Local Government Association (LGA) Written evidence (YDP0074)
Public Services Committee inquiry into The transition from education to employment for young disabled people
Local Government Association submission
About the Local Government Association
The LGA is the national voice of local government. We work with councils to support, promote and improve local government.
We are a politically led, cross-party organisation that works on behalf of councils to ensure local government has a strong, credible voice with national government. We aim to influence and set the political agenda on the issues that matter to councils, so they are able to deliver local solutions to national problems.
Councils have a varied role and multiple statutory duties in supporting young disabled people transitioning from education to employment. Councils know the needs of young people in their area and are committed to delivering a joined-up approach, which works best for this group. With the right powers and resources, councils could do more to bring together decisions around the economy, job creation, transport, skills and employment support and wider support services, to create a joined-up offer for young people and adults around the needs of place. However, they are limited in the resources and levers available to commission or coordinate the provisions that help them to achieve this.
The national employment and skills system is currently too centralised, short-term, and operates in silos. This makes it difficult to plan, target and join up provision and leads to gaps and / or duplicated provision. No Government strategy sets out how schemes should work together or how local stakeholders can complement each other to deliver effective career guidance and support.
Nevertheless, councils endeavour to lead from the front by commissioning devolved and local discretionary provision, joining-up and adding value to national schemes, and by delivering programmes such as Supported Employment, commonly used to help people with disabilities into work. Councils aim to offer a holistic approach to mitigate the adverse impacts of unemployment. Councils also provide opportunities within their own structures, and like many employers providing apprenticeship placements, would benefit from greater flexibility of how they can spend the apprenticeship levy fund for other associated costs.
Quality, locally-tailored and independent careers advice is vital to ensure young people are fully informed of the full range of careers and pathways available to them. However, in schools, careers advice has been identified as inconsistent and late in its intervention. Young, disadvantaged people are therefore at risk of falling further behind. Mental ill-health is also a significant barrier to education, employment and training. Councils’ family and youth services report that children and young people with mental ill-health was growing even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now been exacerbated.
Government interventions and national programmes serve a purpose to ease pressures, providing opportunities for young disabled people to transition into and participate in employment. However, the range of support and schemes available without coordination, and in the aftermath of the pandemic where challenges were exacerbated and resources stretch, young disabled people continue to be disproportionately disadvantaged.
Pressures on Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) demand and cost, and access to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP), remains a significant challenge. Councils are committed to ensuring every child with SEND has access to the high quality support that they need. High needs funding pressures are one of the biggest challenges that councils with educational responsibilities face. However, without major reforms, councils will continue to struggle to manage deficits and to deliver essential support.
Placements and services in children’s social care are also under immense pressure. There are currently insufficient placements to meet the demand and needs of children in care. As the cost of children’s social care placements has risen, and as council budgets have come under increasing pressure, funding has increasingly been diverted away from earlier help services and into services for children in care.
For the LGA to accurately reflect the experiences of young people, we recently commissioned Alma Economics to carry out a review of existing literature, along with a short series of interviews, to identify challenges around access to social care services for people with lifelong disabilities. The findings evidenced the challenges of accessing key services, a workforce under pressure, a mismatch of services and limited support for families, underwritten by inconsistent communications.
The LGA continues to call for councils and combined authorities to be enabled with additional powers and resources to take a more strategic approach to coordinating and commissioning provision. This will help develop the appropriate EET offer and build the wider support to match the needs of young people, including NEETs and the disadvantaged groups.
This submission expands on each of the aforementioned points and seeks to present to the Public Services Committee the varied role that councils perform and the immense pressure on services. Coordination of services, schemes and funding, built around the needs of young people and led by local stakeholders that know they community best, can help deliver the kind of support that can give young disabled people the best chance of finding and staying in employment when they leave education.
Councils want to ensure that every young person, no matter their background, has the tools and support to progress in life and reach their full potential. Local government, as democratically elected leaders of place, and often being the largest employer in a place, play a key role in stimulating local economies and want to ensure that employers have a supply of skilled workforce to meet the current and future business demands in local areas.
As part of their wider role in supporting children and young people and in shaping their local skills and employment system, councils have several statutory duties relating to ensuring all young people up to the age of 18 (25 for those with learning difficulties) participate in education or training. These include:
Despite these wide-ranging responsibilities, councils have very few formal levers over the commissioning or co-ordination of provision to ensure statutory duties are met. This makes it extremely challenging for local government to provide place leadership or to build wider support for those with complex or additional needs.
Nevertheless, councils are leading from the front in supporting participation in education, employment and training through commissioning devolved and local discretionary provision, by joining-up and adding value to national schemes, and by delivering programmes such as Supported Employment, commonly used to help people with disabilities into work. They continue to work hard to mitigate the negative impact of unemployment by providing a holistic support offer. Examples include: Nottinghamshire’s Future’s programme; Bristol City Council’s employment, skills and learning service; and South Gloucestershire Council’s Community Learning and Skills service. Further information of each of these schemes can be found in Appendix A.
Place makes a difference to a young person’s life chances, access to support and economic opportunities. Every area has its own unique labour market and economy, including a mix of jobs, qualification levels, unemployment, vacancies, levels of deprivation and geographic challenges, with often as many differences within regions as between them. A national one-size-fits-all approach cannot therefore deliver on an area’s diverse needs.
Councils and combined authorities, with the right powers and resources, could do more to bring together decisions around the economy, job creation, transport, skills and employment support and wider support services, to create a joined-up offer for young people and adults around the needs of place.
Council transport functions
Local government role includes providing a plethora other services, such as housing and social care, to support young people to make an effective transition from education to world of work. In a recent LGA piece of work on the role of councils in supporting equality, diversity, and economic inclusion, transport was identified as a key barrier, particularly for young people and rural areas.
Transport is fundamental to connecting young people with education, training, job opportunities and support services. However, the high cost of public transport, lack of transport and long journey times is costing regions and is a particular barrier to youth employment in rural areas. For example, poor public transport connections in cities in the North of England result in a loss of productivity worth more than £16 billion a year. Furthermore, provider costs in rural areas are often higher due to the travel distance, poor connecting transport links, and low population density.
Research has found bus services have been cut by more than 80 per cent in the past 15 years in some parts of England and Wales. The study by the University of Leeds, in conjunction with the charity Friends of the Earth, found outside London, bus services plummeted by more than 60 per cent in 80 local authority areas. A report by the County Councils Network has found that councils are spending more than £700 million a year on school transport for 85,000 children with SEND nearly double on special needs transport compared to five years ago.
Buses are important in rural settings, providing critical connectivity for people to access health and leisure services, to get to work, and meet each other. The Government needs to ensure that its future bus strategy and funding is ambitious for all areas and councils are sufficiently supported to deliver effective Bus Service Improvement Plans.
Supporting under 25-year-olds with transport costs is vital to maintain equitable access to further education. Many councils are supporting young people with costs and transport issues in innovative ways, for example, Derbyshire Wheels to Work offers help to young people who are experiencing transport issues through a loan scheme, providing young people with bikes, e-bikes and mopeds. Meanwhile, in the North East a ‘Flexibility’ smartcard has been introduced by Go North East and Co-Wheels that can be used for bus journeys and for access to a car club.
Councils as employers
Local Authorities are major employers in England with a workforce of over 1.2 million.
Skills and workforce
The LGA acts as a champion to encourage and support local authorities to become disability confident and demonstrate diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
As part of the Disability Confident Campaign the LGA is working hard with local government to:
As an incentive for employers who sign-up to the Disability Confident scheme, the LGA also provides access to specialist information from Disability Confident Leader organisations about topics, such as workplace adjustments, mental health in the workplace, and recruitment and retention.
Apprenticeships & T Levels within councils
As a significant employer and apprenticeship levy payer, councils provide support for young people, including those with disabilities to gain access to employment with their local council. The LGA has been providing improvement support to councils as employers to help them create more apprenticeship and T level Industry Placement (IP) opportunities.
All councils in England have active apprenticeship programmes and since the launch of T levels in 2020 councils have been providing IPs where training providers exist. More of course can be done and having the appropriate brokerage in place to help all employers work successfully with providers is essential. Although we welcome the additional investment in provider support, for example to help increase T level placements, direct employer incentives have a greater impact in changing employer behaviour. Consideration should be given to how and when incentives can be used to increase more opportunities.
In a recent LGA T level survey of councils, the majority said they would provide more Industry placements if incentives remained in place to help with the additional capacity needed to provide placements for young people. The LGA is committed to working with DfE to promote how T levels and apprenticeships can continue to be a positive experience for young people to gain long term employment.
Apprenticeship Levy funds
Currently, Apprenticeship Levy funds can only be spent on apprenticeship training and not on many of the other associated costs. The LGA believes the government should introduce flexibilities on what apprenticeship levy funds can be spent on.
We have consistently called for employers to be granted greater flexibility over how they can spend apprenticeship levy funds, including on administration costs, salaries and pre-apprenticeship training. Councils should also be given maximum local freedom, including the ability to pool levy funds to better plan provision across their areas, and use a proportion of the levy to subsidise apprentices’ wages and administration costs and devolve non-Levy apprenticeships funding.
If levy payers were permitted to use a portion of their levy funds to pay for some of the wider costs of maintaining an apprenticeship programme, it would help to create more apprenticeships and give local government greater flexibility to tackle our own skills shortages and bring more young people into the sector.
The national employment and skills system is too centralised, short-term, and standalone. On the ground, this makes it difficult to plan, target and join up provision and leads to gaps and / or duplicated provision. Our analysis (April 2021) reveals that across England, £20 billion is spent on at least 49 nationally contracted or delivered employment and skills related schemes or services managed by 9 Whitehall departments and agencies, multiple providers and over different geographies. No Government strategy sets out how schemes like Levelling Up and Towns Funds, Help to Grow, Restart, Bootcamps, National Careers Service etc should work together.
This is further complicated by the fact that different Whitehall departments are responsible for different age ranges:
All of this makes the system complicated. Many councils have established employment and skills board or similar to help cohere the system. But without formal levers or a duty to discuss with councils how services will operate in local areas, councils can only at best knit together the patchwork of different initiatives. This also means that there is no single organisation nationally or locally responsible for coordinating these, with no one organisation accountable over how the totality are improving local outcomes.
The LGA’s Work Local proposals aim to improve the impact of the employment and skills system work for people and places. It would give elected local leaders powers and a single pot of funding to work with local partners, to design, commission and have oversight of a ‘one stop’ all-age service bringing together careers’ advice, employment support, training and apprenticeships, and business support connected to wider services. In return, it has the potential to increase by 15% the number of people improving their skills or finding work at lower cost. Each will be underpinned by multi-year devolved employment and skills agreements (DESAs). This approach would enable areas to join up decisions and maximise opportunities for residents, businesses and the wider community.
The Youth Jobs Gap series measures the gap in youth employment between young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their better-off peers, it revealed large differences at a local authority level.
The report acknowledged that local and combined authorities’ areas can have a significant impact on NEET young people but lack good quality data on 18 – 24 year olds to allow them to effectively target interventions. Councils do not have a responsibility or statutory duty for collecting this data, and while national data can provide some intelligence into unemployment numbers, it fails to give the broader picture, including on non-claimants.
Nevertheless, many councils provide bespoke support and initiatives for these groups. For example, Surrey County Council provides targeted support and innovative initiatives for those considered to be most at risk of becoming NEET, including young people with disabilities, who also have an Education and Health Care Plan (EHCP), as part of the Year 11-12 Transition Service; Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council has established supported internships programmes; however, there are still too many young people that are finishing their college education and then going into day service. Liverpool City Region’s Our Young Person’s Guarantee is another example of effective support provided by councils (see Appendix A).
Councils are in a unique position with oversight of local education, employment and training (EET) provision to enable effective partnership working. Equally, councils know the needs of young people in their area and are committed to delivering a joined-up approach, which works best for this group. Therefore, the LGA is calling for councils and combined authorities to be enabled with additional powers and resources to take a more strategic approach to coordinating and commissioning provision. This will help develop the appropriate EET offer and build the wider support to match the needs of young people, including NEETs and the disadvantaged groups. Derbyshire County Council has developed the ‘I-Step up Re-engagement Programme’ to address a gap in transition support and provide the wraparound provision for young people.
Poor-quality, insufficient and fragmented CEIAG remains a key barrier to youth employment. In any one area, schools, colleges, councils and national agencies like the NCS, CEC, Job Centre Plus, and Education and Skills Funding Agency, deliver initiatives for different age ranges and groups, with no one organisation responsible or accountable for coordinating it with the local jobs market.
Quality, locally-tailored and independent CEIAG is vital to ensure young people are fully informed of the full range of careers and pathways available to them, including vocational and technical education training options, apprenticeships, and university degrees. It also plays a role in raising aspirations.
Recent years have seen a plethora of new policies, initiatives and new bodies, some of which have proved counter-productive. In schools, careers advice has been identified to be often inconsistent, not independent, and does not start early enough. Poor CEIAG risks disproportionately impacting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, as they are potentially less likely to benefit from resources and advice from family and friends about the breadth of career options.
It is important that CEIAG informs young people about the local and national job market, which industries/sectors are growing, and which skills are in demand. Too often, young people finish training and struggle to find suitable employment or take up low-paid or insecure jobs that do not match their skills or interests with vacancies. This can lead to frustration, disillusionment, and a lack of motivation to pursue further education or training.
Councils report that the reduction in careers advice over recent years means that young people and their families are less well informed about career options due to insufficient staff and resources to spend sufficient time looking at options, support, and reasonable adjustments. The reduction in Disability Employment Advisors in local jobcentres has further reduced the support available.
Nevertheless, local government is working to ensure an inclusive service for all. With the integration of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) functions within local government, and the role of councils in influencing CEC provisions for areas, it is essential that the opportunities this presents are not lost. Most councils are actively engaged with Careers Hub in supporting young people, including those with SENDs. For example:
Plan for Jobs
Evidence on the economic and social impact of the pandemic demonstrates that young people were the worst-affected group not just in the labour market but also in terms of mental health and well-being outcomes. Youth unemployment can have significant long-term effects, with periods of unemployment having a ‘scarring’ effect on young people’s future employability and wage potential. Therefore, it is important to ensure that young people can access early support to secure employment to avoid long-lasting adverse impacts.
Disabled people’s participation in the labour market has been particularly impacted by the pandemic. During 2020 employment fell among disabled people and the disability gap widened. Research by the TUC on disabled workers experiences during the pandemic found that COVID-19 has exacerbated the workplace barriers disabled people encounter and identified that existing legal protections have not been effective in protecting disabled workers from discrimination and adequate workplace health and safety measures.
In April 2022, 52.3 per cent of disabled people were in employment, down from 54.1 per cent a year previously, which indicates that the pandemic has had an ongoing impact on disabled people’s participation in the labour market. Many people who face complex barriers to work, and multiple disadvantages in the labour market, will require wrap-around and tailored support to secure and maintain employment. However, across the country the availability of this support is often either not available or difficult to secure through the national system of skills and employment support, which is complex and fragmented.
Kickstart
The Kickstart scheme had the potential to deliver even better outcomes for young people, businesses and communities if it was planned in partnership with councils and their local partners. The LGA proposed to Government various ways in which local government could help augment the Kickstart offer. A collaborative local approach could have ensured that the scheme was effectively signposted, targeted and delivered at the local level, offering more choice for young people, including those with disabilities by supporting local businesses to develop and host placements; with wrap-around support to ensure uptake and completion rates, and developing progression routes for young people after work placements ended.
As Kickstart was a DWP scheme, it was entirely focused on supporting young Universal Credit claimants into work (18-24). Kickstart could not therefore be used to support under 18-year-olds who were NEET as this group is not a DWP responsibility. Nor could it support the 480,000 young people who are estimated to be ‘hidden’ unemployed each year and do not access the benefits system.
In April 2022, 162,000 young people had started a Kickstart job, which is 36 per cent lower than the 250,000 target, resulting in an underspend of at least £665 million which could have been used to support disengaged young people who were not on Universal Credit.
We believe Kickstart was a missed opportunity to support 16–17-year-old NEETs and 18-24 NEETS who are not in receipt of benefits, who could have benefited from a period of experience with a local employer. The LGA repeatedly urged the DWP to extend the eligibility criteria for accessing the scheme to all young people who had been NEET for six months or more and to allow council skills and employment services, and their local partners, to refer young people into the scheme. Nevertheless many councils continued to support Kickstart and provide opportunities for key priority groups - young people with disabilities, care leavers.
Back to Work Plan
The Government’s £2.5 billion Back to Work Plan, announced at the 2023 Autumn Statement, builds on the earlier Spring Budget. It includes more rigorous expectations and measures to support unemployed claimants into work, as well as new initiatives to help those that have left the jobs market (‘economically inactive’) including older people, people with caring responsibilities, people with health conditions, get back to work.
This vital investment is needed but with so many initiatives being developed at the same time, it is important that there is coordinated planning at a national and local level about how these will work alongside each other. The LGA is committed to working with Government to achieve this, however in the longer term, we would like to see a place based single pot approach to plan and commission a more streamlined offer for people needing back to work support.
Mental ill-health is a significant barrier to education, employment and training. Councils’ family and youth services report that children and young people with mental ill-health was growing even before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now exacerbated pre-existing mental ill-health related issues.
Research by the Prince’s Trust identified that the most common reason why NEET young people are struggling to find a job or not looking for work is due to a mental health problem or disability (39 per cent). This is illustrated in many councils’ local NEET data, which shows a significant growth in the number of young people who are not active in the labour market due to ill-health.
Autistic children and young people are more likely than the general population to experience a range of mental health problems, including hyperactivity disorders, anxiety, and depressive disorders. Children and young people with learning disabilities are more than four times more likely to develop a mental health problem than average. This means that one in seven of all children and young people with mental health difficulties in the UK will also have a learning disability.
Current proposals do not go far enough in tackling the rising demand of mental health need, nor sufficiently focus on the particular needs of children with SEND. The roll out of mental health support teams in schools across the country is essential, as is investment in community mental health support for children who cannot access school-based provisions.
Many councils have already put in place targeted initiatives and developed pathways to successfully support young people who face additional barriers or have complex needs into work or further training. This includes targeted work with young people with SEND, young offender backgrounds, ethnic minority groups, and those with experience of the care system. Such interventions are additional to standard national initiatives and are typically financed through council funding or through a range of external funding bids. Appendix A provides examples, in particular, Hackney Borough Council and Devon County Council.
Access to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP)
ECHPs are a legally binding document that outlines a child or young person’s special educational, health, and social care needs. Some councils advocate changes to EHCPs that include what support is required for an effective post -16 transition. There is also a view that, in order to strengthen the case for an EHCP to be produced and approved, and for the support needed for those with a disability to be accessed, the tone and contents of these documents is often too negative. At various stages of a young person’s education and transition the documentation should be shared with them. There is often a focus on the young person’s barriers and limitations rather than the skills and capabilities that they do have, this can result in a young person being disillusioned and further disengaged.
SEND
Councils share the Government’s ambition of making sure every child with SEND gets the high-quality support that they need. The previous reforms to the SEND system set out in the Children and Families Act 2014 have, however, failed to achieve the goal of improving provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Placing children and young people at the centre of the SEND system was right, but the reforms set out in the Act were not supported by sufficient powers or funding to allow councils to meet the needs of children with SEND or hold health and education partners to account for their contributions to local SEND systems.
The Government’s SEND improvement plan acknowledges that implementing reforms will take several years and while the additional high needs funding that has been made available via the ‘safety valve’ and ‘Delivering Better Value in SEND’ programmes is welcome, these programmes do not address the fundamental cost and demand issues that are driving more councils into deficit and threaten the future financial viability of local government.
We are also concerned that the improvement plan does not include proposals to give councils additional powers to be able to lead SEND systems effectively. The LGA does not believe it would be possible or desirable for the DfE or Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) to build the capacity and expertise to hold partners to account. Councils, education settings and Integrated Care Boards must instead be accountable to each other.
The LGA is concerned that the improvement plan will raise the expectations of children with SEND, as well as their parents and carers, of what a reformed SEND system will be able to deliver and by when. Parental confidence in a new SEND system will be crucial if it is to work effectively and the Government must be careful to manage expectations with regards to the pace of reform given the planned timetable.
SEND demand and cost pressures
Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) and high needs funding pressures are one of the biggest challenges that councils with education responsibilities are currently facing. This is the result of an ever-increasing demand for SEND support and the growing number of children and young people who have an EHCP. Department for Education (DfE) statistics show that at January 2023 there were over 517,000 children with an EHCP, an increase of 9 per cent on 2022. The number of EHCPs has increased every year since they were introduced. We do not believe that the proposals set out in the Government’s SEND and Alternative Provision improvement plan will result in this increase either slowing down or stopping.
The Society of County Treasurers (SCT) conducts regular analyses of council high needs block deficits and the results of their most recent survey, undertaken in March 2022 show that the total deficit facing those councils that responded stands at £1.36 billion, rising to £2.6 billion in 2024/25. Extrapolating those figures for all councils gives an estimated deficit of £1.9 billion in March 2022, rising to £3.6 billion by 2025.
While the LGA has welcomed the decision taken by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Community’s (DLUHC) to extend the statutory override on the treatment of DSG deficits to March 2026, we remain concerned that unless major reforms to the SEND system are implemented in the meantime, it will be impossible for these deficits to be managed down. Their return to council budget sheets could result in severe financial pressures for some.
Nor do we believe that the ‘Safety valve’ programme for those councils with the biggest DSG deficits or the Delivering Better Value in SEND programme will result in council high needs deficits being eliminated in the absence of reform prior to March 2026. We are, therefore, calling for the Government to write off all high needs deficits as a matter of urgency to ensure that councils are not faced with having to cut other services to balance budgets through no fault of their own or their residents.
The shape of a reformed SEND system led by councils
The Government’s SEND Green paper acknowledged that councils are ideally placed to act as convenors of local SEND systems, bringing together health and education partners to develop local inclusion plans. The Green paper rightly recognises that getting the accountabilities, accompanied by the right levers will be crucial; with the right powers and levers, councils can effectively hold partners to account for their contributions to meet the needs of children and young people with special needs and disabilities. These powers should be accompanied by a backstop duty to co-operate for councils, health and schools, in the delivery of support to children and young people with SEND.
Reforms should focus on three broad themes:
Improving mainstream provision and inclusion levels are central to the success of the proposals set out in the Green Paper. The LGA is calling for the development of a more contractual relationship between councils and schools in the provision of high needs funding, focused on outcomes and holding all schools to account for the delivery of those outcomes.
Children’s social care
The increasing need for children’s social care relates to two issues – increasing numbers of children needing support and protection (placements), and the increasing complexity of needs of those children (services) as recognised by both Ofsted and social workers.
Placements
There are currently insufficient placements to meet the needs of children in care, as identified by the Competition and Markets Authority, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and Ofsted.
The increase in the number of children needing placements has, for the last few years, largely been driven by increasing numbers of unaccompanied asylum-seeking (UAS) children arriving in the country. Between 2021 and 2023, the total number of children in care increased by 3,070 (80,770 to 83,840).
The nature of placements needed for children in care has also shifted. A Department for Education (DfE) report published in May 2022 found that the age profile of children entering care has changed since 2013, with over 16s accounting for 20 per cent of entrants in 2021, compared to 13 per cent in 2013.
Wider policy and case law issues (though in some cases welcome) have also increased demand for children’s social care, including placements. This includes:
Services
As the cost of children’s social care placements has risen, and as council budgets have come under increasing pressure, funding has increasingly been diverted away from earlier help services and into services for children in care.
Research for the Children’s Services Funding Alliance found that since 2010-11, spend on early intervention services, including Sure Start children’s centres, family support and services for young people, has fallen by 46 per cent, while expenditure on ‘late interventions’ such as youth justice and child protection, along with child in care services, has risen by almost half (47 per cent). This is despite councils protecting children’s social care spending at the expense of most other services, increasing budgets by 13.6 per cent (£1.5 billion) in the last year alone.
Council reporting on children’s social care
The LGA is not aware of any data reporting that is planned to end by Department for Education. However, the Department has published its Children’s social care data and digital strategy (December 2023) that commits to reviewing what data is collected on children social care to ensure that it is of value. The Strategy acknowledges the shared responsibility with local authorities, safeguarding partners, and other agencies to use the data appropriately and with care. It aims to set out the foundations for a long-term plan to use data and digital services to their full potential.
Currently there is a consultation on health and social care statistics that addresses any proposed changes to social care collections which the LGA will be responding to. We are not aware of any major deletions, however there are some significant changes that will impact the current ‘time series’:
The Adult Social Care outcomes framework (ASCOF) which draws on the collections has recently been refreshed. Also, the Care Data Matters roadmap was published in December 2023 – it sets out the roadmap for improving adult social care data which details the changes, including new developments. Some metrics that have been removed from the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework (ASCOF) for 2023 to 2024, including:
The LGA recently commissioned Alma Economics to carry out a review of existing literature, along with a short series of interviews, identifying challenges around access to social care services for people with lifelong disabilities. This research identified a range of areas where improvements could be made to ensure that disabled children and young people can access the right types of help and support including:
Many of these issues can in part be tackled through work across children’s social care, such as expanding the workforce, re-investing in family help that is led by local needs-assessments and improving data-sharing; however, without sufficient investment, local authorities will struggle to meet the needs of disabled children and young people.
We also encourage the DfE and the DHSC to work together to consider how health and social care services locally, driven by a shared national ambition, can ensure access to the right services for children and young people. This may include access to shared funding across health and social care to deliver integrated services.
We welcome the Law Commission review of legislation for disabled children as this is currently very complex. It is vital that this considers the interaction of legislation for disabled children with that for disabled adults, recognising that this can either enhance or add complexity where people transition from children to adult services.
Children with disabilities should be able to attend the best education settings for their needs, therefore improving levels of mainstream inclusion will be crucial. We therefore welcome the proposal to “underpin the (national) standards with legislation for education at the earliest opportunity to facilitate intervention in education settings if standards are not met” set out in the SEND and AP improvement plan.
As illustrated by the following case studies, where local government has more flexibility to work hand in hand with providers from the outset, they can deliver tailored support and improved outcomes. Given that place-based provision delivers better outcomes, we would like to see Jobcentre Plus (JCP) provision devolved to local areas or at the very least co-commissioned with local government and other relevant partners including housing associations and the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS).
January 2024