SE7 SEND Change Board
Hampshire Green Paper Pathfinder /
Reporting period / 23 May 2013 to 9 July 2013
Project name / SE7 Special Educational Needs and Disability Hampshire Green Paper Pathfinder / Project start date / September 2011
Programme / SE7 SEND Green Paper Pathfinder / Baseline end date / 31 March 2013
Author/project manager / Lynn Mead, Project Manager
Fliss Dickinson, SE7 SEND Hampshire Area Lead Officer / Forecast end date / 30 September 2014
Executive / Steve Crocker, Deputy Director (Children and Families) Children’s Services / Current status / Amber
1 Delivery history
Phase 1 September 2011 to March 2013 / Phase 2 April 2013 to September 2014Jan 2012 / Mar 2012 / May 2012 / July 2012 / Sept 2012 / Nov 2012 / Jan 2013 / April 2013 / May 2013 / Jul 2013 / Sept 2013 / Nov 2013
Budget Status / G / G / G / G / G / G / G / A / A / A
Schedule Status / A / A / A / A / A / A / A / A / A / A
Overall Project Status / G / A / A / A / A / A / A / A / A / A
Key / Red / Serious problems and out of tolerance
Amber / Significant problems but PM has containment plan
Green / No problem or minor issues
2 Table of Contents
1 Delivery history 1
2 Table of Contents 2
3 Management summary 3
4 SE7 Regional Steering Group Update – 21 May 2013 meeting 7
5 Hampshire Pathfinder Project Management 12
6 EHC needs assessment and plan 13
7 Personal Budgets 15
8 Local Offer 17
9 Key Risks and Issues 19
10 Action required by the Change Board 19
3 Management summary
3.1 Overall Hampshire area activity
The Pathfinder has remained amber status overall. The key issues remain the volume of activity required and the capacity available to deliver and meet national requirements for the trial September 2013, during 2014 and when they become statutory in September 2014.
Key activities undertaken since the last Change Board meeting are:
· Meeting the DfE in Hampshire to go through the end to end business process discussing the operational and strategic issues arising from the process map exercise and the requirements set out within the indicative draft code of practice.
· Final publication of the Summer 2013 newsletter, co-produced with HPCN.
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· Critical work to establish the format and guidance of documentation required to enable the EHCP trial process to proceed in September 2013.
· Engagement with both Health and Adult Services at a strategic level to discuss their programme of activity to meet the Pathfinder requirements.
· Further updates on the Hampshire Pathfinder webpages so they are up to date at www.hants.gov.uk/se7sendpathfinder
· Production of an Exit Plan (as required by the Grant Determination Letter) to hand over Pathfinder activity to business as usual from March/September 2014. This is attached at Annex 1.
· Commencing discussion around the development of the requirements for disagreement resolution and mediation.
· Commencing discussions on how IT can enable the whole EHCP process.
· Commencing development of an updated Communications Plan to cover raising awareness activities, engagement of key stakeholders for content in the LO and training requirements for the Pathfinder roll out (trial and final implementation).
· Submission of the May and June monthly reporting to Mott MacDonald which is published on the “Factsheet” tab within the Pathfinder Hantsweb pages www.hants.gov.uk/se7sendpathfinder
3.2 DfE meeting to discuss the end to end draft business process for the EHC needs assessment and plan
The DfE expressed interest in our end to end process map and were invited to Hampshire to view this with representatives from HPCN, SEN, Children’s social care, Health and the Local Offer. This was an opportunity to have an audience with them to set out some of the operational tensions and issues that arise from the process as set out within the current inidicative draft code of practice, regulations and Draft Bill.
DfE representatives were:
Kate Sturdy, Assistant Director SEN and Disability Division
Andrew Baxter focusing on Personal Budgets
Francine Hudson on the Code of Practice
Lara Shepherd on the assessment and EHC Plan
Key areas discussed were:
· The reduced timescale and increased face to face meetings with the forthcoming significant budget pressures.
· Health and social care provision to be included
· Fit of personal budgets
· Data sensitivity and information sharing
· Integration – the process map does not depict an integrated process, however the DfE saw this occurring at the strategic joint commissioning point in the process.
The DfE stated that it was an SEN spine and the key test for social care and health is how these relate to the special educational needs of the child or young person. It was clear that no other local authority has attempted to set out the end to end process and they found it helpful.
Following their visit they stated:
“Thanks so much for putting together such a helpful session on your pathway mapping, we very much appreciated your and colleagues’ time. It was very useful to see all the work you have done and also to expose some of the genuine tensions and difficulties in mapping the new system.”
The next key requirement will be identifying how people work behind the process map as this will be key to achieving the requirements of integration and a streamlined approach.
3.3 Hampshire Pathfinder Champion responsibilities as part of the SE7
The overall requirements were set out within the last Highlight Report. SE7 are joint Champions with Southampton which leads to additional work for East Sussex as Champion Lead regarding planning and co-ordination. Activity since the last Change Board has been:
· 18th June - initial meeting with 11 Non-Pathfinders: (Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, IOW, Portsmouth, Slough, Reading, West Berks, Bracknell Forest, Windsor and Maidenhead & Wokingham) also attended by Wandsworth.
· 25th June - initial meet with London Boroughs (meeting hosted by Bromley and Bexley who are coordinating this 1 to 1 support - SE7 have 10 London boroughs for one day of 1:1 support).
Future activity consists of:
· South East (whole, not just SE7) regional Champion conference 9 July for 11 Non-Pathfinder authorities. DoH and DfE social care representatives have been invited. This will be an opportunity for SE7 to demonstrate good practice and learning – not just an opportunity to hear from delivery partners. It is essential that people are given the opportunity to understand the journey.
Future Champion activity:
· East Sussex County Council, as co-ordinators of the South East Champion activity, are awaiting feedback from the 9th July in order to inform how we take forward the work with the group.
· The DfE had requested that 24 themed workshops be provided and one a month had been arranged between September and March, however, initial feedback has been that this number of workshops is not the way in which the non-pathfinder authorities would wish to receive support. As a result East Sussex and the SE7, and Southampton, are looking at grouping them together and pooling their support time to better effect.
· Funding is very limited but we are also contracted to provide 1 to 1 support days for 10 London Boroughs. For the south east we are commissioned to provide 1 Regional Conference, 21 workshops and 6 days of one to one support between now and March 2014.
· In addition we have a national role to help run up to 5 national conferences (no details yet), to fill gaps in regions and contribute to national thinking.
3.4 Pathfinder communications
Communications sub-group
A Communications sub-group has been established within the Local Offer workstream. At the meeting on 4 July it was apparent that there was no clear Communications Lead identified to lead this group. The lead will need to have the time to develop and manage the whole Pathfinder and Local Offer communications requirements which will increase in intensity over the forthcoming six to 12 months.
Hampshire Pathfinder web pages
The Hampshire Pathfinder web pages are now nearly up to date.
http://www3.hants.gov.uk/SE7sendpathfinder
There has also been suggestion of the addition of a “Schools” tab on the webpages to identify, summarise and link to Pathfinder requirements for this key stakeholder group.
3.5 Disagreement resolution/mediation considerations
The indicative draft code of practice makes it clear that these processes must be provided independent of the local authority. They are specifically required in relation to the special educational provision of the child or young person (section 7 of the indicative draft code of practice).
Currently the SE7 have a regional mediation contract with Global Mediation. The performance and future requirements are being discussed by the Pathfinder Leads at the regional meeting 16 July. Lynn has requested some analysis from Global Mediation regarding the South East activity – subscription levels, total number of referrals broken down by totally resolved, partially resolved and not resolved for the past two years to support the discussions. Discussions are currently underway relating to the extension of the existing contract for one year to enable a full procurement process to be undertaken next year when the precise requirements are known in the legislation.
The subscription over the last two years has been £ 23,036.27 in total the use in Hampshire of the service has been as follows:
2010/11 10 referrals
2011/12 11 referrals
2012/13 2 referrals
Determining the service required, value for money, performance targets required, service quality and contract requirements for the future independent service will need to be agreed.
3.6 Summary Pathfinder workstream progress
The table below sets out the summary progress status for the Phase 2 Pathfinder workstreams. Detail on each is set out within this report.
Table 1: Summary progress of the SE7 SEND Hampshire area Phase 2 workstreams
Workstream / Hampshire Area Lead / RAG status May 2013 / RAG status July 2013 / Reason for RAG status change /EHC needs assessment and plan / Hilary Robbins, County Services Manager HCC / Amber / Green / Ready to commence trial activity for Sept 2013
Personal Budgets / Kieran Lyons, Integrated Disability Manager, HCC / Amber / Amber
Local Offer
(Parent Partnership Service lead) / Tesni Mason, Parent Partnership Service, HCC / Amber / Amber
4 SE7 Regional Steering Group Update – 21 May 2013 meeting
Matters arising
Parent Carer Update (Carrie Britton):
· SE7 mapping exercise regarding engagements of forums with regional work.
· Refreshed representatives at regional subgroups and meetings.
· Collective feeling of pressure in keeping up with the pathfinder workload and developing the forums. Discussing how to manage things better.
· Sharon Smith identified that much of the current information regarding the pathfinder assumes prior knowledge. The SE7 Parent Carer Councils are looking at drawing up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) sheet, a leaflet in basic language and simple terms and a Toolkit for forums to share information and resources to assist non Pathfinders as part of the Champion activity. Discussions are taking place regarding capacity and workload as it is essential to make best use of time. The increased pace of the Pathfinder must not let co-production slip from being the central ethos and revert back to ‘consultation type’ involvement.
SQW SE7 Evaluation Presentation
· The presentation will be sent to the Regional Steering Group. Please see the presentation for full detail of the evaluation findings. The information being shared today has been drawn from the headline findings from the Case Study work – comparing SE7 to the 10 national areas (two of which are SE7 so there is overlap). Research is still ‘in field’ so the full evaluation report will not be available until the July Steering Group meeting.
Discussion/Questions:
· Local Offer: areas have focused initially on SEN, but that is due to the change from the beginning of the pathfinder when Education, Social Care and Health were given equal weighting as partners. The Regulations are heavily education focused and the statutory obligation in that area means that is where the focus has been.
· Parent/Carers are more engaged and had operational influence but some reported more of a challenge being involved strategically and decisions being made outside of consultation.
· Challenge faced with the small sample size at each age group and the difficulty in using this learning to inform how to ‘scale up’ processes. It is important that the lessons learned about the length of time setting up new processes takes is given to non pathfinder areas. The DfE are looking at the format of the transitional arrangements that will be put in place.
· Cultural shift takes more time than process shift.
· Issue has been having to re-engineer new processes following the release of the draft Bill and regulations.
· The DfE will amend the indicative regulations and the code as more detail is received. Very important to get feedback from pathfinders to those writing the Code, Regulations etc. However, they do use the feedback and this does mean that changes are happening.
· Concern that initially reforms were sold as ‘innovation’ but now looking like a change programme.
· Some Pathfinders used this opportunity as a change programme re process. However, although they have achieved that aim, culturally there is still tension and disputes. The approach used by SE7 took 18 months to develop a collective approach but much better longevity as a result.
· Key/link worker – with the role of single point of contact – highlighted as very important to families.
· There is more evidence of co-ordinated assessments across SE7 than nationally.
· Explicit guidance/structured discussion questions provided for ‘keyworkers’ produced better quality assessments/reports that stand up to scrutiny. [Lynn Mead question here – key workers vs key working approaches?]
· There appears to be evidence of co-ordination of assessments rather than integrated assessments – is there any evidence regarding where integration is working well?