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During the session, we were joined by some fantastic contributors, who gave us their own individual insights and perspectives.
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We recently hosted our first interactive webinar, titled “Collaborative learning across local authorities: Enhancing EHCP quality.” This was our opportunity to explain why it’s so essential to focus on stringent quality assurance processes and improvements within the SEND sector.
Hosting this webinar was the first for our team. It’s something we’ll be doing again next year, so please stay tuned and make sure you sign up to our newsletter to keep updated with details of our next online session.
These webinars are not about selling our tools and services to you.
Instead, they are about supporting you with education and helping you to hear real-time perspectives from those working within the sector. By delving into the issues that are affecting you, we can all learn how to work more collaboratively together to improve the outcomes for children and young people with SEND.
If you missed the webinar, please feel free to check out the replay here on YouTube.
“I enjoyed how snappy the presentations were, they kept your interest and were really informative. I also loved hearing how other LAs embed good practice"
”Hearing about real life changes and improvements that have been made”
“I really enjoyed the facts shared and the passion of various professionals, this really provided an appreciation for the bigger picture in the work we do and the significance of working holistically and collaboratively"
“Extremely up to date and topical, really covered the needs of LAs and SEND services deal with on a daily basis”
“Great to hear how another LA has changed its practice to accommodate increase in demand and maintain good quality”
During the session, we were joined by some fantastic contributors, who gave us their own individual insights and perspectives.
A huge thank you to Rachael Kennedy & Amy Brittain from Hertfordshire County Council who told us about their improvement journey and what initiatives they are working on.
We also welcomed Tina Emery OBE who provided us with a parent/carer perspective about how professionals can work more collaboratively with families.
Finally, we introduced Tia Sohi, Education Consultant and SLIP for DfE who shared the national context for what is happening within SEND.
If you joined us for the session, you’ll be aware that they each shared some compelling stories and shaped the narrative of how we can all work together to improve SEND outcomes.
If you weren’t able to join us for the session, here’s a little recap of what you missed.
Starting timeframe: 03.41
Q&A timeframe: 17.50
If you’ve recently read our Hertfordshire County Council case study, you’ll know that the team are passionately involved in a new initiative titled, “Make SEND everyone’s business.”
Rachel spoke about their quality assurance audits and practice development work and how they’ve developed a new operating model across their SEND network as part of a workforce transformation programme. Rachel shared their ten key principles of quality which play crucial part within their SEND quality assurance board and framework. Those principles, which were designed collaboratively with multi-agency partners are used by Hertfordshire to define what “good” looks like from a quality assurance process.
Amy then spoke about her role as a Practice Lead, and the work that she does within HCC’s SEND Academy.
She spoke about the importance of upskilling everyone involved and driving improvements as part of the “Make SEND everyone’s business” initiative. By rethinking their recruitment process and launching a specific six-week training academy, Hertfordshire have successfully added 138 new staff, of which over 50% have lived experience of SEND.
Hertfordshire have focused on the need to deliver training not just to staff, but also multi-agency partners (including education settings training) to ensure that they are creating a joined-up approach. The work will continue from December 2024 when they will launch a brand-new multi-agency training provision with a focus on outcomes, provision and preparation for adulthood.
With more work planned for 2025 (including a commercial training offer), it is clear that sharing knowledge, learning and best practice remains a core part of the work that Rachael and Amy are delivering inHertfordshire.
Starting timeframe: 27.17
Q&A timeframe: 39.22
With 30 years of experience in education, social care and youth work, Tina spoke about how to centre the child or young person’s voice within an EHCP. She highlighted the fact that parents and families are often collecting evidence and advice for years before it gets to the stage of needing evidence to apply for a formal plan.
The topic of communication was a key highlight, with Tina explaining that it’s essential for professionals to communicate with parents and carers effectively. She recommended having plans in place to explain how to communicate if statutory deadlines are potentially going to be missed, while also pointing out that families are having to place their trust in report writers, whom they’ve often never met.
Tina also pointed out that EHCPs may have negative reporting which can be difficult for parents and carers to read. Therefore to build positive relationships, professionals may benefit from having proactive conversations with families in advance to set expectations and help prevent those feelings of shock and upset.
Starting timeframe: 42.15
Q&A timeframe: 01.03.22
Our final guest, Tia Sohi, provided the national context behind SEND. She spoke of the need for shared learning and stakeholder engagement, and reiterated Tina’s point regarding collaboration with parents, carers and families.
As part of the national context, SLIP partners are there to offer additional help and support for local authorities, both operationally and strategically. She shared the need for collaboration and integrated working, withSLIP partners’ first priority to always meet with parents, carers and stakeholders. This allows partners to understand what the challenges are, what quality tools are being used and how the overall process can be improved.
Discussions moved onto the new Ofsted framework, with the majority of Local Authorities receiving a category 3, often due to not having enough lived experience, and a lack of evidence that they are working as a partnership. Tia highlighted the point that many LA’s may be working and collaborating with others effectively and progressing at pace – but if families know nothing about it, that collaboration may become meaningless as it doesn’t demonstrate a strong local area partnership. She recommended that professionals should critically assess whether LAPs are truly working as well as they should be.
Tia talked briefly about the SEND Change Programme and what this means for those seeking to improve the lives of children and young people with SEND. This will include new national standards, better LAP working, tailored lists and a new standardised EHCP template. She explained who the change partners were, and who you can contact to get further updates from.
Finally, Tia concluded by sharing the key updates from theDfE.
ü £4.5m has been allocated to NHS bodies (via LAs)to implement the Early Language Support for Every Child (ELSEC) speech andlanguage intervention project.
ü The Majority of funding spent thus far withinLocal authorities has prioritized the big changes within Alternative provision.
ü Four Local Authorities have adopted the draftnationalised template as their permanent template – however this is taking timeand money to introduce nationally.
As you can see, we covered a lot of different topics in justunder an hour – and we all learnt a lot about the current state of SEND andwhat can be done to make tangible improvements.
This article has only given a brief insight into the discussions. There were plenty of questions and answers also featured, so we highly recommend that you watch the replay which is available on YouTube. To make it easier for you, we’ve listed the video timeframes of each contributor and their Q&A.
If you have any more questions about these topics, please feel free to get in touch. As we mentioned at the start of this article, we’ll be holding a second webinar in the Spring, so please sign up to our newsletter to keep updated.
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