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SEND Improvement Plan

The SEND inspection report for the Hertfordshire area partnership (covering the council and health services) gave us 2 "priority" areas we need to urgently fix, and 5 other areas where we must also show improvement.

Change will take time, but we have a detailed plan to make things better.

The plan was reviewed and approved by Ofsted/ CQC. The DfE have also issued an improvement notice to us. This is standard practice in these circumstances and our Priority Action and Improvement Plan will ensure we meet the requirements of the notice. 

View our full SEND priority action and improvement plan (PDF 995kb)

If you would like a copy of the full document in another format, or a version that will be accessible to screenreaders, please email SENDStrategy@hertfordshire.gov.uk.

Below you can track our progress against the objectives.

Priority actions - the most important things the report told us to focus on

1: Improve the way we share SEND data and information across organisations, so everyone understands where to focus improvements.

More about this aim

We will use the data we have in a more intelligent way, to decide where improvements in services are needed. We will make data easier to use and learn from by making a new “dashboard”. This is one spreadsheet that everyone can view (within our organisations), where we will keep all of the key service information and numbers. We must work quickly to get this new reporting in place. 

We are putting methods in place to make sure we listen and record what children and young people tell us about their lives and services they use or need, and use this information to make improvements.

Progress:

Collecting and using attendance data more effectively (September 2024)

  • Software that gathers school attendance data, and monitors this at an individual and strategic level went live in September. This will support early intervention to ensure children and young people can engage in education.
  • 94.7% of schools in Hertfordshire have signed up and are using the software. We will continue to engage with the remaining schools and encourage them to sign up.

2: Leaders from all organisations need to work together better. They need to make sure that the work done by their services is high quality.

More about this aim

This "priority action" is about leaders in the council and health services working together effectively, with delivering this improvement plan as the key focus. Leaders will set this priority across all services, so we can achieve the aims of the improvement plan as quickly as possible.

We are putting things into place to make sure that the people in positions of leadership have the best ways to find out about what is happening in their services, so they can make the right decisions. We are changing the way our meetings work to improve this. This is known as our 'governance'. 

We will give children and young people opportunities to feed into this work and make sure leaders can listen and respond to what they tell us, through their decision making.

We will create guidelines that set out the expected quality of work that services should provide. We will develop ways to check that services are working to these guidelines.

Progress:

Our Experts by Experience have started working across the partnership, and we are hosting 8 Supported Interns in teams across SEND and Health Services (September 2024)

Our new model of engagement ‘Voices of Hertfordshire’, ensures children and young people are influencing decision making at leadership level. 

Since our 4 Experts by Experience  started working across the partnership in June, they have been championing young people’s voices in improvement work. This has included:  

  • meeting with Directors as part of a reverse mentoring scheme. This provides leaders with an enhanced understanding of young peoples’ lived experience by hearing direct feedback from young people with SEND.  
  • They have identified joint projects that they feel passionately about, such as autism and ADHD pre-diagnosis support. 
  • The Partnership is also hosting 8 supported internships. Current interns are all students aged 17 - 25 who attend Hertfordshire Colleges or the Downs Syndrome UK work programme. As people with lived experience, they bring unique perspectives that offer valuable insights to the work we are doing.  
“It’s early on in the internship, but so far it has been really impactful having a young person work with us. Colleagues in the office feel the benefit of having young people around them. It reminds everyone, especially colleagues who don’t have contact with families or young people in their daily work, of who we are working to support, and their potential when support is in place. In our team, our intern helps us learn more about how to communicate with clarity for people with different needs.” Manager supporting an intern.  

Keep up with the work of Voices of Hertfordshire on their YouTube and Instagram.

Improvement areas - important areas the report told us to improve on.

Improvement areas 1 and 4: Address the gaps and delays in service provision for children and young people with SEND. This includes services for autism, ADHD, mental health, audiology and speech and language

We are reporting on both of these improvement areas together because a lot of the work happening in our improvement services contributes to both these aims.

More about improvement area 1

'Leaders across the partnership should address the variability in children and young people’s access to health services that exists in different areas within the local area so that all children and young people with SEND in Hertfordshire have an equal opportunity to access appropriate provision and support that meets their needs.'

We need to redesign the way we assess children and young people for autism and ADHD so it is less confusing and the process is the same across Hertfordshire. We will improve the support children and their families get while they wait for assessment and make sure everyone can find excellent support no matter which area they live in.

We also aim to more get young people aged 14+ with learning disabilities attending the annual health checks they are entitled to.

More about improvement area 4

'Leaders should further address the gaps and delays in service provision to meet the full range of needs of children and young people with SEND. This includes services for autism, ADHD, mental health, audiology and speech and language.'

We will stop waiting times from getting any longer, and make sure services exist for the things our families need help with. Over time, we will make waiting times for services shorter, but within our 18 month plan, we will "stabilise" the waiting times. Some particular things that families need more help with, and faster, are:

  • mental health
  • speech and language
  • ADHD and autism
  • audiology (hearing).

We will also make sure that when families do have to wait, they know where to get support in the mean time.

We are also helping schools to use a new tool (called Valuing SEND), which helps education staff to identify a child's needs. This can be useful as evidence when getting the right support from colleagues in health and social care, and helps the school to provide the right support to the child.

Progress:

We created 2 new resources for parent carers and professionals to support neurodivergent children and young people (September 2024)

Families told us they found it difficult to navigate services available to support neurodiverse children and young people in Hertfordshire.

  • The Neurodiversity Service Directory (PDF 191kb) lists the different services in Hertfordshire and the type of support on offer, including services providing a combination of early intervention and more specialist neurodiversity support.  
  • The Neurodiversity Handbook (PDF 6.6mb) is written by parents, for parents. The handbook provides advice, strategies and information about resources and organisations that are available for support.

Children waiting for speech and language assessments (September 2024)

We continue to make progress on the number of children and young people waiting for speech and language assessments. As of September 2024, the number of children and young people waiting for their Speech and Language Therapy (SaLT) EHC needs assessment report was 107, down from over 600 in 2023. 

Communicating health service wait times (October 2024)

We created a new page that shows the average wait times for health services.

We had feedback from parents and professionals that these wait times were not reflective of the actual experience of many families. As a result we have updated the webpage with clearer information on how the wait times are calculated. We will seek more feedback on the information as a next phase, too.

2: Improve the quality of Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) documents.

More about this aim

EHCPs need to have really good information from professionals in them about the child’s needs and how to support them. The plan must also include the wishes and views of the child.

We are employing more professionals to work on EHCPs, across a wider range of teams with specialised experience. They will have excellent training and support in the "SEND Academy". We are calling this programme, which has a £7million per year investment, "Making SEND everyone's business".

We will improve our guidelines that set out the expected quality of EHCPs. This will cover guidance for the annual review process too.

Progress:

We have reached our recruitment target set out through the ‘Making SEND Everyone’s Business’ Programme (September 2024)

  • We have appointed 138 new staff through our workforce transformation programme. 
  • 123 of these new staff have been through our SEND Academy and are working in services that directly manage parts of the EHCP process.  
  • 53% of staff surveyed from the new workforce have lived experience of SEND. It was an important aim to recruit individuals with lived experience, who are best placed to support improvement work. 
  • Recruiting and training staff is only 1 piece of the puzzle; staff retention is also crucial. We have developed a wellbeing strategy to ensure staff feel valued and supported in their roles.  

EHCP timeliness:

At the end of September 2024, 56% of EHCPs were issued within 20 weeks. This is up from May 2024 (54% issued within 20 weeks) and compares to 36% for the whole of 2023.

Improving the quality of EHCPs

Our EHCP quality audits have shown an increase in the number of plans rated as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ from 28% (in April - June 2024) to 36% (in July – September 2024).

This is a marked improvement on the 5% rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ the same time last year (July – September 2023). 

There is still a long way to go. Findings from our auditing work helps us design training for staff.

We delivered EHCP Annual Review Training to 431 professionals from schools and settings (September 2024)

  • Feedback from staff, families and settings told us that more training and support is needed for those completing Annual Reviews.  
  • The SEND Quality Assurance team are delivering a series of training sessions for schools and settings. The first sessions happened in September and October with a focus on Annual Reviews, with 431 professionals in attendance.
Feedback about the training was positive. 85% of respondees found the training ‘good’ or above. 

New health advices template for health professionals

  • A new advice template has been developed for health services who contribute to EHC Needs Assessments. This template should support plan writers to more accurately transcribe health information into new plans, thereby improving the quality of the health sections of the plan.  

3: Make sure that children who have EHCPs are attending the right type of school for them.

More about this aim

If a child's EHCP says they need a place at a special school or other type of setting, we need to make sure the right places are available for them.

We continue to create new special school places and specialist resource provisions. We keep you up to date on this work on our page: Increasing specialist provision and school places in Hertfordshire.

We will also focus more on helping children who are out of school or with low attendance because of social, emotional and mental health difficulties.

We will improve the way we make decisions about placements for children with EHCPs, so they have the right type of school identified for them in the first place.

We will do more to track how well the existing schools and education settings we have (including alternative provision) are doing, so we know that they are effective in meeting their pupils' needs.  

Progress:

The number of Placement and Provision panels has increased from 1 to 8 per month (June 2024)

  • We have increased the number of panels happening from 1 to 8 per month.  
  • We know that many families have been waiting too long for their child’s case to be presented at the panel and we prioritised ensuring that families receive a decision.
  • We now have a target of reducing the amount of time before people receive a panel decision to no more than 30 days from request. Read more about the Panels work on our news area.

Increasing special school places in Hertfordshire

5: We should act to address parents’ and carers’ concerns at an early stage to reduce dissatisfaction and eliminate the need for parents and carers to have to follow formal routes of complaint.

More about this aim

We need to make sure all families in Hertfordshire can find information about SEND support and services when they need it.

We also need to communicate better with families who are receiving a service. This means making sure we actively provide updates, and answer calls and emails more promptly. We want to build trusted relationships with our families to help them feel confident in the service they are receiving.

We will make a formal process for communications that all organisations must follow, and create new staff training on the importance of communicating well with families.

In particular, we want to improve parent communication, experience and expectations around the EHCP process. One way we will do this is to increase the number of staff in the EHCP team as a whole. The Making SEND Everyone's Business work (as outlined in improvement area 2) will have a huge impact on improving communication.

We will commit ourselves to learning from previous complaints, by reviewing them and addressing patterns and themes in feedback.

Progress:

EHC Portal available to some families from October to manage the EHC assessment process (October 2024)  

  • In the last update, we told you about a new portal for parents, carers and young people to access information about their EHC Needs assessment and EHCP.
  • The portal is now available to young people and families living in St Albans, Dacorum and Watford, and Three Rivers for new EHC Needs Assessment requests.
  • The rest of Hertfordshire residents will be able to access the portal for new EHCP assessments in the new year.
  • We are planning to expand the portal to cover existing EHCPs later in 2025.

Learn more about the EHC Portal and how the portal is set to expand and cover further areas of the EHC process in the future.  

This page will be updated again at the end of January 2024.

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