West Sussex County Council
Children’s Social Care and the Virtual School
Improving performance: completion of Personal Education Plans
May, 2017
A little over 40% of the Personal Education Plans for children looked after are being completed within timescale. This figure needs ideally to be 100%. To ensure that social workers and managers have accurate information the following monitoring procedure will be adopted from early May, 2017. The process ensures that information regarding completed PEPs is transferred from West Sussex’s commissioned system, ePEP, to Framework-i so that reports generated from Framework-i accurately reflect performance.
Firstly, some brief reminders:
· ePEP must be used for all Personal Education Plans
· PEPs must be reviewed at least once every term and an up to date PEP must be submitted to each statutory review of the care plan
· Social workers need to complete section A for the first PEP and to update section A for subsequent PEPs
· Designated teachers will complete section B and social workers will need to agree with designated teachers who will complete section C for the young person’s views
· Section D “The PEP meeting” needs to be completed at the termly review meeting and those attending should agree who will do this so that it is completed promptly and it is clear that the meeting has taken place. Designated teachers should ensure that targets are set in Section D.
· Section D “PEP Sign-Off” is vital. Social workers and Designated Teachers will need to click their respective boxes “Mark completed” in “PEP Sign-Off” after the review is complete. The Assistant Virtual School Head for the relevant locality will sign off the ePEP once all three “Mark completed” sections have been signed off by the Designated Teacher and the Social Worker (including the Young Person box, either by DT or SW).
· The Virtual School cannot finalise the PEP until the sign-off process is completed by both the Social Worker and the Designated Teacher.
Process for transferring from ePEP to Framework-i:
· The relevant member of the Virtual School team will finalise the PEP once alerted by the system that all three “Mark completed” boxes have been signed off by Social Workers and Designated Teachers.
· Once the final sign-off is completed a PDF* of the ePEP must be created and transferred to Framework-i. This should be undertaken either by Social Workers or by Embedded Coordinators. The Virtual School has trained some Embedded Coordinators in how to do this.
· The PDF copy of the ePEP must be placed in a new PEP episode with the date of the next PEP review meeting identified in the episode outcome. NO PEP EPISODES MAY BE CREATED OTHER THAN BY THE TRANSFER OF A PDF DOCUMENT FROM ePEP.
· By following this process the information on Framework-i will match the information on ePEP by the end of the summer term.
*A PDF copy of any completed ePEP can be created by clicking “View” beside the relevant PEP date on the young person’s user page and following the “Print PEP to PDF File” instructions under “Actions” at the top left of the page.
Additional information:
· Assistant Virtual School Heads (previously known as Associate Advisers) will come to social care team meetings at the invitation of the team manager to update and assist social workers with using ePEP.
· The Virtual School Administrator can provide telephone support on use of ePEP: Mon- Thurs, 0930-1400 during term time. 03302 228 546
· The Quick and Easy Reminder Guide to West Sussex ePEP can be found on the Virtual School website: