As we come to the end of the academic year, with schools breaking-up this week for the summer holidays, we asked Kellie Knott, our SEND Improvement Director, for her reflections having been in post for almost a year.
I’ve been in my post as SEND Improvement Director now for almost a year. During that time I have had the genuine pleasure of meeting so many children and young people with SEND and their parents and carers.
I’ve spoken to them about their lives and aspirations. I’ve spoken to them about their challenges and their frustrations, and about their expectations. I’m under no illusion about how difficult life can be for many parents and young people, and I share their desire for things to be better.
I know that there is so much more to do, but as we reach the end of the academic year, it’s a moment to see that progress and improvements, step by step, are being made towards the future we all want to see.
With new leadership at the helm, and with the continued support from the Government, we are making progress with our SEND Transformation Programme, in place since last Autumn.
We’ve run pilots – successful pilots that have brought about change and improvement. We’ve been working with pre-schools and primary schools to improve the experience and support for young children with SEND as they transition from pre-school to reception and Year 1.
Schools have told us that the project has worked well, benefiting not only those young people involved in the pilot, but every child with SEND that transitions to their school hereafter.
We’re running more pilots. With NHS colleagues, we’ll be shortly starting a project that will bring additional resource to schools to support neurodivergent young people..
We’ve created more Resource Base places in Devon schools, with more being created from September to support young people with SEND in their local schools, alongside their friends.
Educational Psychologists are back working in schools, and increasing the number of schools they work with from September.
Acknowledging parents’ frustrations around communication, we’ve moved all incoming calls for our SEN Statutory Team to our Customer Service Centre.
With those ‘phone lines now open longer, we’re seeing a higher number of calls responded to quicker, and I’m pleased to say an improvement in parents’ satisfaction with the service. It’s also resulted in our Statutory SEN team having more time to focus on progressing applications in a timely manner.
It’s a small step on a long road, but it demonstrates progress in the right direction, all the same.
This month, we’ve seen the introduction of a new email system for the same team, that brings together into one place conversations with parents about their children’s EHCPs. It’s early days, and as with any new system we’ll have teething problems while we get used to it, but we expect that this way of recording conversations means that parents and carers will get a better service from our Statutory SEN team. We’ve already responded to initial feedback from parents and made changes to the system. I welcome feedback to ensure things are better.
This month, we’ve also published the culmination of many months of work with parents and schools – a framework that sets out a standard level of support that is ordinarily available from our schools, so that there’s consistency and transparency of what young people and parents can expect at school.
This part of the framework will support all pupils, while a second part, later in the year, will focus on what support should be ordinarily available in schools for pupils who have additional, more targeted needs.
We’ve made certain that information in our online Devon SEND Local Offer is up to date, and we’ve begun work with parents to make that information simpler to navigate and more easily accessible.
I started this by saying that I’ve talked to a lot of parents and young people about their experience, so I know that data, showing that the timeliness and quality of EHCPs is improving, means little to those who are yet to feel any impact. We will keep working on this to deliver meaningful impact for families.
I said at the six month review in the February edition of this newsletter that this is a three to five year improvement journey but there are things we can also improve now. We’ve a long way to go but I will continue to do my very best to keep that momentum.