Lancashire SEND Partnership Workforce Development Strategy 2026

Introduction

The Lancashire SEND Partnership recognises that Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is everyone’s business. This Workforce Development Strategy provides a shared framework to ensure that all partners—across education, health, social care, and the voluntary sector—develop and maintain the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to support children and young people with SEND aged 0–25.

This strategy aligns with the Children and Families Act 2014 and the SEND Code of Practice, ensuring that all statutory duties are met and that services are inclusive, responsive, and effective.

Ambition and strategic priorities

Our collective ambition is to ensure that every child and young person with SEND in Lancashire:

  • Receives high-quality, inclusive support tailored to their needs.
  • Is empowered to achieve their full potential and prepare for adulthood.
  • Is supported by a confident, skilled, and knowledgeable workforce across all sectors.

The Workforce Strategy will support the delivery of the SEND Partnership's Strategic Priorities as set out within the Lancashire SEND Strategy 2025-2028, and within the Improvement Plan which aims to ensure these ambitions are fulfilled.

Priority 1: Children and young people will have their needs identified as early as possible

Our ambition: Identifying needs early and implementing the right support at the right time.

Priority 2: Children and young people will have their needs met as close to home as possible

Our ambition: Children and young people with SEND have the best opportunity to thrive in Lancashire.

Priority 3: Children and young people are prepared for adult life from the earliest years

Our ambition: Children and young people are supported to develop life skills, achieve their aspirations and make a valuable contribution in their communities.

Priority 4: Working Together - Children, young people and their families will feel valued and heard through communication, collaboration and co-production 

Our ambition: Good communication is important so that children, young people and parent carers feel listened to, their views inform decisions, and transparency develops trust across all partners.

Priority 5: Children, young people and their families will have better outcomes and experiences

Our ambition: Children and young people with SEND will have the best opportunities to live safe, healthy and happy lives and are supported to have high aspirations and achieve their goals.

The SEND Partnership is committed to collaborative working across education, health, social care, and the voluntary sector to ensure all professionals understand their responsibilities under the SEND Code of Practice. This includes promoting early identification and assessment, supporting evidence-based health services, and ensuring social care staff are well-trained in SEND. Strategic co-production with parent and youth forums ensures diverse voices are heard. The overarching goal is to equip all practitioners with the knowledge and skills needed to help children and young people with SEND thrive, gain independence, and prepare for adulthood in their communities.

Scope

As SEND is a shared responsibility, this strategy encompasses all staff within the SEND Partnership and commissioned services. This includes education providers (nurseries, schools, colleges), health partners (both providers and commissioners), and care settings such as Early Help, Family Hubs, residential care providers, children’s and adult services. It also extends to support service staff—such as those in finance, transport, catering, libraries—and governance roles including school governors, board members, and elected officials.

The strategy is designed to complement existing workforce development plans within schools, settings, and partner organisations, and to support the benchmarking of SEND-related learning and development as a core element of positive learning cultures. Workforce matters such as recruitment, retention, engagement, and resilience remain the responsibility of individual agencies, and whilst the Inclusion Service plays a key role in shaping inclusive practice, it maintains its own workforce plans through the SEND Academy.

Policy drivers

This strategy has been developed within the context of Policy drivers, that promote improved outcomes for children, young people, and their families.

Local

  • Lancashire SEND Toolkit: Ordinarily Available Provision 2022
  • Trauma Informed Strategy
  • SEND Strategy 2025-2028
  • Communication and Engagement Strategy 2025-2028
  • Teaching and Learning Toolkit 2024

National

  • The Equality Act 2010
  • SEND Code of Practice 2015
  • SEND & Alternative Provision Plan 2022
  • NICE Guidelines 213 March 2022
  • Early Help Systems Guide 2022
  • Balanced System Framework
  • Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism 2023
  • Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023

Guiding principles

The SEND Partnership will monitor the implementation of this strategy to ensure the wider workforce understand the needs of children and young people with SEND and their families. It specifically endorses the following principles to drive forwards the Workforce Development Strategy and will seek to:

  • Support a culture that is strong and focused upon relationships, values, and inclusivity.
  • Ensure that staff across services understand the priorities of the SEND Partnership and can in turn contribute to support its work as a learning culture.
  • Work with Schools, School Improvement and SEND Specialist Teams in delivering Quality Mark Approaches and with other partners to support quality assurance within commissioning.
  • Reinforce Early Help and Graduated Approach approaches across services, to ensure children receive timely and appropriate support delivered by a competent workforce.
  • Support multi agency learning and support the development of a SEND Community of Practice.
  • Develop our commitment to embedding co-production within our organisational culture, listening to and learning from people`s lived experience.
  • Collaborate with parent carers to identify how to best support them to understand the needs of their children and how to develop their ability to navigate the changing landscape.
  • Ensure the Voice of Children and Young People is celebrated across services and person-centred approaches are supported.
  • Enabling best use of evidence-based practice and learning from external organisations to improve service delivery on a cross sector basis.
  • Support successful preparation for adulthood for children and young people with SEND.
  • Ensuring varied service delivery to optimise learning and value for money, for instance learning in action, e- learning, small group discussion, lunch time learning, one page briefings.

Quality assurance outcomes

A jointly developed and co-produced SEND Workforce Development Strategy will support our approaches to quality assurance and be expected to support the following success measures:

  • Termly surveys carried out by the SEND Partnership shows evidence that parent carers have increasing confidence in the system.
  • Parent carers report increased confidence at transition points between services and where there are changes in provision (e.g., primary to secondary phase)
  • Support young people to have positive ambitions and aspirations as they prepare for adulthood.
  • Increase the number of families who feel supported in preparing their child for adulthood.
  • Increase the confidence of parents that the needs of their children and young people with SEND can be supported effectively by mainstream provision and within universal services. Most children, young people with an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) are educated in their local mainstream school.
  • All professionals know the Local Offer and what the contribution of their service and other services should be.
  • Increase the ability of staff and volunteers within universal services to be inclusive in their approaches and to also know how to support children and young people within their respective service offer.
  • Data from all agencies (e.g., referrals data, SEND audits) shows timely identification of need.
  • A reduction in the number of fixed term and permanent exclusions of children & young people with SEND.
  • Support communications activity with regards to ensuring that key outcomes are well understood by partners, practitioners, and parents.
  • Increase understanding of co-production as a key approach and improve attitudes, language and behaviours towards children and young people with SEND and their families.

Support confidence of parents and the provision of information and advice to support the needs of the child or young person.

Co-production and outcomes for young people

We will promote a shared understanding of co-production and person-centred approaches, while also building confidence in collaborative working and recognising the strengths of partnership working. These approaches will also aim to ensure that parents are supported in accessing learning resources and development opportunities. We will work together with children, young people, their parent carers, and the workforce across the local area to co-produce a set of outcomes that we all want to achieve for children and young people. These outcomes will become embedded in our processes and act as quality assurance guides in measuring the impact of our workforce practice.

The initial statements we will seek to work from are:

My voice is heard, and opinions are valued

I am supported to share my views, and my communication needs are considered. My thoughts are respected. I have choices, am allowed to take managed risks, and have a say in my own life.

I am involved and a part of my community

I am active and involved. I have opportunities in my community. I can choose from a range of groups that meet my interests and needs, and I am supported to participate. I can make friends, learn skills, help others, and have fun. I belong to wider networks, and my sensory and social needs are met.

It is my life

I am hopeful and prepared for the future. I have goals and aspirations for my future. I am supported to take steps towards being independent and am developing life skills and confidence. I have information about jobs and adulthood. I have options and can make my own choices. Where I have an Education, Health and Care Plan it is developed with the recognition that it is my life and My Plan.

I am healthy

I am as healthy as possible and confident my health needs will be met quickly. I will be supported to be active and if in pain or discomfort it will be well managed.

I am happy and emotionally well

I am emotionally well. I am happy and content. I am supported to recover from difficult times. I am mentally healthy and can access good mental health support.

I am safe

I am safe and supported at home, at school, and in the community. I am well supported by a range of adults who understand what matters to me and how to meet my needs. I have a stable and safe home environment and educational environment. I have access to adequate food, clothing and living conditions.

I feel well supported and have a good family life

My family and carers are well supported (parent carers, siblings, family and paid carers). They can easily access support for themselves and for me, and do not need to repeat their story to get support. I am resilient and have resilient carers around me.

I am able to learn

I am supported to achieve, and my achievements are celebrated. My parents are supported to understand my specific needs. They are able to give me the support I need to learn both formally and in the life skills I need, as I move into Adulthood. I have a good education and access to good opportunities and jobs in the future.

Principles

Underpinning this strategy is a set of principles from the SEND Code of Practice which will be reflected in our approach to workforce development so that we:

  • Ensure strategic coherence and a consistent approach which eliminates discrimination based on SEND.
  • Focus on inclusive practice to remove the educational, health or care barriers to learning.
  • Identify needs early and provide support to meet these needs.
  • Support a successful preparation for adulthood for those children and young people with SEND.
  • Equip practitioners to enable children and young people to make choices for themselves and to reach the highest level of independence that is possible and/or aspired to by the child or young person.

In doing this we must:

  • Work collaboratively and co-operatively between and across sectors
  • Include a broad range of voices from across age ranges and support needs, including from parent carers
  • Involve children, young people, and parent carers in discussions and decisions about individual support and provision.

Levels of development

The SEND Code of Practice sets out the statutory requirements to ensure appropriate levels of knowledge, skill and competence are achieved to support children and young people with SEND.

This means that a universal level of understanding must be acquired by all staff and those in governance roles, starting with induction and continuing throughout a person’s employment or term of office. In relation to SEND Awareness the Strategy looks to adopt and build upon development work produced within SE19 and supported by the Council for Disabled Children. Additionally, there are certain roles which require more targeted or specialist knowledge and ongoing development. 

The implementation of this Workforce Development Strategy aims to support improvement across the system in the knowledge and the competencies of all partners, who deliver provision for children and young people with SEND.

Universal awareness of SEND:

Universal information to ensure all partners, leaders, and those in governance roles have a foundational understanding of SEND, statutory duties, and inclusive practice.

What’s included:

  • Essential reading e.g. SEND Code of Practice 2015, The Equality Act 2010, statutory duties, Teaching and Learning Toolkit: Ordinarily Available Provision.
  • Free e-learning resources e.g. Council for Disabled Children, Disability Matters Hub, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Autism Unlocked, Ambitious about Autism, Anna Freud.
  • Lancashire Local Offer, including Information for Professionals
  • Early identification of needs.
  • Early Help training
  • ‘Let’s Talk’ webinars, and SEND Roadshows for parent carers and practitioners.
  • Guidance on language and behaviours with children and young people with SEND.
  • Job descriptions to include responsibilities for equality and inclusion.

Targeted training and development:

Targeted training provides additional, role-specific training for partners who have direct contact with children and young people, or who may identify and refer SEND needs. This includes the essential knowledge and skills for each sector and organisation to ensure all partners understand their statutory obligations and responsibilities for SEND.

Individual services should review their training and development needs for SEND, considering national and local priorities, to secure a shared understanding and consistency of practice. This should include early identification of any concern that might relate to SEND and support to prepare children and young people for adulthood by those staff who are in contact with them e.g., teaching assistants, teachers, health visitors, healthcare practitioners, GPs, practice nurses.  It may also include training on equality and inclusion, health and safety and information governance as part of existing training and development programmes. 

What’s included:

  • Mandatory SEND training embedded in current programmes across services.
  • Training specific to partner e.g. SEND Toolkits, SEND Academy, Social Care Academy, Virtual School, Lancashire Professional Development Service, Independent Provider of Special Education Advice, National Association Special Educational Needs, Skills for Health Capability Frameworks.
  • Opportunities for co-production and multi-agency collaboration e.g. SEND Partnership Development Days.
  • Preparing for adulthood and transitions e.g. National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi).
  • Attachment and Trauma Informed Practice.
  • Emotionally Based School Avoidance guidance.
  • The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism.
  • Key working function.
  • Partnership for the Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools.
  • Lancashire Emotional Health in Schools and Colleges Training.

Specialist training

Specialist training develops advanced knowledge, skills, and competencies for partners with specialist roles and responsibilities in supporting children and young people with complex SEND needs.

What’s included:

  • Specialist Continuing Professional Development (CPD) relevant to role.
  • Specialist events and forums.
  • 1:1 supervision and reflective practice.
  • Access to specialist resources and networks.

Aligning workforce development with local priorities:

It is essential that information from a range of sources is used to identify gaps in awareness, understanding, knowledge and skill to inform workforce development priorities locally. This work will continue to build on successful practice locally, regionally, and nationally, and particularly practice which achieves the greatest impact for children, young people with SEND and their families.

Assurance and oversight

The responsibility for ensuring staff, leaders and those in governance roles have the knowledge, skills, and competence to comply with the requirements set out in SEND Code of Practice rests with individual organisations.  Coherence and consistency across the system will take place through the SEND partnership governance arrangements.

Resource guide

National resources

Deafness

Down's syndrome

Learning disability and / or autism

Legislation and guidance

Mental health

Neurodiversity

SEND law

Speech and language

Support and reasonable adjustments

Local resources

Autism and ADHD

Down's syndrome

Early identification of needs and reasonable adjustments

Early years

Education resources

Education toolkits

Health

Information and advice

Local offer information

Mental health

Partnership webinars

Transitions and preparation for adulthood