Special educational needs support in Cumbria is showing significant evidence of progress after a critical Ofsted report in 2019, but concerns still remain.
The Cumbria Health and Wellbeing Board on Friday heard updates from organisations across the sector on their work.
Strategic Lead for SEND Improvement, Sian Rees, and Cumbria County Council’s assistant director for education and skills, Dan Barton, provided an update on efforts to improve special needs support in Cumbria.
Council leaders and NHS representatives heard an update on the delivery of the SEND Written Statement of Action (WSOA) and the supporting Accelerated Progress Plans.
The statement of action was created by partners in Cumbria in 2019 after an Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspection which provoked significant concern about the effectiveness of special educational needs services.
Speaking of recent work to improve SEND services, Ms Rees said: “There is improved joint working between us and decision making around the most complex children.
“We’re working quite closely with parents to develop services for those children who are in crisis. Of course we would prefer to take action before children and families are in crisis but that does happen at times.
“There’s been a lot of work on upskilling people through training programmes through support programmes for parents.
“We’ve made a lot of progress but as we hone in we start to get to the really challenging areas where we know what the issues are and despite many actions we’re not making the progress we would like to and that’s why we put in these Accelerated Progress Plans – it’s what the Department for Education and NHS England expect us to do when they revisit if we haven’t made progress in certain areas.”
Leader of Cumbria County Council Stewart Young expressed concern about the situation in SEND services.
“I’ve read this report two or three times to try and get a sense of progress that we’re making and I’m struggling with that. It’s three years ago that Ofsted and CQC came in and raised significant concerns, there were nine areas of significant weakness, we’ve spent three years trying to address those areas and we’re still getting indications from DfE that there are concerns about performance in specific areas.
“When they come back, if they decide we haven’t made sufficient progress, what happens then?”
The areas of concern identified by Ofsted and the CQC included limited joint working, understanding the needs of the SEND population; and limited involvement of young people and their families in the co-production of services.
Ms Rees said: “My assessment would be, six out of those nine I would feel reasonably confident.
“If you made no progress across the whole thing, the Secretary of State can intervene and that is what has happened in some other places.”
Board members agreed that an inspection would be welcome to demonstrate the improvements that have been made.
County council officer Mr Barton said: “We’ve got lots of good people working out in the school system who’ve had a really bruising busy time over the last two years. We are coming out of that so schools over time will probably have a bit more capacity.
“Demand within the SEND system has increase very significantly, it’s almost double what it was in 2014 and our projections are saying the growth will continue for at least another 10 years.
“So we will have to look at a system, not just at strategic capacity but actually resource on the ground.”
