There are a number of strategic developments underway in Solihull Council to improve outcomes for children and young people with additional or special educational needs and each of these is an essential component for that journey. The strategies listed below define the developments being undertaken:
This provides an overarching strategy across the local area SEND partnership to provide robust leadership inspection regime. It also meets the requirement for a published SEND strategy whilst reflecting our drive to focus more on early intervention for any child with any additional need and reduce the need for statutory intervention. This strategy will underpin any other SEND policies and activity.
The Solihull SEND Self Evaluation Framework provides an overview of the work that is being delivered across the local area, including areas of strength and areas of development.
(Consultation from January 2022).
This provides an agreed multi-agency framework to focus on early childhood development, identification and support alongside ensuring children have access to high quality and differentiated childcare and early years’ education.
This provides a commonly agreed understanding of good inclusive practise within education settings and a platform for greater school ownership and accountability of this agenda – leading to improved access and outcomes in mainstream and maintained settings for all vulnerable children.
Further information about the Strategy for Inclusive Education
This provides the LAs statutory overarching strategy for ensuring children with special needs and/or disabilities are not unfairly disadvantaged due to the education environment, facilities, equipment or resources available to them. This will inform individual school strategies to reduce discrimination for these children and young people.
This provides a greater understanding of the level of child need coming through the system in the medium term and the type of provision (type of need, age range, level of demand) required to meet this need so all children can have access to appropriate education provision across the spectrum of mainstream to specialist; and the reliance on the independent sector can be reduced.
Special Educational Needs & Disability (SEND) School Place Commissioning Strategy 2021 - 2024
This will complement the SEND School Place Commissioning Strategy and focus on more temporary education arrangements for those children and young people who, for any reason, are unable to access the usual education offer. It will include the required provision for children and young people with medical needs and those excluded from school. Alternative Provision Strategy.
The following initiatives are linked to the strategies shown above:
This provides a 5-year action plan of all activity required (at individual, operational and strategic level) to improve outcomes for children and young people; including multi and single agency plans to bring cohesion to the system. This will enable a greater level of scrutiny and accountability to the whole improvement agenda.
This will be a fluid plan to adapt to feedback from children, young people, parent carers and professionals and respond to any national and local changes.
The Department for Education acknowledges the current challenges which local systems are experiencing in delivering special educational needs and disability services (SEND). The Delivering Better Value in SEND programme (DBV in SEND) is aiming to support local authorities and their local area partners to improve the delivery of SEND services for children and young people whilst working towards financial sustainability.
As part of the DBV programme, we will be working to:
- Improve inclusion for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and additional needs through a structure of assessment, analysis, and training for inclusivity at mainstream schools and other settings.
- To develop a strong, comprehensive suite of resources for all schools, settings and partners that will help improve inclusion of children and young people with young people with SEND in schools that best suit their needs, and without non ideal education health and care plans (EHCPs).
This will provide a consistent framework for all professionals working with children with SEND to consider appropriate support and interventions; with a focus on maximising universal, targeted and specialist provision before escalation to statutory services. This will be used within education to validate the level of inclusive practice.
In January 2023 colleagues from the West Midlands Network carried out a Peer Review on the SEND system in Solihull.
This was a positive learning experience and gave an opportunity for identifying areas of strengths in the borough as well as areas for development.
We are currently considering the recommendations made in light of our work already planned for Year 2 (2023) of delivering the Additional Needs Strategy and from feedback from parent carers on their priority areas for change; through discussions which began at the SEND Community Event on 1 March.
A Peer Review Report was provided.
The Peer Review local area partnership response to the report has been agreed
Supporting information
The purpose of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) is to provide data and information to inform local strategic decision making in relation to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) service provision in the Solihull area. An up to date JSNA is a mandated part of the Ofsted and CQC measurement framework.
The Solihull Council SEND JSNA combines available data, research and intelligence to explore SEND prevalence and trends for children and young people aged 0 25 living and/or studying in Solihull as compared to statistically similar local authorities and the national average.