Evaluation of implementation of the Additional Support for Learning (Scotland) Act 2004
Compiled by
Lesley Nelson – Assistant Psychologist
Jenny Wilson – Principal Educational Psychologist
East Lothian Council Educational Psychology Service
September 2008
ASL Evaluation Project Group:
Jenny Wilson Principal Educational Psychologist
Liz Herd Inclusion & Equality Officer
Raymy Boyle Integration Manager
Jill Gorzkowska ASL Health Link Officer
Lisa Shine Consumer Involvement Officer
Lynda Brady Admin Officer ASL
Tania Hutchison Assistant Psychologist (until March 2008)
Lesley Nelson Assistant Psychologist (from July 2008)
CONTENTS
Page
1. Introduction 4
2. Executive Summary 7
3. Data Collected 11
4. Results – Phase One 13
5. Results – Phase Two 18
6. Conclusion 31
7. Draft proposals for action 33
Appendix 1 Questionnaire to Professionals
Appendix 2 Audit of Paperwork
Appendix 3 Questionnaire to Parents/Carers
Appendix 4 Questionnaire to Young People
1. INTRODUCTION
In November 2005 a multi agency group was established to oversee an action plan devised to support implementation of the ASL Act, which commenced on November 14th 2005. This group was dissolved in August 2007 as it was agreed it had achieved its task. At its final meeting the ASL Act Implementation Group set up a project group to carry out an evaluation of the impact of the ASL Act on children and young people with support needs in education. This report presents the outcome of the evaluation.
Background
The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 requires co-operation between services to assess children in need, including children affected by disability, and provide services to give those children the opportunity to lead lives which are as normal as possible.
For Scotland’s Children (2001) – the Scottish Executive’s Report on Better Integrated Services identified action points including:
· Consider Children’s Services as a Single Service System
· Ensure Inclusive Access to Universal Services
· Co-ordinate Needs Assessment
· Co-ordinate Intervention
· Target Services
The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (ASL Act is one of a series of initiatives to ensure coordinated, proportionate and, where required, multi agency support for children.
The ASL Act was commenced in November 2005. The Act introduces a new framework for supporting children and young people and their families in school education and replaces the term ‘special educational needs’ with ‘additional support needs’. The term ‘additional support needs’ applies to children and young people whom, for whatever reason, require additional support, long or short term, in order to help them make the most of their school education.
The Act aims to ensure that all children and young people are provided with the necessary support to help them work towards achieving their full potential and promotes collaborative working among all professionals supporting children and young people. The ASL Act requires Education Authorities to have in place arrangements for identifying and addressing children’s additional support needs. A major thrust of the ASL Act is to ensure coordinated multi agency support for those with significant and enduring needs.
Other key changes to practice required by the Act are:
· The right of parents and young people to request assessment of Additional Support Needs
· The need to provide information for parents and young people about policy and provision for additional support needs
· The need to involve parents/carers and young people in assessment and planning of intervention to address additional support needs
· The need to plan for transitions
· A co-ordinated support plan as the statutory planning document for children and young people with significant additional support needs who require a significant level of intervention from services within and outwith education.
Getting It Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) (2005) requires effective multi agency working and the targeting of available resources to provide proportionate, timely and appropriate responses to each child's needs and provide extra support or help to those that need it, so that they can make good use of the opportunities available; and the best outcomes can be achieved
Staged Assessment and Intervention
In East Lothian we meet all these requirements for effective multi agency working through Staged Assessment and Intervention (SA&I), is the assessment and planning framework used by services working with children and young people.
HMIE report on the implementation of ASL Act
http://www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/aslr.pdf
In October 2007 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) published a report, which evaluated the consistency, effectiveness and efficiency of education authorities in implementing the ASL Act. HMIe found that most authorities were effective in ensuring that their procedures for implementing the Act were in line with the duties of the Act and the associated Code of Practice. The most effective authorities had built on existing good practice and developed joint strategic approaches with other agencies. However, most authority plans focused on the process of implementation. Few had given sufficient consideration at strategic management level to monitoring the impact of these processes on families and on the learning experiences of children and young people.
Our approach to the task
The project group adopted a two-stage approach to the task.
Phase one focused on gathering information about the SA&I framework in practice and perceptions of professionals on implementation of the ASL Act and its impact on outcomes for children and young people. Questionnaires were sent out to various groups of professionals. In addition discussion forums were set up for professionals working in Children’s Services, Children’s Health Services and Education. Issues that emerged from the data collected at phase one informed the focus for phase two.
Phase two comprised ‘taking a closer look’ at the Act in practice by undertaking an audit of practice around operation of the Staged Assessment and Intervention Framework and gathering information about the impact of the Act from children/young people and their parents/carers.
2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Professionals
In the view of the professionals involved communication and inter-agency working have improved since the Act was commenced. Some professionals however, still found that access to information about children/young people could be difficult. The SA&I framework was considered to be clearer and used more effectively but Co-ordinated Support Plans (CSPs) needed to be explained better.
Professionals believed that since the Act was implemented, children and young people had been consulted more and parental involvement had increased. Comments indicated that a certain level of this existed pre the Act but at a fairly low level – parents seemed to be consulted but not directly involved in planning. Many professionals commented that training is needed to effectively involve children and young people at meetings.
Professionals identified a number of changes for the better since the Act was implemented:
- Communication was better
- There was more involvement – whole team around child, parents and children – a multi agency approach
- Ability to access professionals between meetings is improved
- Record keeping was excellent – but maybe could be streamlined slightly
- Improved awareness re ASN
- SA&I procedures had become embedded - there was a clear path to follow
- Enhanced transition
- Educational Psychologist involvement and training
- Awareness of the need to involve children and young people more
For professionals, what still needed to happen to ensure that the key principles of the Act were met included:
- Finding ways of involving children and young people more
- More parental involvement and better information for them
- Increased funding to meet additional support needs and for admin support
- More time
- More commitment from outside agencies to attend meetings
- More rigorous audit of actions agreed by case co-ordinator – scrutiny re how they have been progressed, accountability and more active monitoring where agreed actions were not carried out
- Continued training re Additional Support Needs and associated issues
The Staged Assessment and Intervention framework in practice
The audit of a random sample of SA&I documents indicated that SA&I records were not fully completed or that the appropriate information was not always recorded. There were also a few examples of the SA&I recording formats not being used to record discussions amongst parents and professionals or to detail an action plan for what happened next. Although most of the SA&I records sampled had an action plan, it was not clear whether or how the interventions agreed would be evaluated. Consideration of the SA&I records reviewed indicated that children’s views needed to be more effectively taken into account at SA&I meetings. The role of the chairperson also needed to be better understood by professionals and more consistently addressed.
The audit of Staged Assessment and Intervention (SA&I) documentation and focus groups with professionals about the SA&I process corresponded with much of the feedback provided through the questionnaires:
- A shared view amongst professionals that action plans have helped give focus to meetings;
- A high attendance of parents at SA&I meetings;
- Agreement that responsibility for meeting children’s support needs was now shared amongst agencies resulting in a clearer focus on where to go with the child;
- A shared opinion that using a standard format to record SA&I meetings was helpful.
Parents
Twenty-six parents returned questionnaires. There was a high awareness of the Act amongst the parents who participated in the consultation sessions. They believed that staff involved with their child gave excellent input and have been helpful. A high percentage of parents attended meetings concerning their child’s needs. They considered that Co-ordinated Support Plans (CSPs) had helped multi-agency working and made support easier to find. Most commented that they did not receive enough information about their child’s needs. The need for an independent point of contact was identified. A few parents had concerns about the complex language used in the information available about the Staged Assessment and Intervention Framework. Some parents expressed concern about professionals whom they believed do not know their child giving advice about his/her support needs or how to address them. A couple of parents were concerned about the time it took for things to happen. Parents were also annoyed at problems they blamed on budgets – i.e. support for their child being cut and a lack of resources.
Young People
Twenty-eight pupils completed questionnaires and took part in focus groups. Young people enjoy school on both an academic and social level. They felt they received support with their work but also with personal problems. They were supported by a variety of people but in particular the school nurse and guidance teacher. Most were aware that they could attend meetings but many chose not to. This may have been because of an assumption that meetings are “when you get into trouble”. Very few of the young people had heard of the ASL Act and the terms surrounding it. The young people enjoyed the focus groups because they could give their opinion and share experiences with others.
Good practice
Examples of good practice gathered from the questionnaires and focus groups include: having the same teacher for two years in primary school, beginning preparation for transition to secondary school in primary six and arranging extra visits to high school for those with greater difficulties during transition, preparing parents for what to expect at meetings and debriefing them afterwards and assuming the child will attend all of the meeting.
Proposals for action
Based on the findings of the report the ASL Evaluation Project Group proposed the following action points:
· Revising the strategy for disseminating information about the ASL Act
· Devising a means for parents to have their voices heard
· Information in a format that is suitable for children/young people
· Training for practitioners to more actively involve children and young people in any decisions that will affect them
· Training to enable the connection between ASL and GIRFEC to be better understood by professionals, parents and children/young people
· Training for professionals to be able to involve parents in assessment and planning to meet their child’s needs
· Improvement of joint training which would include education, children’s health services and children’s services
· Developing a quality improvement process for the SA&I framework to evaluate the impact of assessment and intervention co-ordinated via SA&I for families and children
3. DATA COLLECTED
Phase 1
Questionnaires were sent out to professionals representative of the range of services working with children. (Appendix 1) A total of 125 questionnaires were returned.
Figure 1
Three focus groups took place during November/December 2007 with representatives from Children’s Health Services, Education and Children’s Services.
Phase 2
Two school clusters volunteered to take part in an audit of practice around the Staged Assessment and Intervention framework (SA&I) (Appendix 2). These took place during April and May 2008. A total of fifteen anonymous SA&I records were audited. The SA&I records sampled reflected pupils at Stages 1, 2 and 3 within the SA&I framework.
Two focus groups took place in June 2008 with parents/carers - one in Musselburgh and the other in Haddington. Questionnaires were distributed after the focus groups to parents/carers who had indicated a wish to provide feedback. (Appendix 3) Twenty-six questionnaires were returned.
Three focus groups took place with young people in June 2008 - with a group of 10 pupils from two secondary schools and a group of 8 pupils from a third secondary school. As part of the focus group, the pupils completed a ‘Getting Help’ questionnaire. (Appendix 4) 28 pupils completed this questionnaire about who in their life they felt supported by and in what ways these various people helped them.
4. RESULTS – PHASE ONE
Professionals’ Questionnaire
Almost half (49%) of the respondents considered that outcomes for children with additional support needs (ASN) had improved since implementation of the ASL Act. Health professionals believed that the Early Years Community Assessment Team (EYCAT) system had improved planning for pre school aged children. However, almost half (48%) of the respondents indicated that outcomes had “stayed the same” suggesting little or no impact of the ASL Act on practice. Comments from respondents qualified this with a number reporting that they had good procedures to meet children’s support needs before the Act. Some professionals from Education specifically, considered that outcomes were worse as there were not enough resources to meet children’s additional support needs.