Belong

Experts at Hand

A new offer of expert advice and services from education and health professionals into mainstream education settings.
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education
This will require strong partnership working and development in collaboration with local settings, health partners and families. Local areas will define the exact offer and distribution of resources, according to local circumstances, but we expect that support will primarily come from expert education and health services and from expert outreach from specialist settings, including Alternative Provision (AP).
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education

Curating and creating resources for the Universal Offer

Scaling up will take time, so each local area should start establishing clear partnership governance to support delivery and fair allocation of expertise and resources. Initially, we expect the focus to be on upskilling of education staff to raise baseline knowledge across mainstream settings.
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education
icons for experts lead to docs, worksheets and video resources

Experts mentioned in the SEND Reforms include speech and language therapists, educational psychologists, alternative provision, ocupational therapists, and specialist bases.

Drawing on these skills, local authorites will be able to curate and create resources for SENCOs and teachers to support Universal Inclusion.

Belong supports this upskilling, with teachers accessing self-serve resources, and accessing "on-demand" training.

Curating and creating resources for Targeted and Targeted +

Practitioners will share effective strategies and interventions for commonly occurring needs and offer tailored guidance as needs change. 
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education
3 sets of experts talking to children leading to a masintream school

Belong allows teachers to seamlessly move from Universal to Targeted and Targeted + with graduated resources to support individual learner needs.

Drawing on these skills, local authorites will be able to curate and create resources for SENCOs and teachers to deliver Universal Inclusion, and support individual learners across all the Development Areas.

Guidance for Indivdual Support Plans (ISPs)

ISPs will be tailored in line with the layers of support, with guidance provided to help settings ensure they are high-quality.For children receiving Targeted support, ISPs should include evidence-based interventions from the National Inclusion Standards.
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education
all the people involved in writing a digital ISP

It's not clear from the consultation document if the guidance for ISP will come from Experts at Hand, in addition to the National Inclusion Standards.

However, teachers, SENCOs, and parent carers will be involved in creating ISPs.

One way or another, we would expect that there will be a level of support from Experts at Hand for ISPs. There may be a role for Experts at Hand to audit and assure the delivery of ISPs.

Working with Groups

LAs and ICBs will commission expert professionals to work directly with mainstream settings. This will give settings easier and earlier access to expert advice without a child or young person requiring an assessment or referral, improving early support for more children through group-based approaches.
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education
how groups are constructed

Groups are created by local authorities and Integrated Care Boards. They will consist of Schools and MATs, Specialist Bases, Special Schools, Early years settings, and Post-16. Groups will work together to support inclusion.

Experts at Hand will work directly with Groups which should bring them closer to individual learners, and their needs.

EHCPs

EHCPs will guarantee statutory entitlements to the educational provision from the Specialist Provision Package that each child and young person needs, and their expected outcomes, alongside care provision and statutory entitlements to health provision.Specialist Provision Packages will cover the full offer the child or young person requires, including core educational provision where this is different from the norm, and the range of additional services, intervention and resources that are needed to remove their barriers to learning, such as access to physiotherapy and augmentative communication devices.
SEND reform: putting children and young people first
Department for Education
specialist provision packages lead to EHCPs lead to Digital ISPs

It's not clear from the SEND reforms what role the Experts at Hand will have in EHCPs. We assume that Experts at Hand will support the delivery of "additional services, interventions and resources need to remove barriers to learning"