September focus for next phase towards improving SEND assessments
07 August 2024
Priority work on improving services for children with special needs and disabilities (SEND) in West Northamptonshire continues to progress, with extra staff starting next month to focus on tackling the increased demand for education health and care plans (EHCPs).
Seven dedicated EHC caseworkers will be joining West Northamptonshire Council (WNC) at the start of the new school year in September to improve the timeliness and quality of these pivotal assessments for families requesting SEND support.
The work is a key area for improvement identified in the recent Ofsted inspection of West Northamptonshire’s SEND Partnership, which highlighted significant concerns about the services currently provided to children and their families in the area.
The Council is working with partners to progress a broad range of actions to address the report’s findings, and also recently committed to increasing capacity of its SEND team to help meet the unprecedented demand for the services – having experienced in its first few years as a council a 40 per cent increase in EHCP requests (an increase of over 1,000).
Work is already under way to address the issues, with WNC also recently commissioning a team of Educational Psychologists to support with overdue EHC assessments, setting a positive trajectory for improvement. Although there is still much work to do, the additional resource is starting to make an impact, with 42% of EHCPs issued within the 20-week statutory timescale in June 2024 – a significant increase from the 2023 average of 6%. 139 plans have been issued since the start of the priority action plan, with 20.1% of these issued within 20 weeks.
The Partnership is now focusing on several priority actions that require urgent attention to address the findings of the report.
“We are committed to working hard with all our partners on better outcomes for SEND children and their families and delivering the priority action plan for improving services.Cllr Fiona Baker, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Education at WNC
“We fully accept the findings of the recent Ofsted inspection and apologise to children, young people and their families where we have fallen short. We know we are still in the very early days of our improvement journey with many families not yet able to feel the impact of this work, but it’s encouraging to see we are making gradual, positive progress in addressing our challenges, particularly around our unprecedented EHCP caseloads.
“With seven additional caseworkers joining the service in September we anticipate we’ll continue on the current trajectory to further increase the number of ECHPs issued within the statutory timescale.”