SCN0123

Written evidence from Infant School 1

Executive Summary

1. Nine years on, The Children and Families Act has not achieved the key aims of the Lamb Inquiry in 2009. Parents still feel frustrated by the systems imposed by the Local Authority and report that communication from the LA is weak with regards to timescales and support. Parents are still having to battle with the local authority to get provision for their children/young people and the number of tribunal cases increases each year. As a school, we will always do our best to support these parents, but timescales are often incredibly lengthy and clarity and communication from the local authority regarding children’s cases is often weak.
2. When the new legislation was brought in, this was not supported by sufficient funding in all local authorities to enable it to succeed.
3. The culture change regarding the way that cases were managed, as recommended in the Lamb Report and embedded in the Children and Families Act, are rarely adhered to in our local authority.
4. EHCPs are often poorly written, are weak in content and are unhelpful to schools attempting to meet the needs of children with highly complex needs. The needs of the pupil are often not fully described and recommended provision is poor and sometimes not related to need. Outcomes on EHCPs vary in quality. We have received EHCPs with little to no outcomes listed. Where outcomes are present, they are rarely SMART. Provision is rarely specific, detailed and quantified.
5. Educational Psychology involvement in the assessment of pupils and the generation of EHCPs since April 2018, has not been guaranteed, meaning specialist advice to schools is sometimes non-existent.
6. Some of the transition from Statements and LDAs to EHC Plans by the Local Authority was very poorly managed. New assessments were rarely conducted as part of the transition, and ‘copy and paste’ from the Statement was the standard recommended approach by the local authority. Despite schools relentlessly working to set timescales, some parents and schools received draft EHC plans that were not finalised for years.
7. Historically and to date, Local Authority staff have made some very unhelpful and unlawful comments to parents regarding statutory assessment and funding for SEND pupils, especially in mainstream settings. This has created issues for many schools who are then left to manage the fall out with parents. It is not clear how well some AEN officers understand the law. One parent was told by the local authority that it was the schools job to commission a new statutory assessment for their child and this was not their responsibility. The assessment had been completed while the child was in a Nursery setting and was very out of date. The local authority has a legal obligation to commission this re-assessment but despite ongoing conversations with SEND officers at the LA, this has still not been completed nearly a year on.
8. The annual review of EHC Plans has been poorly managed by the local authority and timescales are not being met in the majority of cases. Some parents have not received new draft plans or updated plans for months or even years after the annual review. The local authority has made schools aware of the “backlog” of paperwork that they are facing with regards to EHCPs but have not managed to take action to rectify this.
9. Funding for children with severe and complex needs is not sufficient to meet the level of needs being presented in mainstream settings and there are insufficient spaces within specialist provisions to cater for the level of needs within the LA.
10. The numbers of pupils presenting with severe and complex needs has risen significantly within the local authority, but the authority remains floor funded, meaning schools are unable to meet the legal requirements laid out in the child’s EHCP.
11. There is typically no local authority or health professional’s attendance at annual reviews and in the majority of cases, these are left to schools to complete alongside the parents. Due to this, there is little quality assurance that plans are being reviewed and updated appropriately and within legal guidelines.

Assessment of and support for children and young people with SEND

12. The statutory assessment process for EHC plans since 2014 has been weak and not overly useful to educational settings. The law is quite clear on the requirement for a full assessment of need but the majority of assessments are by an Educational Psychologist only. In 2018 the local authority encountered problems with the recruitment and retention of Educational Psychologists and began to issue draft plans with no assessment at all, telling parents and school settings that they would add the Educational Psychology component at a later date. Some parents have been invited to wait, well past the statutory timescales, in order to get the Educational Psychology assessment which has significantly delayed the support for individual pupils, especially where a change of educational placement is required.
13. Access to the Speech and Language Therapy service is challenging. It is the policy of this service to only carry out direct work or assessment with children who have an EHCP, no matter how severe their speech and language needs. Speech and Language services in school have been severely cut and schools are often left to deliver programmes and complete ongoing assessments themselves, or to buy in specialist support. Due to this policy, there are subsequently few Speech Therapy assessments as part of the statutory assessment process.
14. Locally the Occupational Therapy service has rejected referrals for sensory assessments and will not stipulate sensory integration programmes for children displaying these types of need. This is again, left to the educational provider to ensure that appropriate support is in place to meet the needs of the child without specialist intervention, advice or support. For many schools this is challenging due to the experience of staff and therefore, needs can go unmet.
15. Access to paediatricians can also be limited and communication between the local authority and the health professionals is very poor. This often leads to mixed messages being given to parents regarding criteria for EHCPs or additional funding and support. Many parents, upon receipt of an ASD diagnosis are informed they should now request statutory assessment by a paediatrician who is clearly unaware of the criteria for this and the fact that this will then be rejected by the local authority. This causes frustration for parents who are reliant on professional advice and it is always the educational providers who have to clarify misunderstandings and deal with parents who have been given misleading information.
16. Access to mental health services has never been as bad as it is currently and mental health issues in children and young people continues to rise. The profile of mental health and the need for high quality, early intervention has been raised at many levels, but services locally are just not equipped to meet the needs in the area. Many referrals have been “lost in the system” when CAHMs has been recommissioned and service providers have changed. Waiting lists for the newly commissioned NELFT are routinely taking at least 12 months before and appointment is offered, which for many pupils, families and schools is far too long. Again, it is falling to educational providers to deliver mental health support and intervention without any specialist advice or support.
17. Communication between different departments within the local authority is often incredibly poor which leads to much frustration for parents and schools. Often schools are named on a child’s EHCP, but this is not effectively communicated to the admissions departments, meaning children do not appear on the school’s allocation lists. On many occasions, this has resulted in schools being forced to go over their Pupil Admission Numbers (PAN) This in turn, results in highly complex children being placed in large class sizes with stretched resources and higher adult to child ratios. The delays to complete EHCP requests within the local authority, can mean lengthy and anxious waiting times for parents seeking specialist provision placements for their children but being told they must apply for mainstream placements until the EHCP is finalised.

The transition from statements of special educational needs and Learning Disability Assessments to Education, Health and Care Plans

18. In general, new assessments were not conducted as part of the transition to EHC Plans, and ‘copy and paste’ from the Statement was the common approach.
19. The transfer of statements to EHCPs was left mainly to SENCOs within educational settings, and although the local authority provided training on this process, SENCOs were left feeling anxious about the transfer and the creation of a legal document without the support of professionals involved.
20. Some parents received draft EHC plans that were not finalised for years and annual reviews were conducted of draft plans. This became a pointless and unlawful exercise. 

The level and distribution of funding for SEND provision

21. Until a recent drive from a large group of headteachers and a change in the corporate director for education within the local authority, communication around High Needs Funding (HNF) between the LA and schools has been incredibly poor. Communication has improved recently, but funding for SEND pupils remains over stretched. We are a floor funded LA, and funding for High Needs pupils has remained static, despite an increase in the number of pupils within the LA with identified SEND. This has resulted in significant reductions in funding for schools and young people.
22. There has been a real lack of transparency around the previous and current processes for applying for High Needs Funding (HNF). The Local Authority administers £23million for High Needs Funding allocated by the DfE. That amount has been determined, in part, by the LA indicating how many High Needs Funded pupils were anticipated. Our perception is that the Local Authority initially underestimated the extent of the need in the County and therefore has since had to restrict the amount that schools could claim. Schools have sought clarification on the systems the LA have in place to predict the numbers of pupils likely to meet criteria for HNF in the future, to prevent this underestimation from reoccurring, but this has not yet been forthcoming. 
23. In April 2017 schools set their budgets, which were sent to the Local Authority and agreed, with no prior warning that any change to high needs funding was imminent. The changes were implemented shortly after this, resulting in many schools suffering from the effect of this change and now working with deficit budgets and debt recovery plans. Many schools are facing restructure as a result of these changes.
24. The criteria for HNF claims has changed significantly recently, which has not been supported by any guidance or clarification from the Local Authority. To enable professionals to work effectively within the current published criteria, schools require more clarity around LA expectations of eligibility. This has been requested, but has not yet been forthcoming.
25. Within our LA, finances are heavily weighted on the funding of interventions based out of the classroom, as it is almost impossible to reach financial thresholds without costing one to one intervention. This therefore excludes children from the support they require to effectively access quality first teaching. This has the potential to have a detrimental effect on vulnerable children’s learning, academic progress, wellbeing, sense of belonging and social and emotional development. If left unsupported within a classroom, these pupils will affect the learning and outcomes for their peers as well as potentially affecting the wellbeing and stress levels of teaching staff. Without the financial support to continue proven good practice in schools, our concern is that standards for all children will decrease and children could be placed at higher risk of exclusion.
26. The LA has created a graduated needs specific top up rates chart (attached) As headteachers, we are yet to receive clarity about the new funding rates or explanation as to how children have been placed within these bands. We have requested a dialogue from the LA to explain this process further but this has not yet been forthcoming. Transparency around this would support schools with effective three-year budget setting and staff planning.
27. Many children with severe and complex needs have long term conditions that require long term solutions. Within our LA, the new model of need specific, graduated funding allocations for HNF is simply not reliable enough to provide assured support over time. Most pupils do not grow out of Autism, ADHD or Severe Speech and Language Difficulties. HNF is too likely to be reduced or removed to provide useful, enduring support to our most complex pupils. Any notion that funding should be reduced over time is misleading.
28. There are also concerns around HNF and school to school transition. When a pupil in receipt of HNF transfers to another school, the school is expected to apply again as a new application rather than a renewal. This leads to inconsistency of support for the pupil and the inability for schools to plan effectively or recruit appropriately experienced staff prior to transition. We appreciate the reasons behind this decision, in that that every school is unique and may utilise funding in different ways. However, we feel a more effective system would be for the HNF to continue for a short period of time to assist the child’s transition within the new school, before a renewal is required.
29. Schools have worked tirelessly to train and invest in the highest quality staff to support our SEND pupils. The retention of these members of staff is at risk due to a lack of predictability of funding. For some schools, this has resulted in redundancy procedures or restructure. Redundancy and Restructure come at a cost to the whole school budget and in some cases the local authority. These also have a dramatic implication on staffing structures and educational provision.

The roles of and co-operation between education, health and social care sectors

30. There has been very little effective collaboration between education, health and social care. The relevant sections in the local authority EHC plan template for health (C and G) and social care (D, H1 and H2) usually contain hardly any information. Health and Social Care professionals, even if directly working with the child or family, will rarely attend annual reviews or contribute to the statutory assessment process.
31. The local authority has stated that pupils do not need an EHCP to access additional funding for severe and complex needs via high needs funding. However, speech and language therapy services refuse to carry out direct work with any pupils unless an EHCP is in place. Even with an EHCP, children’s cases are often closed when they enter Year 1 as S+LT claim these needs can be met in school. This is simply not good enough for the majority of children and is mainly based upon the services inability to recruit or retain staff.

Recommendations

32. The DFE should review the consistency of funding allocations between each local authority to ensure fairness and clarity regardless as to which authority schools or children fall into.
33. The DFE should consider removing funding restrictions for local authorities, meaning that money could be moved between different areas, ensuring that funding for SEND pupils and those in receipt of HNF remained consistent and substantial enough for schools to implement appropriate provisions.
34. The DFE should review floor funded authorities to ensure that appropriate funds are being given to support SEND pupils. This does not necessarily mean injecting more money, but reviewing expenditure across the authority, including salaries of personnel to ensure value for money and that resources are being put to the best use.
35. An independent review should look at the number, success rate and type of SENDIST appeals being lodged by each local authority and how much each local authority spends on tribunals. The DFE should consider a cap on local authority spending in this area.
36. The DFE should take a close look at the systems employed by local authorities to distribute High Needs Funding. They should provide a template of how the process should be managed to avoid further system collapses and over spending. Ofsted should inspect the High Needs Funding provision in each local authority.
37. Staff training within the local authority should come from a DFE approved external provider rather than within the local authority. Staff should be required to take and pass an approved qualification in SEND law before offering advice to parents or schools.
38. Full and proper statutory assessment should be mandatory and local authorities should be held to account for poor assessments and poor plans.
39. Collaboration with health authorities should be much more effective, not just for assessment but in regard to diagnosis and provision (such as CBT). Waiting more than a year for a diagnosis should incur a fine for the NHS trust.
40. Improved communication systems within different departments of the local authority such as SEND departments and admissions.
41. Improvements in communication and joint working between SEN departments of the local authority and personnel working in schools. Attendance at local authority headteacher briefings would be a good start to this. This has often been requested but the message is usually left to other LA staff to deliver.
42. The annual review of EHC plans should be recognised to be of equal importance as the assessment process and should be followed with equal rigour. The local authority should therefore fund reassessment of need where required, rather than trying to make schools commission this themselves.
43. Both Ofsted and the DFE should review the amount, type and extent of SEN provision in the county and make binding recommendations about how to develop and improve it.
44. Improved systems within the local authority to ensure that Educational Psychologists can be attracted, employed and retained. These need to be comparable to other authorities.

June 2018