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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.

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.

Department for Education and NHS England 'Stocktake' review

  • The Department for Education and NHS England conducted a ‘stocktake’ September – October 2024 to assess our Local Area Partnership’s progress in delivering our Priority Action and Improvement Plan (PAP).
  • The stocktake summary report (PDF 188kb) highlighted that we have made significant progress across the plan, including a key focus on progress across both Priority Action areas. 
  • The review confirmed that we have established much stronger governance and joint working arrangements since the inspection. It highlighted the development of the data dashboard, which will continue to be instrumental in informing the SEND work that the local area does. The review also provided clear recommendations for further focus that align with our improvement plan, which we remain committed to delivering. 
  • The report highlighted that whilst improvement work is beginning to have an impact on experiences of some children, young people, and families, it is too early for impact to be widespread.

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:

Children waiting for speech and language assessments (January 2025)

There has been a 99% reduction in the number of children and young people waiting more than 6 weeks for an EHC Needs Assessment Speech and Language Therapy report (compared to baseline Sep 23 to Nov 24).
There has been an improvement in the number of speech and language therapist jobs filled over the last 12 months. In Jan 2024, 25.4% of posts were unfilled, but in Jan 2025, 4% are unfilled.

More families getting early support for neurodiversity

Last year, the Neurodiversity Support Hub was expanded. The hub provides support to families and professionals regardless of whether they have a diagnosis. The expansion has led to a 19% increase in usage.
  • 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.

More young people are having an annual health check (January 2025)

In East and North Hertfordshire there has been a rise of 4.7% in the number of eligible young people having an Annual Health Check and an 8.7% rise in South and West Herts.

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:

EHCP timeliness (December 2024)

  • We completed 54% of EHC Needs Assessments within the 20 week timeframe in 2024. This is more than the previous year (40%) and national average (50%). This performance is against a backdrop of a 27% increase in the number of EHC Needs Assessment Requests agreed for the year to the end of December 2024, meaning we have completed both more EHCPs, and more in time.
  • We completed 20% of annual reviews in the last year within the 4 week timeline, and 20% were completed within 12 weeks. This is an improvement on 2023 performance (9.5% and 15% respectively). Whilst we are not yet meeting our next milestone (40%), we have made 57% more Annual Review decisions in 2024 compared to 2023. We are prioritising a backlog of reviews, so we expect performance to continue improving.

EHCP quality (December 2024)

In Oct - Dec 24, 50.6% of plans were graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. This is a 14.4% improvement on the previous quarter and above the national benchmarking.

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:

We continue working with schools to find new specialist places for children waiting (November 2024)

The number of children waiting more than one year has decreased by 63% in November 2024, compared to baseline at September 2023.
  • We are developing the next SEND Sufficiency strategy - that is our strategy that plans school places in Hertfordshire, ensuring children with additional needs can get the right provision. We are working closely with mainstream and special schools, early years settings and colleges to ensure that children and young people can access provision that is inclusive and effective in meeting their needs.
  • Informing this new strategy is a commissioned review of special schools, draft recommendations have been shared with school leaders and engagement is happening with schools.

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 has opened to all new assessment requests

  • The EHC Portal, an online tracker for parents, carers and young people to access information about their EHC Needs assessment, is now available to all families in Hertfordshire who request assessment. Previously, it piloted in the West of the county.

Communication in relation to EHCPs has improved

  • There has been an increase in compliments, particularly those related to communication. In Oct - Dec 2024, 142 compliments were received, making it the second quarter in a row in which the number of compliments received is higher than complaints received during the same period.

We reviewed the Resolution and Reconciliation Service

  • We completed an internal review of the Resolution and Reconciliation (R&R) service, which has highlighted good practice and areas for development. We are now building the recommendations from the review into our SEND Improvement Programme work.

This page will be updated again at the end of April 2025.

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