Agenda item

Education, Health & Care Plan process and annual reviews

To consider PowerPoint presentation.

 

Note – the Chair will allow 30 minutes for this agenda item.

Decision:

Further to the meeting in December 2023, the Committee received a presentation which provided an update on the Education, Health & Care Plan (EHCP) process and annual reviews.

 

The Committee noted the update.

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed the Council’s Service Director – Education, A Walker and Head of SEND, C Merchant-Jones to the meeting for this agenda item.

 

Further to the meeting in December 2023, the Committee received a presentation which provided an update on the Education, Health & Care Plan (EHCP) process and annual reviews. Ms Walker and Ms Merchant-Jones highlighted the following:

·      the percentage of school aged children with EHC plans has continued to grow and 5% of school aged children have an EHC plan.

·      the rate of EHC plan issued within 20-weeks has reduced, owing to recruitment and retention issues and high number who had ‘become stuck’ in the assessment process.

·      work and focus on those children ‘stuck in the system,’ to make sure looking for a placement able to meet needs, which is supporting more effective and timely decision making

·      tribunals and concern about trajectory still and so are looking at practice and policy – annual planning meetings offered to every school across Somerset to identify children requiring support from specialist LA teams; clarify expectations with schools to ensure that appropriate advice and support in advance of meeting; additional staff in place to process annual review reports in a timely way.

·      the transformation work and redesign of team around the school.

·      challenges - system barriers; redesigning internal process; technology; capacity in the team remains a challenge and high turnover of staff.

 

The Committee discussed the update, asked a number of questions and made a number of comments, which were responded to at the meeting:-

·      data and system barriers requiring corporate support to change (slide 9) -  explained its around systems and having a good agile recording system. There are several system in children’s services and historically, the education one is not working well and this is a significant block – are investigating a different system which would be integrated with the social care system and are doing some work around financial aspects / due diligence.

·      question about the decrease in number of plans maintained by the Council following the focussed effort on ceasing plans undertaken in January and how this impacted on compliance and any knock on effect – do not believe it had a disproportionate effect on other parts of the system – just recognise that need to focus efforts on ceasing EHC plans where they are no longer necessary. Will follow this up to discuss outside the meeting.

·      question about the ‘success rate’ at tribunals – when look at the data and the sharp increase, driving us to ask the question about the process and for there to be a graduated (measured) process – a detailed response will be circulated with the minutes.

·      disappointment that the presentation had been provided late.

·      what does ‘reducing conflict in system’ mean – when the process goes well, it’s a process where professionals and parents come together and come up with a plan that is going to help the child progress better than they would otherwise have done; no conflict and should feel quite positive and afford feedback; this is not a universal experience.; have a graduated response tool and its about following process through.

·      smaller early years settings can struggle in getting assessments done – had positive meeting with Early Years providers and agreed it is about getting things in place early; process and communication is key and speed and effectiveness of support too.

 

The Committee thanked the officers for the update.

Supporting documents: