Reflections from Steve Crocker - 27 March 2024

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

The board met once more on 27 March. 

I started the meeting by sharing some of my reflections and activity that has been taking place over the last month to help support our improvement work.

Chair’s remarks

Since the last meeting, I have met with all the headteachers from special schools, which was very helpful and constructive and there was a real appetite to support the work of the SEND transformation programme. More on the programme below. 

Following on from my last blog, where I mentioned I had connected with the Council for Disabled Children, I have since facilitated a couple of meetings with them together with senior leaders around co-production and autism pathways. 

 We have reached our first milestone in that we have just completed our first deep dive together with partners and the Department for Education and NHS England. This was covered on the agenda so do read on for more but I think, overall, we were able to demonstrate areas of action and how we are working better as a partnership. This includes a culture shift across partnership organisations to prioritise SEND improvement. But more work needs to be done as everybody around the table agreed.

This month, I’ve also met with partnership leads for the county council and NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board (BOB ICB) around our joint commissioning and areas for improvement. 

Generally, across our work, I can see there is a lot of positive traction, and the feedback I’m hearing is that we’re on the right tracks. There’s energy and commitment to deliver but there’s lots more work to do – we have to keep going!

First on the agenda was a discussion on our deep dive. 

Deep dive

Katie Moore, Department for Education Regional Lead for SEND explained to the board that under the new local area partnership SEND inspection framework, after an inspection, there are a series of deep dives and stocktakes to review progress. This is before Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) revisit around 18 months after the first inspection. 

Every six months, there will be a stocktake, which assesses the impact changes have had or are having, and in between these there will be deep dives around progress on the inspection priority action areas.

The recent deep dive looked at the inspection priority action areas one and three. Priority area one is that the views of children, young people and their families are sought, listened to, and acted on effectively. Priority area three is that children and young people’s needs are consistently identified accurately and assessed in a timely and effective way from the outset; and that we improve the quality of education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

Katie, Mark McCurrie Independent SEND Adviser for the DfE and David Keaveney-Sheath, NHS England Adviser, provided informal feedback. This reflected that it has taken time for plans to get into action but progress has been made over the last eight months since the inspection, particularly in the last few months. There is more capacity in the system and we have plans in place to address the inspection areas of improvement and beyond. The summary of the DfE feedback is that:

“The APA deep dive into Priority Area 1 and 3 of the SEND Improvement Plan demonstrated a journey from intention to actions. The local area stated they are starting to see an improving picture of the organisations culture, with a sense that the partnership across the local area is beginning to strengthen. However, there is more work to be done across all priority areas. The area needs to evidence how the changes you are making are becoming part of core operations with open and transparent communication with children and their families.”

This leads me to the next agenda item. Ian Smart, SEND Transformation Programme Director, provided an update on progress we are making as a partnership on the transformation programme.

Progress update on the transformation programme

We are working in tandem on delivering projects that respond to the inspection areas of focus, as well as integrating them into a wider improvement programme. The priority action areas don’t completely address all potential improvements – we want to be better than just the Ofsted actions. 

Lisa Lyons, Oxfordshire County Council’s Director of Children’s Services, explained that the priority action plan (PAP) is quite a blunt tool to purely address the Ofsted/CQC areas of improvement. Those areas sit in a wider governance system with links across the partnership – one example being the local authority’s relationships with schools. So, we’re doing wider work to pull all this together in a continuous improvement plan. SEND services do not sit in isolation from wider children’s services. This will help us be more successful overall in maximising the positive impact for children and families. 

Ian recapped on key activity over the past four months starting with the approval of the PAP and the agreement and set-up of a transformation programme approach to address the “widespread and systemic failings” identified in the inspection and deliver change that is sustainable in the long-term.​

Some of the projects identified to drive forward change where progress is or has been made include: key performance indicators so we can measure success; SEND needs analysis; agreeing a communications and engagement approach, including how we maximise co-production opportunities and capture the voice and views of children, young people, parents and carers; the development or review of existing frameworks and strategies – multi-agency quality assurance framework, sufficiency (school places) strategy, alternative provision framework; and focus to improve pathways – enhanced educational pathways, specialist health pathways, pathways to independence.​

As part of the programme governance, we have a partnership delivery group (PDG) that provides regular check and challenge. At the most recent meeting, the PDG concluded that the programme needs to be bolder in its scale, scope and pace, including across nine areas of focus:​

1. Early help and prevention strategy and board: Co-produce the strategy across the partnership and set-up a board, which will be a key strategic enabler of transformation.
2. Early years board: Set-up a board and link-up with Oxford Health’s new 0-19 service contract and health and wellbeing strategy.​
3. A single view of the truth: A co-produced map of the graduated approach, including the offer, pathways and thresholds across all ages and stages​.
4. Oxfordshire schools partnership group: This group will support schools-led improvement, centred on a new education and inclusion strategy and funding. 
5. Enhanced pathways pilot: Evidence the impact from the 24 schools piloting enhanced pathways (part of the graduated approach), which could provide a basis for an ‘invest to save’ business case for all 287 schools​.
6. Professional development: Improve the scale, scope and pace of continuous professional development offer for practitioners and professional across all ages and stages. ​
7. Multi-agency quality assurance (MAQA): Accelerate the roll-out of the MAQA framework, including measurement of quality of advice and education, health and care plans before issue. Additionally, reduce the backlog of annual reviews​.
8. Neurodiversity and integrated therapies: Design and mobilise programmes to support more children and young people on waiting lists and to transform the operating and funding models (focused on earlier help and intervention). ​
9. SEND strategy and priority action plan refresh: Revise the milestone dates and deliverables.

Oxfordshire Parent Carers Forum raised that there is increasing parent and carer frustrations and impatience regarding timing of change. They are not feeling improvements on the ground.

I recognise these frustrations and we do need to work to address where more change is required. However, change will take time and we are operating in a national system which is not working effectively for children. 

The board agreed that we do need to celebrate the tangible changes that are being made, for example, the timeliness around EHCP assessments. But we recognise there are still parents and families with EHCPs already who don’t recognise progress as their reality, and who need further support to feel and see positive change. 

There was a discussion around the steps we need to take to help with this. First, we need to improve our outcomes in Oxfordshire for children and young people with SEND and then we will be in a stronger position to lobby for change nationally from government. 

Closer to home, we acknowledged that we have just launched our first set of SEND Oxfordshire Conversations with parents and carers, which will help with ongoing dialogue. Thank you to those of you who attended and I hope you found them useful. We will be running more and will keep you posted on dates. We need to build on these and use them to be visible and accessible as leaders across the partnership to help listen and act.

Next, we moved on to discuss education pathways for young people aged 16 and over. This is a really important area for us to improve. Young people consistently tell us that they want a pathway to independence that is planned for from their early teens.

Education training and employment for those aged 16 and over

The local area’s responsibility for children and young people with EHCPs continues to age 25. ​Therefore, support spans across children’s, adults and a range of other services​. 

Kate Reynolds, Interim Director of Education, at the county council gave an overview of the current picture:

Educational landscape

• There has been a slight increase in young people staying on in education (78.8 per cent compared with 78.4 per cent in 20/21)​.
• Those with SEND are more likely to stay on in schools (though less than the national picture).
• In Oxfordshire, there is a slightly higher percentage of young people with SEND in apprenticeships (five per cent) compared with four per cent nationally. 

Post 16 education

• We have three further education colleges with 284 young people (Abingdon, Witney, Activate Learning, Oxford. These are mainly post 16 with some adult education being offered.
• 202 young people attend sixth forms in schools (roughly three per cent of the total in sixth forms)​.
• Of the 133 young people with SEND completing level 3 qualifications, 53 per cent (71) continued in further education, 42 per cent (56) went on to higher education.

Employment and training

• There is a slightly higher percentage of young people with SEND in employment (eight per cent) compared to the national average (six per cent)​.
• There are 339 young people not in education, employment or training – 53 (16 per cent) have an EHCP and 82 (24 per cent) have some form of SEND support.
• 227 out of 685 of students at the virtual school have an EHCP, an education, health and care needs assessment or SEND support​.
• There is a wide-ranging education, employment and training for care leavers and SEND young people supported by the virtual school.
• Afghan new arrivals who have ‘indefinite leave to remain’ status can access educational support at Watchfield/Shrivenham (Military of Defence site) with a focus on maths through English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses, including those aged 16 and over. 

The local authority has commissioned the University of Oxford to examine the educational experience of 16 - 19 year old refugees and asylum seekers with SEND. We will receive a report in early January 2025, which will include lessons learned and resources to help support this group of young people. 

Kate outlined some of the changes made to employment and skills training, locally and nationally that impact services and support. For example, local enterprise partnerships will become part of local authorities moving forward (1 April) and they have led on skills bootcamps previously. And the government’s Back to Work Plan announced last November, which aims to support over a million people with long-term health conditions, disabilities, or long-term unemployment to find and maintain employment. 

Kate outlined the challenges we collectively face in this area, including different funding frameworks for children and adults; different services contributing support and funding from different areas, for example healthcare funding; ​lack of strong links to the local economy and local economic needs; and crucially​ we need to include young people with SEND in our strategic post 16 planning and educational and employment provision. 

It was recognised that the partnership and the board includes leaders of major employers in the county and we need to be more inclusive. Oxfordshire also has one of the strongest economies in the UK. There is much more that we can do from this position of strength and this is an area that we will come back to in time. Partners were invited to pick up the gauntlet and come back with ideas on how we can ensure more internships, more apprenticeships, more meaningful jobs.

So that’s it from me for now, and I hope, as always, this is useful. We next meet as a board on 24 April 2024, where I’ll be able to share reflections on the Better Together Conference (Thursday 28 March). This annual event provides an opportunity for family carers, professionals, and organisations who support children and young people with SEND to work together to find a positive way forward to improve services and outcomes.

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. Also don’t forget to sign-up to receive the SEND e-newsletter if you’re not already receiving it. 

Until next time. 

Steve Crocker