Local area SEND consultation:
The inspection of local areas’effectiveness in identifying and meeting the needs of disabled children and young people and those who have special educational needs
Consultation document – response from The Communication Trust
This is a consultation on Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission’s proposals forinspecting,under section 20 of the Children Act 2004, how effectively local areasfulfil their responsibilities towards disabled children and young people and those who have special educational needs. It sets out the principles under which the two inspectorates propose to undertake these joint inspections. We are seeking the widest possible range of views from those who have an interest in, or expertise relating to, disability and special educational needs. We particularly want to hear from disabled young people and those who have special educational needs and their parents and carers.A further version of this consultation that is suitable for completion by young people is available through the following link:The closing date for the consultation is 4 January 2016.
If you would like a version of this document in a different format, such as large print or Braille, please telephone 0300 123 1231 or email .
Published:October 2015
Reference no:150134
The consultation process and submitting your views
1.We welcome your responses to this consultation paper. The information you provide will inform what inspectors will evaluate and how they will carry out their inspections of local areas.
2.The consultation opens on 12 October and closes on 4 January 2016.
3.We expect to publish a response to the consultation in early 2016.
Sending back your response
4.There are three ways of completing and submitting your response.
Online electronic questionnaire
5.Main questionnaire: visit complete and submit an electronic version of the response form.
6.Young person’s questionnaire: young people can visit complete and submit their responses. Hard copies of the young person’s version are available for download from or on request .
7.Visit to download a Word version of this document and complete the questions on your computer. When you have completed the form, please email it to th the consultation name in the subject line (Local area SEND consultation).
Print and post
8.Visit to print a Word or PDF version of the response form that can be filled in by hand. When you have completed it please post it to:
Schools Policy Team
Ofsted
Aviation House
125 Kingsway
London WC2B 6SE
1
Local area SEND consultation
October 2015, No. 150134
Questionnaire for the inspection of local areas’ effectiveness in identifying and meeting the needs of disabled children and young people and those who have special educational needs
Confidentiality
The information you provide will be held by us. It will only be used for the purposes of consultation and to help us plan and develop our statistical outputs.
We will treat your identity in confidence, if you disclose it to us.
Are you responding on behalf of an organisation?
Yesplease complete Section 1 and the following questions
Noplease complete Section 2 and the following questions
Section 1
If you would like us to consider publishing the views of your organisation, please indicate this below.
Which organisation are you responding on behalf of?The CommunicationTrust
- The Communication Trust is a coalition of over 50 not-for-profit organisations. Working together we support everyone who works with children and young people in England to support their speech, language and communication. Our work focuses on supporting children and young people who struggle to communicate because they have speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) as well as supporting all children and young people to communicate to the best of their ability.
Are you happy for us to consider publishing the views of your organisation?
Yes
No
Section 2
Which of the below best describes you? Please tick one option.
I am:
A child or young person who has disabilities and/or special educational needs / A parent or carer of a child or young person who has disabilities and/or special educational needsA local authority officer / A local health service officer
An early years leader or manager / An early years governor
A school leader or manager / A further education leader or manager
A school governor / A further education governor
A teacher / A specialist therapist
A special educational needs
coordinator (SENCo) / None of these
Prefer not to say
Other (please tell us)
Please help us make the right decisions for how we inspect local areas’ responsibilities towards disabled children and young people and those who have special educational needs.
Proposal 1
Inspectors will evaluate how effectively the local area identifies disabled children and young people and those who have special educational needs(please refer to paragraphs26 to 27).
Q1. Do you agree with this?
Yes / No / Don’t knowDo you have any comments on this?
We welcome this as an essential accountability measure for local areas in relation to their responsibilities to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The 2014 SEND Code of Practice clearly outlines that there should be a focus on early identification across all provision and that it is the responsibility of all practitioners to be able to identify where a child or young person is not demonstrating the expected skills for their age. Throughout the passage of the Children and Families Act and the implementation of the reformed SEND system we have highlighted at every opportunity the central importance of accurate and early identification of SLCN. We have also worked to provide practical resources and guidance to support local areas engaging with the reformed SEND system to better identify children and young people with SLCN - our early identification framework and the progression tools are just two examples of this practical support. Further information about our work around the reforms is available on our website here -Below we outline key ways in which local area effectiveness in identifying children and young people with SEND, in particular, those with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), should be strengthened.
1) Establish a clear picture of local identification rates against clinical prevalence data
This proposal provides a vital opportunity to ensure that settings and services are held to account to ensure their identification figures match with clinical prevalence statistics.
We know that under identification of speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) is an issue across the country and that local areas continue to under-identify SLCN. National statistics on SLCN do not reflect clinical prevalence data; recent data (Special Educational Needs in England: January 2015, DfE) indicates that across primary, secondary and special schools, approximately 2% of pupils are identified as having SLCN as their primary need, whereas clinical data suggests this figure is between 5-7% and that around 10% of children have long term, persistent SLCN.
Additionally, we know that in some areas, particularly areas of high deprivation, up to 50% of children are starting school without the speech, language and communication skills that they need. Despite this, recent data indicates that only approximately 7% of children who are eligible for free school meals are identified as having SLCN as their primary need.
2) Ensure a clear distinction between identification processes and subsequent assessments
Proposal 1 highlights how Ofsted and CQC plan to evaluate the effectiveness and timeliness of assessments undertaken once a child has been identified as potentially requiring additional support. This risks perpetuating the issue of under-identification and will also make it difficult to make accurate judgements on timeliness and effectiveness of assessments and joint working etc.
It is crucial that identification and assessment are considered as two different elements and local areas are held to account for both separately. Identification needs to be understood as the process involved in spotting that a child or young person is struggling with an area of their development, whereas assessment needs to be understood as the process of beginning to work out what the child or young person’s strengths and needs are. As such, processes for ensuring the early identification of children and young people who may have SLCN should be embedded across all education, health and social care settings in a local area to ensure effective assessments can be undertaken.
To identify children and young people struggling with their speech, language and communication development, it is essential that the children’s workforce has an understanding and awareness of; the kinds of difficulties to look out for, what typical development looks like across age groups that they are working with, and what systems are in place to identify SLCN and monitor progress in language and communication in the settings they work in. The inspection should seek to evaluate how local areas support their practitioners to gain these skills.
In terms of assessment, it will also be important for inspections to hold local areas to account for the processes in place for moving from identification to assessment; there should be an expectation that all practitioners working across health, education and social care are aware of how to begin the assessment process for a child or young person who has been identified as requiring additional support.
We welcome the commitment in paragraph 21.4 to take account of data from the healthy child programme. For early years settings and health visiting services particularly, inspections should seek to establish how the integrated review process or healthy child check support the early identification of additional needs. For SLCN, we know it’s essential that practitioners from both health and education services consider identification as part of their universal service and embed identification processes into their everyday practice. A joined up approach to both initial training of these professionals, and to training and CPD across health and education is an important part of this. The inspections should seek to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in local areas and should also offer an opportunity to highlight or showcase good practice in this area (examples can be seen in the recent NCB follow up study The Integrated review: Follow up report on practice in two local authority areas).
In addition, it is important to ensure clarity around the ‘assessments’ being inspected. We very much welcome the clear intention outlined in proposal 1 to look at identification of children who may require an EHC plan and also, crucially, those who may need SEN support - the category the vast majority of children and young people with SLCN will fall into. It will be important that the inspection of ‘assessments’ is understood as any assessment not only a statutory EHC needs assessment. This would include formal and informal methods and those undertaken by specialists employed or commissioned by the local area to support identification of particular needs.
Finally, it will be important that Ofsted and CQC establish core principles for evaluating the efficiency of assessments used to identify additional support that may be required. For example, we know that the implementation of the graduated approach by schools and settings is broad and varied, an issue further compounded by the changes to the national curriculum which leave schools responsible for implementing their own progress tracking systems.
3) Evaluate higher level, strategic identification arrangements
Paragraph 26 is clear that the identification of needs across the local area will be a focus of the inspection. However, those points developed in paragraph 27 do not provide any additional detail around how this will be undertaken. The joint strategic needs assessment (JSNA) is the means by which the local health and wellbeing boards understand and agree on the needs of local children and young people with SEN. These inspections offer an excellent opportunity to ensure JSNAs are reflecting the needs of children and young people with SEN, and SLCN specifically given its well evidenced current levels of under identification. Crucially, the local area inspection process should ensure that local health and wellbeing boards are interrogating local data sources on identified needs and that these needs are reflected accurately in joint commissioning activity and review.
Proposal 2
Inspectors will evaluate how effectively the local area meets the needs and improves the outcomes of disabled children and young people and those who have special educational needs(please refer to paragraphs 28 to 31).
Q2. Do you agree with this?
Yes / No / Don’t knowDo you have any comments on this?
Again we welcome this as an integral part of the inspection focus. To ensure the inspection provides a comprehensive picture around whether the needs of children and young people with SLCN are being met, there are some improvements that should be made to strengthen the proposals which we outline below.1)Develop a specific approach to holding local areas to account for the quality of their published local offer
We would welcome a much clearer and more specific approach around how the local area SEND inspection will evaluate the local offer, and in particular, to what extent services on the published local offer are available and meeting the needs of children and young people. This independent inspection will be a vital way to ensure children and young people with SLCN, in the SEN support category, and their families are able to access timely, quality and appropriate support in their area. We know that the quality of local offers is vastly varied, and given the under identification issue highlighted in our response to proposal 1, we also know that there are likely to be issues around availability of SLCN support through the local offer in many local areas. Again, this is an area we've worked hard to provide practical support to local areas in, developing a Local Offer page on our website to provide a simple way for Local Authorities to make available to parents the support our membership is able to provide (much of which is available nationally) in one place. We know that currently 102 LAs have included a link to it but there remain around a third who haven't.
2)Evaluate higher level, strategic arrangements to ensure a better provision of services
As also highlighted in our response to proposal 1, additional detail on the commitment made to ‘considering how effectively the needs of the area as a whole are met and outcomes improved’ (paragraph 29) will be essential. Where gaps in services available locally are identified during the inspection process, it will be crucial that the reasons are fully explored. Again, failure in the JSNA to adequately predict need in the local area will lead to a shortage of services required to support for high prevalence but under identified needs, such as SLCN.
In particular, again we highlight services which are jointly commissioned, such as speech and language therapy, as a priority area for these inspections to evaluate. Feedback we’ve received from professionals suggests that despite the efforts of individual practitioners working closely together at delivery level to provide joined up support for SLCN, failures in strategic level commissioning arrangements, particularly around funding agreements, have prevented them from providing an effective joined up service. It will be absolutely crucial that inspections highlight clearly the issues impacting local areas’ ability to meet the needs of children and young people, particularly, if is due to a lack of available resources or funding.
3)Outline a clear and shared understanding of potentially ambiguous terms
We very much welcome the focus on involving children and young people and their families in the inspection process.
When talking to children and young people with SLCN and their families, it will be essential for Ofsted and CQC to have a clear understanding of what constitutes positive ‘outcomes’ and 'effectiveness' from their perspectives.
Research has shown (The preferred outcomes of children and young people with SLCN, 2012; Better Communication Research Programme) that children and young people with SLCN and their families often place greatest emphasis on achieving outcomes related to aspirations around social inclusiveness and wellbeing – to make friends, feel included, be independent etc. However, we know that more academic focussed outcomes are important for local areas and are often, in the context of school inspection for example, the main focus of evaluating success.
In assessing outcomes, it's important that the inspection team look for evidence that shows the area is successfully including children and young people and their families’ views and wishes in developing outcomes and that outcomes are viewed in the widest sense. This will need to include a focus on how different services/settings ensure all children and young people, including those with more complex SLCN, are enabled to participate in discussions about their outcomes. Identifying how local areas are supporting children and young people to participate will support the development of recommendations and examples of good practice for other local areas.
In terms of a shared understanding of what ‘effectiveness’ means for families and children and young people, it’s important that the inspection recognises that opinions given by children and young people and their families will be subjective, but no less valid. Different families and children are likely to have different expectations and therefore have differing views on how their local services have met their expectations.
It would therefore be useful to include some key indicators for local areas as to what 'effectiveness' looks like - both for local areas to adhere to, and as a framework for children and young people and their families to use to provide their views. This framework should be developed in partnership with children and young people and their families.