What we have done so far:
- Made it easier for families to find support through our Family Information Service and the Local Offer. This includes working with everyone who supports you to see how we can work better together – starting with how Health Visitors can work with families and early years’ settings from when children are two years old;
- Put things in place so we can write better Education, Health & Care Plans (EHCPs), complete them more quickly and within the timescales we have to meet;
- Provided more special school and Additional Resource Provision (ARP) places through our SEND Specialist Commissioning Strategy and Alternative Provision Strategy 2021. Put extra specialist support in place for you if you have struggled in school through COVID or found it hard to go to school because of your additional needs;
- We have worked with our therapy services to understand how long you have to wait for support and are looking for ways to speed this up;
- We have put a clear process in place in children’s social care for screening and assessment as part of the EHCP request. This helps with writing the plan and makes sure that any possible safeguarding concerns can be referred into the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) for further consideration.
What else you want us to do:
- Review our way of supporting you as soon as it is needed through our Early Years Strategy and Graduated Approach. Develop how we work across services in the Council (with Reshaping Education giving us a new Inclusion Team) so schools better understand how to support you and can get extra help as soon as they need it;
- Improve the information in our Education, Health & Care Plans (EHCPs) so people working with you clearly know what you can do well, what you need help with and how best to support you;
- We will work with our therapy services to find ways to speed up the waiting time. We will give you more information and advice whilst you are waiting and make sure you, and your parent carers, know where to find this;
- We will improve the information within our social care assessments for EHCPs to ensure services which can support you and your family are clearly identified and signposted to;
If we have agreed that you need social care support, we will review this every year. This information will support the annual review of your EHCP if you have one.