Lancashire SEND Partnership

A strategy is a plan of action to help achieve a vision.

Our strategy covers the support and services for children and young people with SEND and sets out the improvements we want to make over the next two years. It also suggests what we need to consider about the way we deliver and fund services.

It has four important priorities based on our vision for the future:

Priority 1: Plan for and meet the needs of children and young people
Priority 2: Become equal partners who understand and listen to each other
Priority 3: Develop services that are child centred, accessible and responsive
Priority 4: Ensure children and young people achieve their potential and ambitions

The priorities will form the basis of the improvement plan for 2019 to 2021. 

• Lancashire SEND Partnership Strategy: 2019 – 2021 (PDF 941 KB)

The SEND local offer for Lancashire is going to receive a makeover. Feedback from everyone in the Partnership is being used to develop a new website that better meets our shared needs.

Parents and carers expressed their views in the summer and will be invited to take part in more consultation very soon.

A workshop with young people was held recently at Sir Tom Finney Community High School. Pupils from year eleven took part in a design class, supported by the University of Central Lancashire, to create a new brand and mascot for the local offer.

More classes will be held in January and the final design will be published early 2019.

If you would like to take part in the re-development, please email SENDPartnership@lancashire.gov.uk.

Lancashire County Council has appointed Edwina Grant OBE as the new executive director for education and children's services.

Edwina comes with a wealth of experience including her current role as national children's services adviser for the Local Government Association.

She will take up the position from John Readman who has been working on an interim basis since January. Edwina will also assume the role of chair of the Lancashire SEND Partnership from 17^th December onwards.

We look forward to welcoming Edwina and thank John for his leadership and guidance over the last 12 months.

The forum has been set up by a group of independent parents and carers of children and young people who have additional needs and live in Lancashire.

They have worked with an associate from Contact, which has been asked by the Department for Education (DfE) to set up similar forums across the country, in areas where the previous forum has been discontinued.

The newly elected interim chair is Sam Jones with Melissa Palmer elected as interim vice chair. They are working with a small steering group to develop a vision for the forum and begin to work with more parents from across Lancashire.

Sam recently attended training with parent carer representatives from across the region at the north west regional training day. They also represented Lancashire at the National Network of Parent Carer Forums (NNPCF) and at their National Conference in Coventry. Speakers included representatives from NHS England and Nadhim Zahawi, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the DfE.

There are 93,000 members of similar Parent Carer Forums across the country and representatives from the national steering group are able to speak directly to the policy makers working in Government.

The Lancashire PCF will be working locally to gather the voice of parents and carers in Lancashire and working as a strategic partner on the SEND Partnership Board and with other key decision making boards.

Please email chair@lancashireparents.co.uk for more information.

SEND Service is hosting a number of engagement events across Lancashire for parents and carers. Each drop-in session will provide an opportunity to meet local health professionals for work with children and young people with SEND. 

Parent carers will also be able to ask for information and advice about SEND services and share experiences.

We will shortly publish the dates for each event on the SEND local offer.

In October, over 600 SEN co-ordinators (SENCOs), SEND officers (SENDOs) head teachers and early year's managers attended eighteen events to contribute to developments and learn more about the SEND Partnership. They also took part in workshops to improve processes:

• Head teachers informed the key themes for the new SEND Partnership strategy.
• SENCOs and SENDOs co-produced new quality standards for education health and care (EHC) plans.
• Early year's managers identified ways of supporting pre-school children with early identification of needs.

The events provided an opportunity to work more closely together. More events will be arranged for 2019.

(Pictured are colleagues from the SEND Partnership and SEND Services at the event held at Dunkenhalgh Hotel, Burnley)

Over 240 SEN Coordinators (SENCOs) representing 218 schools have worked together with SENDO's in the local authority to produce new quality standards for Education Health and Care (EHC) plans.

The five quality standards are:

1. The views, wishes and feelings of CYP and their families have been included within the plans.
2. Plans are clear, concise, understandable and accessible.
3. Plans are evident of partners coordinating and working together with the CYP and family.
4. Plans have clear needs identified.
5. Plans have specific outcomes identified.

An audit programme has been agreed which will review the compliance and, quality of the plans.

The framework for improving the quality of EHC plans (PDF 685 KB) has been developed by working group four.

Contact, the charity for families of disabled children, hosted a conference at the Hallmark Hotel Leyland on 26^th November. The event helped Lancashire parent carers grow their support groups and network with other people in their area.

The day was supported by the Lancashire SEND Partnership, Barnardo's, CVS and ADHD northwest.

Parent carers seeking more information can email helpline@contact.org.uk or call the free helpline on 0808 808 3555.

(Pictured is Gareth Jenkins, communications and engagement lead for the Lancashire SEND Partnership, with a representative from Contact.)

A new diagnostic pathway has been developed through the SEND Partnership working group 2 following engagement with parent, carers, young people, and health and education professionals.  

It will provide a consistent approach to considering neurodevelopmental conditions for young people living in Lancashire aged 0 to 25 years.

The new pathway has four key elements; referral and triage, initial assessment, assessment process and feedback and planning.

Further engagement is planned for January 2019 with parents, carers, charities, health, social care and education colleagues. The four key elements will be discussed in more detail and tested.

To get involved with the next stage, please email carolinewaddington@nhs.net.

A new online tool provides access to school population data for children with SEND. The webpage helps display accurate information in an easy to read dashboard. 

It is currently hosted by Lancashire County Council and supported by the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.

The tool will continue to be developed to display a wide range of information – any feedback will be welcomed by emailing BusinessIntelligence.JSNA@lancashire.gov.uk.

So far, more than 1,000 people have contributed to the Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool (POET) survey from In-Control. Children, young people, families and practitioners across Lancashire can take part.

The survey is part of the ongoing national pilot to help local areas understand the impact of the SEND reforms.

The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete online using one of these links:

The survey is still open and you can complete it online using one of these links:

• Survey for parents or carers
• Survey for children and young people
• Survey for practitioners

The findings are being used to inform improvements and will enable us to understand more about what we are getting right and where we need to continue improvement. Read the 2017/18 report.