Reflections from Steve Crocker - 28 February 2024

Hello and welcome to my third blog as independent chair of the Oxfordshire SEND Strategic Improvement and Assurance Board.

The board met once more on 28 February.

I kicked off the meeting by sharing some of the connections I have made over the last month to help support our improvement work.

Chair’s remarks

I’ve been continuing to meet and connect with school leaders – not least because we know that any improvements in the system will involve schools. To this end, I spoke at the ACER Trust conference with special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDCO) leads from across Oxfordshire, outlining the national and local challenges and how we are starting to meet those challenges.

I’ve also had the opportunity to connect with the Council for Disabled Children through some of my other roles and it has offered support around looking at NHS waiting lists and co-production based on their experiences elsewhere. I will be following up with them.

In addition, I’ve had further meetings with members of the Oxfordshire Education Commission and the Local Government Association lead on SEND. Hopefully, these connections will help us all as we go forward.

We then moved on to take a look at the forward plan.

Forward plan

This will help us see what we, as a strategic board, will be looking at and discussing over the coming months. For example, in March, we will be looking at programme progress, including against key performance indicators; and post-16 provision, including the quality and performance of this provision. All local area partnership (LAP) members were invited to review the plan and share any thoughts or items that need to be considered.

Alternative provision

Next on the agenda, the county council led a discussion on alternative provision (AP). The council shared that AP is a key focus for government with recent thematic research showing that AP can lead to better outcomes for some children. However, there are issues of quality and quantity of provision, including the complexity of settings that are registered and unregistered.

We talked about the definition of AP. AP is designed to be a short-term intervention to re-engage a child in learning and support them back into education at their school. It is usually planned for an initial period of up to 12 weeks.

It includes:

• provision used by schools to try to prevent suspensions or permanent exclusion, or to re-engage pupils in their education
• Oxfordshire Hospital School for children with medical needs
• provision for pupils who have been permanently excluded and awaiting a new placement
• pupils moving into Oxfordshire without a school place

The county council updated on the AP strategy that had been agreed in May 2023. The key headlines of the strategy are that the council aims to increase the use of bespoke AP to support children with education, health and care plans to maintain a placement, as an alternative to a placement or if there is no appropriate placement (this does led to significant cost increases); develop optimal and sustainable use of our registered AP; and provide registered AP for our most vulnerable children with complex needs.

Actions to date include the appointment to a strategic post with oversight of the use of registered and unregistered AP; improvements in the consistency of recording and reporting of AP activity, which has enabled management oversight and a strategic approach to the use of AP by the local authority and schools; and increasing the use of, in a three-year plan, Meadowbrook College.

The strategy is also aiming to commission providers from an open framework from April 2024. This is instead of using a dynamic purchasing system for unregistered providers. The open framework includes a new quality assurance process for providers joining it and there will be a full inspection annually for all providers along with an annual self-assessment.

There was some discussion on the health needs of young people who attend AP and the importance of incorporating this in future plans. Oxfordshire Parent Carer Forum (OxPCF) also outlined the need to work with parent carers on AP provision moving forward.

Key performance indicators (KPI) and dashboard

The county council then gave an update on the KPI dashboard. Some of this is a bit techy but I’ll try and give you an overview. The bottom line is that we need to be able to measure our collective progress (in the council, in schools and in the NHS) in both quantitative and qualitative ways.

The board has previously reviewed key data relating to education, health and care needs assessments, plans and tribunals. It has also already considered a draft set of service activity and outcome measures aligned to the three transformation programme improvement themes (outlined in my first blog) and endorsed the initiation of the SEND improvement dashboard project.

Progress in the last month includes:

• Further consideration of the KPI dashboard requirements, including the need to be able to understand baselines, targets, direction of travel and relevant comparators to effectively evaluate progress and impact.
• An initial data audit has been started to map the dashboard use cases, data sources and any known data issues.
• Data quality is likely to be an issue, so we will need to be mindful of how and where it is shared so that it isn’t misleading or inaccurate.

The proposed plan for the next month includes:

• Work with the transformation programme theme groups and co-chairs to review the KPI dashboard requirements.
• Development of an overall design and delivery plan for the KPI dashboard so that clear data and insight can be shared with the board from April onwards.
• Ensure appropriate data safeguards are in place and facilitate access to the draft dashboard for relevant stakeholders, developing short training /guidance videos to support this new way of working.

It was proposed that programme theme co-chairs and groups are supported to identify their KPI dashboard requirements and plans by the SEND transformation programme team through existing programme meetings. It was noted that the national SEND and AP dashboard is due to be published in March 2024 with LAPs expected to have some limited access prior to the public release.

There was also general agreement that the board should focus on strategic data and targets in discussions to assess progress, and that this data should be used to hold us all to account. We will work on how we can share the agreed KPIs safely and effectively as data becomes available in the coming months.

Next on the agenda was communications and engagement.

Communications, engagement and co-production

A cross-cutting workstream within the SEND transformation programme has been set-up covering communications, engagement and co-production.

The overall aims are:

1. Keep audiences regularly informed of progress to improve services for children and young people with SEND.

2. Facilitate effective communication and engagement opportunities to inform, involve and, where appropriate, co-produce activity, listening to families in an active and inclusive way.

3. Increase and maintain trust and confidence in the public agencies involved in delivering the SEND priority action plan and service improvements.

As referenced, in my last blog, we now have a communications and engagement strategy that provides an overall framework and approach for the board and LAP on improvement communications with key principles and commitments outlined. The strategy was agreed in the meeting and key elements are detailed below.

Commitments and principles

The local area partnership (LAP) is committed to good communications, consultation and engagement practice, putting children and young people with SEND, and their families, at the heart of decision-making. This means engaging with and listening to residents, and other partners, in an open, active and inclusive way.

This means the LAP will:

• Provide a range of ways to both communicate with SEND families on service improvement progress and engage with them on their lived experiences, across multiple channels, both on and offline.
• Support and share agreed communications and signpost audiences to key information. Each partner is accountable for dissemination and will use their own channels and networks.
• Support the growth of the audience reach1 for partnership wide channels through signposting (eg the SEND e-newsletter for parents and carers and the online local offer of support and services) that offer opportunities for more people to be informed, have their say and for quality engagement in multiple ways.
• Actively listen to what SEND families value most, involving them in conversations about the things that affect them and using this feedback to help shape or improve services – both in design and delivery.
• Deliver transparent, consistent and timely communications, with all partners contributing to sharing content for the coordination of partnership progress updates and news.
• Be inclusive when seeking views, reaching the seldom-heard or hard to reach2 such as children and young people, those vulnerable and those who are digitally excluded3.
• Demonstrate where the partnership has taken the views of consultees into account in its decision-making.

These commitments, also align with the county council’s consultation and engagement strategy 2022 - 25.

Communications and channels

Across the partnership, there will be a number of channels and opportunities to engage with our audiences. An audit will be undertaken to capture and agree what channels are optimal to use for key updates both on behalf of the partnership and locally by individual partners. All partners are committed to signposting to key and agreed channels, contributing towards audience growth to optimise reach and engagement.

Examples include the county council’s website, which is hosting a SEND improvement webpage, with information on the partnership and improvement board.

Any significant updates will be published or updated here, including my blogs. Key news updates will also be signposted from this webpage.

All partners should also use, contribute to and promote Oxfordshire’s SEND Local Offer as a central source of information for families and practitioners.

Overall, the use of channels that support targeted communications and engagement will be prioritised above broadcast channels such as the county council and NHS Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board’s (BOB ICB) corporate social media channels if the audience is parents and carers. Appropriate channel use will be selected based on the target audience for a communications and activity taking place.

Engagement

A commitment has been made to enhance existing arrangements to listen to, and act on the views of children and young people, parents, carers and professionals. On top of existing meetings with OxPCF and other parent and carer support groups, a variety of termly information gathering and sharing sessions will be held, online and in-person, including in educational settings, to gather feedback. For example, two SEND Oxfordshire Conversation events will be taking place on 19 March.

To support key milestones of the transformation programme, where appropriate, we will want to directly gather the views of children and young people with SEND. Depending on the engagement activity, we will explore reaching out to groups that advocate for children and young people to help us to gather the voices of those with SEND and share updates. We can also reach out through special needs schools and groups where children and young people are, to pre-existing activities or meetings.

It is recognised that communicating with and gathering feedback from children and young people with SEND requires specialist professional expertise, particularly from those with high or complex needs. A variety of methods, for example focus groups, could be used. The wellbeing of any children and young people will be prioritised above any engagement activity, including professional consideration of who to involve.

A baseline survey for parents and carers of children and young people with SEND will be undertaken to gather views on their lived experience outcomes to inform strategic planning and evaluation of SEND services and improvement. A follow-up survey will take place nine to 12 months later to assess the partnership’s progress. This will help the partnership identify what is working well, what could be improved and what needs to be prioritised.

Co-production

Working to an agreed definition of co-production, the partnership will identify opportunities or areas for co-production across the transformation programme with parents and carers and children and young people with SEND. Activity should be meaningful and add value to improving services and the lived experiences of families and children and young people with SEND. It is recognised that it is not possible, nor appropriate, for all activity to be co-produced.

SEND improvement co-production with families should be channelled through OxPCF, schools and educational settings, and other trusted community groups and networks. The outputs of the partnership’s engagement activities will inform co-production work, and new or strengthened connections with families will provide a basis for initiating user-led co-production activity. The partnership aims to begin by developing a SEND improvement co-production charter that sets out ways of working and standards that all partners will commit to.

The definition agreed to during the meeting was an established definition co-produced with communities and partners in Oxfordshire previously called Oxfordshire Working Together.

“Co-production is the process where providers and/or professionals and stakeholding citizens equally share a whole-life responsibility for the creation and delivery of products, services or knowledge. Co-production is underpinned by the principles of equality, diversity, access and reciprocity.”

Transformation programme governance

The meeting ended with an explanation of the programme governance. 

• Programme governance meetings and reporting cycle (pdf format, 355KB)

BOB ICB has been shortened for the purposes of the image and stands for NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire West Integrated Care Board.

So that’s it from me for now, and I hope this is useful. I feel that this blog has been a bit more technical than I would have liked but it’s important that we get all of the right frameworks in place and try to explain them to drive the improvement that we need. We next meet as a board on 27 March 2024 where we will revisit our improvement progress and together agree next steps. 

If you are a parent or carer and have any thoughts or comments, please share with the PCF by emailing info@oxpcf.org.uk. If you are a partner, please do feedback through your organisation. You can find a list of the LAP member representatives on the board on the SEND improvement webpage. 

Until next time. 
Steve Crocker