforce.
2. Scope issues
There are a number of key questions we need to address in the early stages of the
project –
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What do we mean or want to put in place by way of joint commissioning? Do
we want to pool budgets, and should we create a shadow/virtual pool as part
of the project? Which budgets are in scope?
Bath & North East Somerset SEND reform – outline project plan – v1 – 30/7/13
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How integrated do we want services to be – depth (more integrated working
across separate services, co-location, fully integrated structures) and width
(which services should be included)? And if we want greater integration when
and how (does not have to be within this project timeframe and maybe much
better if not – e.g. establish ‘shadow/virtual’ integration for now)?
Do we want to introduce key-working for EHC assessment, planning and
review and how (and if not, how do we propose to make this young person
and parent carer centred)?
How should we work with schools, settings and colleges to specify in more
detail how needs will be assessed at the Additional SEN Support stage, and
presumably this be through use of the CAF/existing integrated working
processes?
Do we want to provide personal budgets (PBs) more widely than just those
with integrated EHC plans (NB health service implementing PB’s for some
children April 2014)?
Clarity that this project is simply about implementing the SEND reforms, it is
not about making cuts to any budgets or reducing the number of children with
integrated EHC plans compared to those eligible for statements now. Also
that while the project may raise other issues, e.g. service integration, gaps or
changes needed to services in the local offer, we need to be clear about
whether such issues are ‘core’ to the project or not, and about their urgency if
not.
Clarity about the core objectives of the project which stem from the legislative
changes and the desire to be aspirational in achieving them while not overreaching ourselves.
We need to achieve clarity about integrated family centred working
arrangements for children and young people with SEN or disabilities or both,
and for those with SEN at all levels of need, within the framework set out
nationally. The draft framework currently excludes those without SEN from the
integrated education, health and care (EHC) plans proposed, and is relatively
unclear about how the arrangements should work for those with SEN below
the current threshold for a statement of SEN in the current framework.
3. Key risks
This simply outlines some key risks that are obvious now - we will need to risk
assess the project more thoroughly as part of detailed planning and keep risks
under review in each workstream as well as across the project as a whole.
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Key elements in the Bill and/or the draft indicative code of practice may be
radically changed and/or dropped at a late stage in our project.
Lack of clarity in the draft framework about practice around additional SEN
support (replaces current school action/school action plus) and exclusion
of disabled young people without SEN from the proposed integrated plans
– risk of weaker framework for these groups
Bath & North East Somerset SEND reform – outline project plan – v1 – 30/7/13
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Parents carers and/or young people may not trust the purpose of the
reforms and meaningful engagement may be hard to achieve.
Schools/early years settings/16+ providers may not fully buy in to what is
needed/wanted in respect of Additional SEN Support.
Other service developments, budget savings, changes to Council, Clinical
Commissioning Group (CCG) or Sirona Health and Care may cut across,
distract or reduce availability of necessary staff time and focus thus
undermining this project.
Loss of key personnel during the project.
4. Deliverables
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Sustainable process for initial development and future review of local offer.
First local offer.
Processes for delivering integrated EHC assessments, plans and reviews.
Systems for integrated decision making and delivering personal budgets
linked with integrated EHC plans.
Training for EHC staff in particular, and more widely as needed in the new
system, and to promote culture change and integrated family centred working.
Wider communications, events, workshops, meetings etc to achieve
engagement of all stakeholders as required.
5. Resources needed – finance and staff time
Significant staff time will be needed to work on the main work streams.
The local offer will require significant staff time. Development of webpages will
require additional capacity.
EHC assessment, planning and review will require staff time from across education,
health, children’s and adults social care. Developing and piloting integrated
assessment and planning, tracking children and young people’s information will
require significant admin capacity.
Joint commissioning and personal budgets will require staff time including key
finance and commissioning/ contracts personnel as well as key
managers/practitioners.
Services will need to commit to staff attendance at training and other events.
Finance will be required for venues, refreshments, materials including printing and
other costs in delivering events, meetings etc.
Finance may be required for changes to IT or other systems required to underpin the
changes.
Parent carers and young people will need us to meet the costs of their participation.
Bath & North East Somerset SEND reform – outline project plan – v1 – 30/7/13
Engagement of young people in particular will require additional support if not fully
achievable through existing young people’s participation infrastructure.
6. Project workstreams and timeline
These are set out in separate documents –
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Outline workstreams and timeline
Detailed description of workstreams.
Overall the project is intended to deliver the required changes by September 2014,
with a need for a review/consolidation stage to Dec 2014.
Lead officer – Charlie Moat, Project Officer Service Improvement
Signed off by the SEND reform steering group 30th July 2013
Bath & North East Somerset SEND reform – outline project plan – v1 – 30/7/13