Our refreshed Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Transformation Programme is well underway now, and we are working hard to make the necessary changes to improve the lived experience of children and young people, whilst ensuring that we also reach a financially sustainable position.
Our focus is transformational change not just service improvement, and a large part of this is altering how we support children and young people so that they are able stay within their mainstream setting, as well as increasing the number of places available at specialist providers within the public sector.
However, we recognise that for some children, placements with providers in the independent sector will still be the most appropriate based on their needs. Where this is the case, we need to ensure that a high quality of education is provided and that we also achieve best value for the placement. For this to happen, we need to make some changes to things like our commissioning and procurement arrangements for independent special school places, alternative provision and short stay support to ensure a consistent approach and successful outcomes for children and young people.
We’ve contacted providers to discuss the way we currently work and some of the changes we are planning to make and have invited them to share their thoughts with us and their experience of working in other ways, for example with other local authorities. This work is in the early stages at the moment, but more details will follow in due course and we will keep you up to date via this news webpage and our monthly SEND newsletter.
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