Written evidence submitted by Council for Disabled Children (SFC0065)

This submission aims to provide the Committee with insights into the principles of effective practice from the Council for Disabled Children’s (CDC) work over the past 10 years to strengthen the Special Education Needs and Disability system.

About CDC

1. CDC is the umbrella body for the disabled children's sector we have a membership of over 390 Voluntary and Community Sector organizations working with and for disabled children, young people, and their families. We also convene networks of organisations and professionals working in local authorities, public health bodies, and professional bodies.
2. CDC has been a Strategic Reform Partner of the Department for Education since 2013 and is part of a network of organizations that have been funded by the Government to support the sector address its system challenges through a program of national support focused on embedding the duties set out in the Children and Families Act 2014. Across these programmes of work, engaging with hundreds of organisations and thousands of professionals every year
3. As part of this national improvement contract, we also host the What Works in SEND (WWIS) Programme, in partnership with the ISOS Partnership, the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) and the University of Warwick.  WWIS is an ambitious learning and innovation programme designed to generate high-quality evidence of what works (and what doesn’t) in SEND service improvement and practice models.
4. These programmes underpin our understanding of how local systems can utilise their resources as effectively as possible, and the principles any reform programme from national should build on.

SEND System Performance

5. The SEND system encompasses a diverse group of children and young people with the full range of talents, strengths, and needs that must be nurtured, professionals working in lots of different services, almost all committed to doing the best for children, and parents and carers who want the best possible education and support for their children.
6. However, as has been repeatedly set out in recent high-profile reports, most recently in the National Audit Office Report, the overall system is not working for any of those groups. Too many children are not receiving the support they need, not having the experiences they deserve, and not achieving the outcomes they are capable of. Too many parent carers worry about their children being understood and supported in school and feel pursing additional support child is their only option.Many professionals are burnt out, a situation described in Ian Kessler and Annette Boaz’s King College London recent scoping study of SEND Therapies commissioned by the Department as a system where therapists are suffering from  “moral injury” due working within a system that means they are unable to deliver care to the standard they want and need to compromise their values.[1]
7. We believe this system is failing to meet children’s needs, not because of any lack of effort of those within it but because resources are insufficient or misallocated and incentives are misaligned. The system is seeing significant increases in spending in one element of the system that supports children with special educational needs and disable children, the High Needs Block
8. Addressing these challenges may require national policy reform, but it also needs to invest in developing and embedding evidence of effective practice, to give local systems guidance as to how to address the challenge they are facing and make the best use of the resources available to them to improve the outcomes for children, young people and their families.

Evidence of effective practice

9. The What Works in SEND Programme is an ambitious learning and innovation programme designed to generate high-quality evidence of what works (and what doesn’t) in SEND service improvement and practice models.
10. The WWiS Effective Practice Evidence Framework developed during 2023 through co-production with local and national SEND system leaders and parent carers with experience in the SEND system provides a robust methodology for capturing, validating, and sharing examples of effective practice in establishing and sustaining effective local SEND systems in England. It includes validated examples across a range of themes such as:

• Strategic partnership working/leadership and governance;
• Achieving long-term outcomes and making a difference in lived experiences;
• Co-productive working with young people and parents/carers;
• Information and communications.

11. This learning has been synthesized into a resource which identifies 5 SEND system enablers:

• Co-production and relationships between children and young people, families, and practitioners
• Shared vision and evidence-informed priorities
• Stable and knowledgeable leadership and governance
• A focus on high-quality delivery of the essentials
• A well-organised, skilled and supported workforce

12. Over the past decade, CDC has worked with partners to deliver support to local SEND systems to strengthen their approach. These interventions have been delivered in a challenging context, WWIS identified the following factors that increased pressure on the SEND system:

• COVID-19: impact on SEND services and service-users;
• Closure or reduced preventative services, family support and youth work;
• Escalating demands for SEND services, especially EHCPs;
• Cost of living crisis and impact on families with children with SEND and SEND workforce;
• Increasing child poverty and widening gap in health and welfare inequalities;
• Workforce shortages, staff churn and increasing reliance on agency staff;
• Financial pressures on local authorities and health providers;
• Increasing refugee families;

13. WWIS undertook a review of these intervention programmes and identified 6 key ‘ingredients’ to successful service improvement based on leaders' and practitioners’ experience with these improvement programmes.[2]. These 6 ingredients were

• Effective co-production between agency partners in SEND
• Co-production with parent carers and children / young people with SEND
• Leadership
• Workforce capability, stability and morale
• Organisational culture
• Accountability

14. These enablers and ingredients provide important insight into what to prioritise when building the capacity of, and confidence, in the SEND system.

The next section sets out some particular considerations that any reforms must address.

Multiagency working and joint commissioning

15. Many children and young people with SEND and their families will require support from a range of professionals working in different services, including education, health, social care, housing, youth justice, and voluntary organisations. The Children and Families Act sets a clear legal requirement for local authorities and ICBs to make joint commissioning arrangements for education, health, and care provision for children and young people with SEN or disabilities.
16. However, this has not happened consistently, strategic arrangements between partners to jointly commission services for children with SEND are not routinely in place, data is not shared, and financial and resource pressures as well as changes to the structures of the NHS Integrated Care Board covering multiple local authorities replace Clinical Commissioning Groups disrupt joint working relationships.
17. The WWISC has conducted a review of SEND Joint Commissioning arrangements and highlighted the following 3 enablers of effective joint commissioning:

1. A collaborative culture, focused on working together and developing agreed language and trusting relationships and shared values across the system, rather than a narrow focus on finances or operational planning.
2. Joint working should be overseen by a governance structure focused on improving outcomes by working across individual organisational boundaries. Leadership was vital, at senior levels, and empowering those in middle system roles like the Designated Social Care Officers and Designated Social Care.

3. Co-production with parent carers must be central, ensuring an outcomes-based approach. This must be data-driven, using insights from robust data to plan services and monitor outcomes. Formal arrangements, such as section 75 arrangements can strengthen accountability and make it less subject to individual professionals and jointly funded roles, which can help overcome fragmentation.

Outcomes Based Commissioning

18. To tie partners into effective joint commissioning arrangements that maximise the use of available resources CDC has supported local systems to adopt an outcomes-based approach to planning integrated services for children and young people with special educational needs. This helps the system move from being outcome-focused (focused on what is being delivered and what the system is like) to being outcomes-focused (focused on what difference is being made to children’s lives).
19. Central to this process is the identification and co-production of a set of shared outcomes that are underpinned by robust quantitative and qualitative data, which allow commissioners and service leaders to continually evaluate the performance of their services and inform the local area’s approaches to commissioning services for children and young people with SEND

Strengthening Inclusion

20. A consistent theme in our work with local systems is the central role that inclusive mainstream education provision needs to play in the improvement of the SEN system. This needs to start in early years provision, through primary and secondary into further education and training and transition to adulthood.
21. We know many education providers and the professionals working in them are committed to creating a welcoming and supportive environment for all students, however, too much of the practice is a result of individual attitudes and ethos, rather than the expected and required operation of the system.
22. While the Children and Families Act does place a requirement on schools and early years providers to meet the needs of children who require the special educational provision, it is only to use their “best endeavours”, rather than a clear and unambiguous requirement to meet the needs of students with SEN. The Equality Act also requires education providers to make reasonable adjustments and proactively plan to meet the needs of disabled children but we are concerned that awareness and adherence to these requirements is limited.
23. We are concerned that the relative lack of SEND content in initial teacher training and the curriculum, assessment, qualification, and inspection regimes do not encourage or enable education providers to prioritise inclusion.
24. This is exacerbated where the ability of schools to access external sources of expertise support to meet the full range of students' needs may increasingly only be available for an Education Health and Care Plan creating perverse incentives. SEND system improvement must address these drivers, establishing clear expectations on all education providers, backed by new models of wraparound support for schools, and clear accountability mechanisms.
25. There are developments to build on, local systems have developed their own Ordinarily Available Provision documents, clearly setting out the expectations of what provision will be available to meet children’s needs within school, and the support from other agencies to increase the school’s confidence and capacity to deliver this provision. For example, an occupational therapist might visit a school to develop a specific plan for a child for whom the school’s standard approach isn’t working, and then support the school staff to deliver the plan. An educational setting is also more likely to yield an accurate assessment than a clinical environment. 
26. New models of early intervention and support for neurodiverse children are emerging, like in Portsmouth where the ICS, the local authority and schools are trialling a neurodiversity profiling tool and have put in place a neurodiversity team (0-19) to support education settings. The aim is to improve early identification of neurodiversity and offer increased support for families and professionals, so that children and young people may not need to go through the lengthy assessment process to get their needs met. 

The Importance of Support for the Early Years

27. Laying the foundations of inclusion and early intervention in the Early Years is essential to materialise the shift towards an inclusive mainstream system core element.
28. The Early Years Send (EYSEND) partnership to increase access and inclusion in early years for children with SEN and disabilities. Consisting of six organisations in the EY and SEND sectors, it brings together expertise to provide a combination of strategic, system-level support for local areas, with a wide range of training and professional development opportunities for the EY workforce, as well as the parent carer community. The EYSEND programme has been running since 2017, and its current iteration, 2023-25, focuses on the Family Hubs network in 75 funded areas.
29. Our Data and Evidence Report for 2023 has shown the programme’s strength as a convenor and hub for knowledge sharing and systems change. Training, national seminars, and regional events have been oversubscribed across the board in 2022-23, despite mounting staffing pressures in the early years sector. Strategic support given to LAs has strengthened multi-agency working, improving outcomes for young children with more joined-up working between education, health, and social care. Over the past three years, the EYSEND Partnership has reached 21,477 people (16,671 practitioners and 4,806 parents) through training, events, and targeted strategic support. 
30. Through intensive work within the constraints and particularities of the localities we work in, we are able to see firsthand, and through conversations with parent carers and professionals, what are the emerging challenges, as well as examples of good practice. With that, we also refresh and update our training offer, and have, for example, added a sensory needs training to our menu of training sessions.
31. Some of the learning from the last few months of our work include:

• The ongoing legacy of the pandemic and associated restrictions; the need for robust longitudinal research to assess this impact and the best ways to mitigate it.
• Workforce challenges continue to be the chief concern of many in the sector. These include recruitment and retention, overload, and lack of appropriate training for the levels of need manifesting in EY settings and schools.
• An urgent need to support local areas, practitioners and settings to successfully carry out changes to entitlements, particularly the expansion of the 2-year-old cohort.
• The Family Hub infrastructure has the potential to support a positive, preventive approach to SEND, but practice varies widely, and local areas require support to maximise the benefits. There is also clearly a gap in that only 75 areas have funding for this approach.

The Importance of Information Advice and Support

32. Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities Information, Advice, and Support (SENDIAS) services are statutory services that provide free, impartial advice and support regarding matters relating to SEN/D.
33. We know that there is a strong relationship between good and early impartial information, advice, and support for children, young people, and parents from local SEND Information Advice and Support Services (SENDIAS) in improving knowledge, relationships, and provision which in turn, reduces escalation of needs and associated costs SENDIAS services role is to ensure children, young people and families understand their rights and the processes for accessing support and services, as well as offering information, advice and/or support on how to challenge when things aren’t right. This empowers those children, young people, and families and helps ensure that local authorities and those delivering services get things right the first time. This, in turn, prevents challenging and costly dispute resolution which saves local areas money and capacity and helps prevent a potential breakdown in relationships between those children, young people, and families and those delivering, or commissioning services. 
34. The Information, Advice, and Support Services Network has submitted evidence to the committee which illustrates this further.

Importance of key “middle leadership” roles in the SEND System

35. Since the implementation of the Children and Families Act, new roles have developed that play a crucial role in enabling effective multiagency working across SEND systems; the Designated Clinical Officer and the Designated Social Care Officer.  These roles have become increasingly crucial in enabling local systems to implement and embed multiagency working across health and social care, a major system goal. However, they are non-statutory and can lack the capacity, resources, and strategic influence needed to address the scale of the challenge within their system.
36. An upcoming WWISC report on their roles will make recommendations for how these roles can be strengthened to increase the consistency of their effectiveness.

The Role Challenge

37. Clear guidance on middle leader roles: Develop generic job descriptions for DCO and DSCO roles and expectations, with particular emphasis upon to whom they are accountable, scope and boundaries around their role, support for their role, and that aligns expected outcomes across middle-level leader roles.
38. Clearer accountabilities for middle-level leaders: Align organisational & system accountabilities through the identification of appropriate senior line managers & performance objectives of middle-level leaders.
39. Support middle-level leaders to enact strategic influence: Ensure operational issues do not percolate upwards to middle-level leaders, through for example ensuring they are supported by Deputies/Assistants to reduce their workload.
40. Support middle-level leaders to develop relationships and networks across the system: Middle-level leaders should be identified with such capabilities in mind and allowed sufficient time and space to do this when starting their roles.

The Organisational Challenge

41. Position middle-level managers for system influence: the key challenge here is for middle-level leaders to enact strategic influence. They may be best placed in teams that cross professional and organisational boundaries, for example, across children’s services and adult services in a LA, or in an ICB, and/or report to a senior leader that can enact strategic influence.
42. Co-locate middle-level leaders and their teams: Middle-level leaders and their teams might best be co-located, for example, in system-level hubs
43. Cultivating a shared culture across middle-level leaders: Cultivation (rather than top-down management) represents an apt metaphor to engender a receptive culture that is values-based, which focuses upon the needs of the whole child and families, and the adoption of a social model of SEND service delivery.
44. Align organisation strategies towards send service improvement: Engage partner agencies through an emphasis upon SEND as ‘everyone’s business’ to push SEND up the list of priorities, and enact proactive and preventative actions towards SEND service improvement.

The People Management Challenge

45. Senior leadership support: Senior leaders should empower middle-level leaders to enact strategic influence, and at the same time senior leaders should represent a conduit for middle-level leaders’ upward influence.
46. Formal training: Use middle-level leaders and their SEND expertise that allows them legitimacy to educate other professionals in partner organisations about SEND.
47. Informal learning: Peer-to-peer support through communities of practice, across local areas, counter isolation that middle-level leaders might feel as lone experts.
48. Funding and capacity: Invest in middle leadership roles & boost funding for longer-term contracts for middle-level leaders to sustain & embed partnership working.

Delivering Accountability

49. Any reforms must realign accountability mechanisms and financial resources, creating shared responsibility and shared investment and eliminating disputes of who’s responsible for different aspects of provision and arguments over cost shunting between agencies. Educational providers, the NHS as well as local authorities must be fully committed to improving outcomes for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and disabled children.
50. This will require significant change to how elements of the system are designed and operate, working in partnership with children, young people and parent carers must be absolutely central to these efforts, as required by the Children and Families Act. It must also draw insight from the emerging body of evidence of the principles of effective improvement programmes to support the system through any period of change.

November 2024