The Strategic Director, Children’s Services will submit Document “A” which asks the Board to:

·         Take note of the proposals for SEND Transformation 0-25

·         Support the SEND transformation to provide additional capacity within the Early Years Enhanced Specialist Provisions (EYESP) to meet the complex health needs of some children with SEND, for example, through providing additional capacity from school nursing.

Recommended-

(1)       That the proposals outlined in Document “A” be noted and that Board Members and their organisations be asked to contribute to the formal consultation.

(2)       That the Board notes that the Strategic Director, Children’s Services in consultation with the Portfolio Holder is authorised to consider consultation findings from partners, stakeholders, staff, children and their families and implement the proposals.

                        (Lynn Donohue/Angela Spencer-Brooke – 01274 439610)

The Strategic Director, Children’s Services submitted Document “A” which asked the Board to:

·         Take note of the proposals for SEND Transformation 0-25

·         Support the SEND transformation to provide additional capacity within the Early Years Enhanced Specialist Provisions (EYESP) to meet the complex health needs of some children with SEND, for example, through providing additional capacity from school nursing.

A powerpoint presentation was also provided to support the report. Board Members were informed that the current position was:

·         There was both a growing population of children and young people in Bradford  and a growing population of children and young people with SEND

·         The complexity of special needs in Bradford was increasing – as a result there was a need for more specialist places in early years and education settings but Bradford was a highly inclusive local authority; only 1% of the school population was in Special Schools

·         Increasing the number of specialist places for SEND alongside a predicted population growth would still only result in around 1% of SEND pupils attending specialist provision

·         Working in a challenging and changing financial and educational landscape

·         With this came the opportunity to transform delivery of specialist provision and support for SEND in the District – intervening early to reduce costly intervention later in the life of a child or young person

The proposed model would continue to make a range of specialist services available across the district for children and young people with SEND and had been based on the evidence and findings of the SEND Strategic Review in Bradford 2016. Formal consultation received 79 responses containing a total of 16 comments and 144 questions.

The aim of the proposal was to improve outcomes and life chances for all children and young people in Bradford by ensuring the following:

·         Early identification, early assessment and early intervention of children with SEND

·         Increase in high quality places to meet a growing need for SEND

·         Effective use of the outstanding practice and provision across the district

·         Use of e specialist knowledge, skills and expertise in meeting the need of children and young people with SEND.

A proposal was outlined based on a two-locality model. Each locality providing 50 early years specialist places across two locations for children aged 2-5 years, with capacity for children aged up to 7 where appropriate; located in geographically accessible areas to serve the highest areas of SEND across the District  further places would continue to be provided in in  mainstream early years and educational settings. A SEND Specialist Centre of Excellence would be co-located with one provision in each locality.

The SEND Specialist Centres of Excellence would  comprise a range of SEND specialist practitioners, for example specialist teachers of autism, cognition and learning and behaviour, family support workers, portage home visitors, who would provide consultation, support, training and outreach work for all SEND early years children across all types of early years setting.

It was reported that there were currently 3 nursery schools (Canterbury, St Edmund’s, Strong Close across the District already providing integrated early years SEND and mainstream places; Through an expression of interest process a 4^th provision had been identified as Abbey Green Nursery School.

Members were informed that it was crucial to ensure there was sufficiency of places for children with SEND; identifying and assessing children with SEND early with  appropriate provision for children within the district. Delivery of the new offer would start in April 2018 and a simplified fact sheet had been prepared for parents’ consultation. The report was before the Board to highlight the growing population of SEND and the increase in children with more complex health needs; additional capacity/resources would be needed from school nursing teams.

Members commented on a number of issues which included:

·         Location of Early Years Enhanced Specialist Provisions?

·         Sufficiency of involvement of health professionals including community paediatricians and  school nursing and processes for assessments before the age of five?

·         Who could refer to provision and what was the capacity in the system to do early assessments and could demand for places be met?

·         Services for 16-25 year olds, life time planning, employment, housing etc.

·         Voluntary and private sector role in holiday provision, and inclusive time with siblings?

·         What were the connections with and arrangements for information about access to private and voluntary sector provision?

·         It was crucial that parents were informed about the changes and consulted early on; there had been a lack of responses from parents to the initial consultation; needed to look at how parents were consulted; was there anything GP’s/hospitals could do with engagement with parents?

·         Needed to get better at ensuring that Members of the public know about changes being proposed to services; Parents Forum was an area that could be used; BDSL (Bradford Disability Sport and Leisure) could put officers in contact with other voluntary and community sectors who would be keen to help contact more parents.

·         Could officers recirculate the local offer annual report to the Board, and how many people were using the local offer site.

·         Needed to look at how organisations could further integrate their services around children and young people with SEN.

·         Undertaking assessments for 0-5 year olds needed to be undertaken by Specialist Service from Paediatricians.

In response to Members’ questions it was reported that:

·         The EYESP Centres would be located in: Strong Close Nursery (Keighley East); Canterbury Nursery (Great Horton and Lidget Green); St Edmund’s (Girlington) and Abbey Grove Nursery (Manningham); officers would illustrate the centres on a map and send them to Board Members.

·         Further discussions would need to take place with community paediatricians regarding the impact for community paediatrics

·         Special schools did not have enough places so needed to build on the capacity of good and outstanding nursery schools to host additional places.

·         The referral system would be changing and referrals would now come from schools, GPs etc

·         There had been a backlog of referrals. Systems and capacity were continually being looked at.

·         Prior assessments would not be needed now, only referrals, which could be supported in schools; health advice and how reports could be accessed from paediatricians was being looked at.

·         Further dialogue was needed with the health sector in terms of community paediatric input and how health expertise to the new specialist provisions would be provided.

·         The model proposed was not looking at 16-25 year olds; there was still a lot of work to do around that group including building the independence and resilience of young people.

·         Specialist centres of excellence would work with different settings who had children with SEN and in future could better meet children’s needs.

·         The Local offer website provided information on private and voluntary sector provision.

·         For pupils who were on the SEND register, the schools received up to £10,000 per pupil; for pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan  schools receive  additional funding of £990 to £7,500 per annum per pupil.

Resolved-

(1)       That the proposals outlined in Document “A” be noted and that Board Members and their organisations be asked to contribute to the formal consultation.

(2)       That the Board notes that the Strategic Director, Children’s Services in consultation with the Portfolio Holder is authorised to consider consultation findings from partners, stakeholders, staff, children and their families and implement the proposals.

(3)       That the Board Members consider how their organisations can further integrate their services around children and young people with special educational needs in order to further improve outcomes for children young people and their families.

Action:           Strategic Director, Children’s Services