Hammersmith & Fulham Local Area Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy 2023-2028

Hammersmith & Fulham Local Area Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy

2023-2028

2 Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy

Contents

Acronyms used in this document 3

Key priorities 7

Introduction 4

Measuring success 9

Vision 4

Governance 9

Shared principles 4

Appendix A: Local area co-production framework 11

Co-production 5

Appendix B: Glossary 12

Hammersmith & Fulham context 6

Impact of Covid pandemic 7

3 Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy

Acronyms used in this document

4 Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy

Introduction

Vision

Our Hammersmith & Fulham SEND Strategy 2023-2028 sets out our local area vision and priorities for supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their families, and how we will work together to deliver these over the next five years.

Children and young people lead happy, healthy, and fulfilling lives and achieve their life goals.

Shared principles

Underpinning our vision is a set of jointly agreed principles. We want Hammersmith & Fulham to be a place where all children and young people with SEND and their families:

This strategy, co-produced with children and their families, involves all partner agencies in Hammersmith & Fulham who have responsibilities for commissioning and providing services for children and young people with SEND including local authority services, education settings, health providers and the voluntary and community sector.

• Feel welcomed, included and valued. • Have a voice, are listened to, have choice and control and are equal partners in decision-making about their own lives. • Have their needs identified early and accurately, with effective support put in place quickly. • Benefit from joined up support from staff who have the right knowledge and skills. • Have access to high-quality education locally. • Are clear about what they can ordinarily expect from their local services and education setting. • Have high aspirations for their future with a clear focus on life outcomes across education, health and care. • Have access to the right information at the right time.

The strategy applies to all children and young people with SEND aged 0 to 25 who have an Education, Health and Care Plan or receive SEND Support. It is set within the challenging context outlined in the Department for Education’s (D f E) SEND Green Paper: Right Support; Right Place; Right Time, published in March 2022 following a national SEND Review. We are committed to supporting all our children and young people to have the best possible outcomes so that they go on to have fulfilling lives, living healthily and as independently as possible.

This strategy will sit alongside our Early Intervention Strategy and SEND Sufficiency Strategy and will align with other strategies as they are refreshed and developed including our Joint Commissioning, Co-production, and Autism strategies.

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Co-production

Our vision for co-production is that it becomes the way of working in our local area, transforms culture and practice and delivers positive life outcomes.

We reached out to children, young people and their families in a number of different ways as shown below.

An overview of this is provided on page 11 in Appendix A: Local area co-production framework

We’ve used an active and flexible approach to co-production in the development of this strategy informed and shaped by residents to reflect the diversity of our local population.

Re think Champions

Parent Reference Groups Parent/Carer voice

You said, we will Youth Voice Resident-led Hundreds of conversations

Coffee mornings Surgeries Parents active

Surveys SEND I A S S Annual Reviews Youth Council

Youth-led Peer researchers

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Hammersmith & Fulham context

Supporting children Snapshot of children and young people with an E H C P open to Children’s Social Care Health providers NHS North West London with SEND in H&F 4 maintained nurseries Central London Community Healthcare 39 are children looked after 36 primary schools 15 have a child protection plan 11 secondary schools Chelsea and Westminster Hospital 57 have a child in need plan 1 dedicated Sixth Form and 1 F E College 32 are care leavers Imperial NHS Trust 4 special schools (Additional children receive support under C S D P A legislation) West London Mental Health NHS Trust 2 resourced provisions 60 young people are supported by Adult 28 Gp practices Stephen Wiltshire Centre 1 Commissioned A P provider Social Care Snapshot of children and young people with E H C Ps Percentage of pupils with an E H C P increase The percentage of pupils E H C P placements in mainstream provision 52% children and young people with an E H C P are placed 1,511 children and young people with an E H C P in H&F with an E H C P increased from 3.5% in 2015/16 to 5.1% in 2021/22 resident in H&F in mainstream provision This is 3% of the residents Compared with national aged 0-25 in H&F This is higher than London average of 40.8% and national averages (D f E SEN2 2022) (Snapshot 30 September 2022) Primary needs Two-thirds of E H C Ps in H&F Snapshot of children Schools 100% of schools rated good or outstanding by Ofsted and young people receiving SEN Support 2,195 children and young people with SEN Support in H&F schools – 10.8% of identify Autistic Spectrum Condition and Speech, Language and Communication West London College rated good Needs as the primary need the school population There is a rising trend in the identification of Social, Emotional and Mental Health 1,625 (74%) are H&F residents (S E M H) as a primary need (D f E Autumn School Census 2022) Data correct Autumn 2022 7 Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Strategy

Impact of Covid pandemic

Priority 1 – Robust identification, assessment, and early intervention

What we plan to do:

• Strengthen and embed the universal and

targeted offer through evidence-based interventions and use of the graduated approach to SEND.

• Develop an early intervention approach

to meeting Speech Language and Communication Needs including the expansion and embedding of the Joint Communication Team.

• Pioneer inclusive technology to support

independence as young people grow up.

• Develop a whole system approach to support

early identification pre diagnosis for those awaiting a formal assessment of Social Communication Difficulties.

• Ensure that Education, Health and Care Needs

Assessments are undertaken within statutory timescales and that E H C Ps are of a consistent quality and standard.

• Increase the uptake of 2.5-year-old Healthy

Child programme development checks.

Whilst there was a strong partnership response to the Covid-19 pandemic locally, the impact on children and young people with SEND is continuing to emerge. We know from national research, Ofsted – SEND: old issues, new issues, next steps June 2021, that the lost months of education, the narrowing of access to services and community resources, and the financial and emotional impact on families has had a disproportionate impact on disabled children and those with SEN and their families. Local feedback resonates with this and is informing our priorities.

Key priorities

We have identified the following key priorities:

• Robust identification, assessment and early intervention of children and young people’s needs. • Development of sufficient inclusive and effective local provision. • Successful preparation for adulthood including person-centred pathways through education, health, and care.

How will we know we are making progress? • Improved educational outcomes for children with an E H C P or SEN support. • Increased uptake in 2.5-year-old checks with Health Visitors. • The number of children achieving a good level of development on the foundation stage profile increases in line or above the national average. • Improved waiting times for assessment. • Schools are confident about meeting children’s SEND when they arrive in school reception classes and use the graduated approach to SEN well. • SEN Early Years Inclusion Funding (S E N I F) is used effectively to address emerging needs for children in Private, Voluntary and Independent Early Years Providers.

Underpinning these priorities is our commitment to:

• Strengthening our outcomes-focussed quality assurance framework. • Continuing to embed co-production as our way of working. • A system wide approach at all levels in which SEND is everyone’s business. • Multi-agency workforce development.

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Priority 2 – Development of sufficient inclusive and effective local provision

Priority 3 – Successful preparation for adulthood (P F A)

What we plan to do: • Deliver a single strategy and plan for SEN Sufficiency that is inclusive of outreach provision and Alternative Provision arrangements. • Development of provision to meet Social Emotional and Mental Health Needs in the local school system. • Develop and implement an Inclusion Charter. • Support our school network to ensure they have the right skills to identify needs quickly and put in place appropriate provision at SEN support. • Co-produce refreshed annual review guidance, including toolkit, ensuring children are at the centre of what we do. • Support and empower our children and young people to be co-producers, so they can actively participate to ensure outcomes are wide ranging and across a broad range of cultural pursuits.

What we plan to do: • Strengthen the young person’s voice in their own transition planning. • Implement the new 16-25 young people’s mental health service. • Expand inclusive employment locally. • Develop a local area protocol and approach for managing transitions with the care plan at the core of provision and pathway planning. • Develop robust processes for joint planning current and future cohorts to inform commissioning intentions and appropriate individual pathways. • Produce a local area P F A pathways document for professionals, parents and young people to ensure routes are clear and defined across Education, Health and Care. • Develop a local area P F A toolkit to support a shared understanding of pathways and agency/collective responsibilities in delivering robust P F A outcomes for children and young people. • Review of unit costs and approach to funding post 16 places jointly with Commissioning Alliance partners.

How will we know we are making progress? • More staff will have accessed training to develop the right skills to identify needs quickly and put in place appropriate provision at SEN support. • More children placed in local schools. • The number of suspensions of young people on SEN support in secondary schools decreases. • The number and timeliness of children reintegrated into mainstream school from Alternative Provision will improve. • Parents will have more confidence in mainstream schools’ capacity to meet needs and include children successfully. • Increased confidence of settings to effectively support positive outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

How will we know we are making progress?

• Pathways for children and young people

with SEND will be clear and show the different options and access arrangements. Children, young people and their families will experience greater choice and control over decisions and their journey will be in line with their aspirations.

• Young people will have been actively involved

in their holistic plans.

• With greater parental confidence in

mainstream schools, more children transfer to mainstream secondary and further education colleges.

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• Careers information, advice and guidance is

inclusive, positive about aspirations and leads more young people with SEND into jobs they want to do, with more young people taking up supported internships and/or moving into paid employment when they are work ready.

• More young people with SEND living and

travelling independently with opportunities to join in local community activities.

(S E F); stakeholder feedback; co-production activities; relevant H&F datasets; and regional and national benchmarking and work is underway across the partnership to build on our existing datasets and develop a set of agreed success measures for our SEND Data Dashboard.

Governance

The Children’s Education, Health, and Social Care Partnership Board spans the range of local area partners involved in working with children and young people. It is chaired by the Strategic Director for Children’s Services and the Borough Director for H&F in the NHS North West London Integrated Care Board. The Partnership Board holds the local area to account on the progress of actions and priorities in this strategy.

Measuring success

As part of this five-year strategy, we have identified performance areas against each priority for which Smart targets will be set and reviewed at least annually. We are co-producing our SEND Outcomes Framework with key stakeholders.

Following creation of the Children’s Education, Health and Social Care Partnership Board, the SEND Delivery Group will provide oversight of the SEND Strategy and Self Evaluation and subsequent programmes of work; responsible for monitoring the roadmap for SEND for children and young people (0-25).

SEND systems can be complex and make it difficult to see whether the changes in the system are making a difference for children and young people. We will be using a range of information including audit, data and stakeholder feedback to tell us how well we are performing, what’s working well and where we need to act to achieve change.

We will refine our baseline data which is made up of information from: our Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, our local area SEND self-evaluation

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SEND governance structure

Mental Health and Frailty Campaign Diabetes Campaign Health Campaign Wellbeing Campaign Children’s Education, Health and Social Care Partnership Board High Needs Block Performance Board Early Intervention C Y P Mental SEND Delivery and Support Health subgroup Group Group Key Local Area Corporate structures S E M H Steering C Y P E W M H Partnership Local Area Children’s Services structure Group Group

SEND Delivery Group governance structure

Autism Partnership

Adult Independent Living Commissioning

Key Local Area Adult Social Care structure

Board (all age)

Steering Group (Learning Disability, Autism, Transition and

SEND Delivery Group Local Area Children’s Services structure Mental Health) SEN Sufficiency/ Speech, Language and Communication SEND Clinical Preparation Quality Assurance Reference for Adulthood Ordinarily Group Available Needs

Co-production

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Appendix A: Local area co-production framework

Our vision for co-production is that it becomes our way of doing things with residents not to them, that it transforms culture and practice and delivers positive life outcomes

• Surgeries to understand and respond to individual issues. • Joint Training sessions. • Digital tools to capture different voices. • Parent Carer representatives on executive boards & forums. • Log of issues & regular catching up sessions to co-produce solutions. • Peer researchers & young champions driving mental health co-production work.

Our shared approach • We value the voices and lived experiences of our young residents, parents and carers to shape a happier, healthier, and safer borough. • Young people as influencers, co-producers and agents of change. • Decisions about children and young people are made together. • Diversification of approaches so that voices fully reflect our local population. • Person-centred and inclusive. • Challenge exclusion and remove barriers. • Building positive relationships. • Use co-designed success measures to track progress. • Honest about quality, value and what’s possible.

Parents and carers

• My voice and my child’s

voice are valued and things are done with me.

• Feel supported by

professionals and have a peer support network.

• I can become/understand

how I can be an ‘ally’ for my child and support their life plans.

Professionals

• Value children and young

people with SEND and their families.

• See young people,

children and families as assets and welcome them as equal partners.

• Work with children and

young people with SEND to co-produce SEN support and E H C Ps built on individual strengths, capabilities and life plans.

• Are prepared to compromise,

to change culture and practice.

What this means for stakeholders

Children and Young People • Feel welcome, safe, happy and learning. • A feeling of independence and control. • Feeling welcome and valued. • Being fully involved in planning and decisions that affect me so I know what you’re doing and why. • Feeling safe to talk about my own life goals and what I need to achieve them. • Activities designed around what I want and not someone else’s idea of what I need.

How we are doing it • Joint calendar of events and roadshows, reference groups. • Youth Voice Network & Youth Council, actively participating in ‘local offer’. • Parent-led focus groups alongside multi-agency professionals.

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Appendix B: Glossary

Additional Needs Additional needs describes a group of children or young people who require additional support to help them make improved progress or catch up, which may be a short-term intervention or a longer-term strategy.

Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (E H C N A) A process of assessment referred to as an education, health and care needs assessment carried out by the Local Authority for a child or young person 0-25. An E H C needs assessment is a detailed look at a child’s special educational needs (SEN) and the support her or she may need in order to learn.

Alternative Provision (A P) Education in a setting that is not a mainstream or special school. The education should be based on the needs of the child and can be provided through a variety of routes, including pupil referral units (P R U s).

Education, Health and Care Plan (E H C P) An E H C P details the education, health and social care support that is to be provided to a child or young person who has SEN or a disability. It is drawn up by the local authority after an E H C needs assessment of the child or young person has determined that an E H C P is necessary, and after consultation with relevant partner agencies.

Annual Review (A R) An annual meeting, or every 6 months for under 5s, to review the Education Health and Care Plan. At this meeting parents/carers, the child/young person and professionals review the needs of the child/young person and what support they require. After this meeting, the L A then decides whether an E H C P it is still needed and whether any changes should be made to the Plan.

E W M H Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health – this is a partnership group within the SEND Governance landscape.

Co-production Co-production is a collaborative approach to decision-making and service design that recognises for organisations to deliver successful services, they must understand the needs of their users and engage them closely in the design and delivery of those services.

F E Further education includes any study after secondary education that’s not part of higher education (that is, not taken as part of an undergraduate or graduate degree).

Graduated Approach The SEND Code of Practice says that schools should follow a graduated approach when providing SEN Support. This is based on a cycle of: Assess, Plan, Do, Review.

C S D P A Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. An Act to make further provision with respect to the welfare of chronically sick and disabled persons; and for connected purposes.

H&F Hammersmith & Fulham Council, the local authority.

D f E Department for Education. The Department for Education is responsible for children’s services and education, including early years, schools, higher and further education policy, apprenticeships and wider skills in England.

I C B Integrated Care Board – the local NHS organisation responsible for the planning and delivery of services to meet the health needs of the population.

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Glossary continued

Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (J S N A) Joint strategic needs assessments analyse the health needs of populations to inform and guide commissioning of health, wellbeing, and social care services within local authority areas. The J S N A provides an evidence base for health and wellbeing boards to decide on key local health priorities.

S E M H Children and young people may experience a wide range of social and emotional difficulties which manifest themselves in many ways. These may include becoming withdrawn or isolated, as well as displaying challenging, disruptive, or disturbing behaviour. These behaviours may reflect underlying mental health difficulties such as anxiety or depression, self-harming, substance misuse eating disorders or physical symptoms that are medically unexplained. Other children and young people may have disorders such as attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder or attachment disorder.

Ofsted Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. Ofsted inspect services providing education and skills for learners of all ages.

Outcome An outcome can be defined as the benefit or difference made to an individual as a result of an intervention. It should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound (Smart).

SEND I A S S Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information Advice and Support Services. SEND I A S S offer information, advice and support for parents and carers of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). This service is also offered directly to young people.

P F A Preparation for Adulthood – The term “Preparing for Adulthood” is used to describe the process of moving from childhood into adult life. It is used by professionals to describe the changes in services when a child becomes an adult. However, this transition can happen at different times for different families.

Smart Smart stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

• Specific – Objective clearly states, so anyone

reading it can understand, what will be done and who will do it.

• Measurable – Objective includes how the

action will be measured. Measuring your objectives helps you determine if you are making progress. It keeps you on track and on schedule.

• Achievable – Objective is realistic. Setting

reasonable objectives helps ensure success.

• Relevant – A relevant objective makes sense

and addresses the vision of the project.

• Time-bound – Every objective has a specific

timeline for completion.

School SEN Support A category for young people who need extra specialist support but not an E H C P. This may take the form of additional support from within the school or require the involvement of specialist staff or support services. The purpose of SEN support is to help children achieve the outcomes or learning objectives that have been set for them by the school.

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Glossary continued

Special Educational Needs (SEN) A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if he or she has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age or has a disability which prevents or hinders him or her from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions.

Transition The process of moving from one school phase or another or from school to adult life.

Published by Hammersmith & Fulham Health and Care Partnership

www.hfhcp.co.uk

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