Inclusive Rutland: Rutland's SEND and Inclusion Strategy 2017 (Refreshed December 2020)

Rutland County Council

East Leicestershire and Rutland Clinical Commissioning Group

Inclusive Rutland

Rutland’s SEND and Inclusion Strategy 2017

(Refreshed 2020)

SEND and Inclusion Strategy — Refreshed December 2020 1|

Executive Summary Our Vision

To support all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities to lead healthy, independent and safe lives.

In Rutland we are committed to being a County that promotes inclusion, maximises children’s and young people’s opportunities to be independent and focuses on their abilities not their disabilities. We want the information on support and the way to get support to be understood by our children and families and professionals and that the support will reflect the individual needs of a child. We believe that every child and young person with special educational needs and disabilities from Rutland should, wherever possible, have their needs met locally, so that they can enjoy a family life, be with friends and that they should expect to receive high quality education, health and social care support that promotes their wellbeing and their journey to adulthood.

Our Strategy

Our Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Inclusion Strategy will turn our vision into actions. Our Strategy provides us with an opportunity to create a shared view of the challenges faced by children and young people and our SEND Development Plan will put actions in place for children and young people with special educational needs and disability. It brings our health, education, and social care partners together and puts children and families at the centre of our services. There is recognition that there is increased demand and growing pressure on the SEND system and that we need to work collaboratively so that we utilise our resources in a way that achieves maximum impact and the best outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Our Strategy enables us together to identify the gaps in services, and challenge what needs to change and improve to achieve better outcomes for children and young people.

This document outlines Rutland’s’ ‘Local Offer’ and informs the approach partners take in working with children and families and the design of future services. Our SEND and Inclusion Strategy takes into account national research and best practice and recognises the importance of the early years and early intervention.

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Our offer also takes into account key messages from Working Together to Safeguard Children, (DfE 2015), the SEND Code of Practice (DfE/DoH 2015).

This Strategy sets out clear expectations of the Council and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), and other partners, specially health and education providers, which reflects the statutory requirement under primary legislation, regulation and case law as set out in the SEND Code of Practice (2015), Section 28 Duty to Co-operate and the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, (Llr) Safeguarding Partnership’s Safeguarding procedures. The expectations of professionals in Rutland as defined in the SEN and Disability Code of Practice (2015) include;

e Participation of and co-production with children and families in decision making about their support

e Services will work together to ensure that EHC Plans will identify not only a child’s or young person’s education needs and support but address their health and social care needs too. This will be tested though our partnership performance and quality assurance mechanisms

¢ Special educational provision is made available for those who need it and children with SEND are treated fairly

e Early years providers, schools and colleges know precisely where their children and young people with SEND are in their learning and development and provide suitable stretch and challenge in their education.

¢ Support children’s successful preparation for transition through phases of their education and transition in to adulthood and employment

Rutland is committed to safeguarding disabled children and young people, promoting safer care, and ensuring that children are appropriately protected.

1. Where are we now?

The demand for and the spending on services and support for children with SEND in Rutland have grown significantly in the last three years. As of October 2019 there are;

e 706 children/young people attending Rutland schools have an Education Health and Care Plan or SEN Support (School Census: Summer 2019)

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e 226 children living in Rutland have an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

e The percentage of children in Rutland Schools not including Special or Independent Schools are (School Census: Summer 2019):

Primary Schools - 2.2% of pupils have an EHCP. 11.1% receive SEN Support

- Secondary Schools - 2.3% of pupils have an EHCP. 10.3% receive SEN Support

¢ 67 children living in Rutland attend special or alternative provision, 49 of which attend an out of county special school.

e 39 children attend local mainstream designated special provisions. © 33 young people living in Rutland attend post-16 out of county colleges.

e 133 children with a disability are in receipt of Aiming High short breaks or positive activities.

¢ 18 children with a disability are in receipt of Social Care (CiN) care packages.

¢ According to the Labour Force Survey, disabled people are now more likely to be employed than they were in previous years, but still remain significantly less likely to be in employment than non-disabled people. In March 2019 we reported that 97% of the year 12 and 13 cohort were in education or training compared with 86.7% of 16 and 17 year olds with an EHCP.

e Expenditure on high needs in Rutland has increased by 41% from £2.7 million in 2012/2013 to £3.8million in 2018/19.

2. What will we achieve?

1. Identify the needs of our children sooner and put support in place earlier, so we reduce the need for unnecessary assessments and intrusion in families’ lives

2. More children will be able to maintain their education and their family life in Rutland when it is in their interest.

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3. Children and parents will be encouraged to seek appropriate support and will have more choice and feel more in control of their support plan.

3. What are we going to do?

1. Monitor and review the services for children and young people with SEND and respond to them through evidence-based early support and intervention across our health, social care and education system.

2. Support our early years providers, mainstream schools and post 16 settings with the resources, training and time they need, so that they can provide effective provision for children and young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties and special educational needs and disabilities, so that children can maintain their education and make good progress in their learning.

3. Include children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities and their parents or carers, especially those who find it hard to access our services, in decisions about their individual support and listen to and act on what they tell us about local education, health and care provision.

This Strategy will be supported by an SEND Development Plan containing, a detailed set of actions with timescales, outcome measures, and resource implications.

4. How will we know we have succeeded?

Partners in education, health, and social care through the Children and Young People’s Partnership arrangements, will agree the key performance indicators to measure the impact and effectiveness of our Strategy to test the effectiveness of our ‘Local Offer’ and to monitor if the outcomes for children and their families are being achieved.

Our performance indicators will measure key outcomes:

1. That timescales are met in assessing and responding to children’s needs and the need for specialist services or unnecessary intrusions in families’ lives is reduced.

2. Children and young people achieve their potential and educational standards at least in line with those seen nationally

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3. More children retained and succeeding in mainstream educational settings if this is the most appropriate setting for them, through high quality education provision

4. Children and their families report improvements in their life at the end of an intervention.

5. The sustained and meaningful engagement of children and their parents is evidenced in their support plans

6. More young people are in training and employment

7. There is fair access to health and social care services for children, young people and their families across the county and across our geographical boundaries

8. Decisions are robust and can demonstrably evidence best value for money

Having completed a self-evaluation (Sef) of our services, we have identified key actions which are set out in our SEND Development Plan. We show the specific actions, how we will measure success, and the timescales for completion. We will review the Development Plan regularly over the timescale of the strategy. We will report annually to the Children and Young People’s Partnership and the Health and Well Being Board and we will publish this on the Council Local Offer website.

The Strategy has had input from a broad range of stakeholders including young people, parents and carers.

In summary the partnership and children and families, will know the progress we are making and why.

Inclusion in Rutland

Inclusive Rutland describes our positive response to individual needs, differences, abilities and disabilities by striving to meet the needs of different people and taking deliberate action to create environments where everyone feels respected and able to achieve their full potential. It means putting support in place when it is needed and knowing when to withdraw, adjusting an offer or an intervention to meet health, social care or education needs. In

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education, inclusion embodies the child's right to participate and the school's duty to accept the child and to take every action to ensure they succeed. This could include providing more accessible and understandable information, adjustment to the delivery of certain curriculum areas or providing one to one support in school or in college.

Being ‘inclusive’ requires us to meet the needs of children who may experience emotional and behavioural difficulties which challenges their education. It means through our ‘early intervention’ support we will meet the needs of children as soon as additional needs start to emerge, or when there is a strong likelihood that an additional need or disability will emerge in the future.

Education settings — early year’s settings, schools and colleges — should be able to meet the needs of most children with a learning disability and are required to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to be able to do so through quality differentiated teaching and learning.

SEN Support is the graduated process schools and other settings use to identify and meet the needs of children with SEN. This support should be regularly reviewed, utilising the, ‘assess, plan, do, review’ model, with support then adjusted where necessary to ensure it is still effective and leading to improved outcomes in line with the SEND Code of Practice (2015).

Some children and young people with a special educational need may also have a disability which does not affect their ability to learn but might stop them from being able to do certain day-to-day things. In this document the term SEN and Disability is used across the 0 to 25 age range and includes learning difficulties and disabilities.

Our ‘Local Offer’ is for all children with additional needs that emerge at any point throughout childhood, adolescence and in to adulthood. The ‘Local Offer’ includes universal services; such as early year’s settings and schools, health visiting and Gp services or adult learning, voluntary and community groups, one to one family support in the home, or the Aiming High for disabled children short breaks, and specialist services, such as social care or specialist health services.

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Rutland’s SEND Local Offer: http://ris.rutland.gov.uk/kb5/rutland/directory/localoffer.page?localofferchannel=0

The financial context is increasingly challenging and will continue to be so. Demands and pressures on services are increasing while resources become more constrained. There are likely to be further changes during the life of this Strategy that we will need to take account of.

We will manage and monitor the equitable use of our SEND funding to make sure we get the best outcomes for children and young people with higher level needs and the most value for money. In this context it is more important than ever that all partners work together to share information, expertise and resources to meet needs and ensure positive outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

We will operate our multi agency SEND Panel supported by partners to ensure we have robust decision making and accountability for the decisions we make in assessing and responding to children and young people’s needs.

Key Principles

Rutland County Council and East Leicestershire and Rutland Clinical Commissioning Group and its partners’ commitment to an Inclusive Rutland is central to the delivery of the Sustainability and Transformation Plan, the Children’s Plan, the Health and Well Being Strategy and the Education Improvement Framework, with inclusion cutting across key priority outcomes which are underpinned by a key set of principles, as set out in the SEND Code of Practice, (2015) and reflected in our Locality Thresholds Document (updated 2019), such as;

e Identify in the early years utilising the Integrated Development Assessment, children and young people’s needs and put in place early intervention to support them

¢ Support the participation and co-production of children and their parents in decision making and strive to offer greater choice and control for young people over their support

e¢ Promote inclusive practice and removing barriers to learning and access to health and social care services

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e Reduce duplication of assessment so that children, young people and their families do not tell their stories multiple times to health, education and social care professionals

¢ Support young people to make successful transitions through phases, (e.g. primary to secondary transfer) and/or types of provision and to adulthood and independent living and employment

¢ Our workforce will be supported to be multi-skilled, to be creative and tenacious and adopt the principle of the Signs of Safety model of working with families to identify strengths and to resolve challenges.

e The services will offer best value for money and utilise shared expertise and resource across partnerships.

Early Intervention

Rutland County Council provides the ‘front door’ through which parents/carers and professionals can access additional support at any level, including early help advice and support.

All children and families can access universal public health services, such as their midwife, health visitor and Gp. Integrated development assessments are offered at key developmental points in a child’s life, to support early identification of needs and to support access to timely intervention.

Referrals to specialist services may be recommended for further assessment before returning to universal services from General Practitioners, Health Visitors or School Nurses.

The critical features of effective Early Intervention which have been identified nationally and on which Rutland’s process is founded are:

¢ a multi-disciplinary approach that brings a range of professional skills and expertise to bear through a “Team Around The Family” approach

¢ a relationship with a trusted Lead Professional who can engage the child and their family, and if necessary co-ordinate the support needed from other agencies around a family

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* practice that empowers families and helps them to develop the capacity to maintain a family life and fulfil their caring duties

¢ a holistic approach that addresses children’s education, health and socialcare needs in the wider family and whenever possible in their community

¢ Increased integration of services and joint commissioning across the Local Authority and Health services.

Identifying children who would benefit from early intervention

The Children and Families Act 2014 (sections 22/24), clearly sets out the Local Authority's and the NHS’s duties to identify all children and young people in their area who may have special educational need or have or may have a disability. ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children (DfE 2013, revised 2015) and Rutland’s Early Help Strategy puts the responsibility on all professionals and educators to identify emerging needs and to take professional responsibility to ensure that if a family does not meet the thresholds for specific services, that action is taken to prevent the lower level needs escalating.

Key professionals and educators working in universal services in Rutland are best placed to identify children or their families, who have or may have an SEN or disability and therefore at risk of poor outcomes. Health providers, schools and settings have a duty to ensure that all children achieve well and that those with additional needs have an educational offer which enables them to succeed and reach their potential. Early intervention is essential, with high quality teaching reflecting the need of the child and adjusted to enable the child to access a curriculum through which they develop skills which will improve their life chances. Wherever it is appropriate to do so, children with additional needs should be supported to access a mainstream setting and have support for their health and social care needs.

This is achievable and will be central to the success of the Rutland SEND and Inclusion Strategy.

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Alongside this, we will utilise local intelligence such as the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA), school’s census data, data collated through the 0 to 19 Healthy Child programme and our Children’s Centre programme, to understand local need and inform joint commissioning arrangements.

Who can Access Support?

The provision of early help and inclusion services forms part of Rutland’s continuum of help and support to respond tothe different levels of need of our individual children and families. In Rutland this is described in our Llr Thresholds document updated September 2019. https://Irsb.org.uk/uploads/view-the-llr-scp-thresholds-for-access-to-services- for-children-and-families-in-leicester-leicestershire-rutland.pdf

How to Access Support

To ensure that the best possible and earliest support is provided to children and families, there needs to be easy and accessible support through the ‘Local Offer’ and an Early He! p Assessment, which will consider a child’s developmental needs, family and environmental factors and parenting capacity.

All staff should be aware of the early help process, and understand their role in it. This includes identifying emerging problems, liaising with the designated safeguarding lead, sharing information with other professionals to support early identification and assessment and, in some cases, acting as the lead professional in undertaking an early help assessment.

In some cases a health, or social care professional or educator will be

able to identify a specific need, but may not be able to provide appropriate

support. In this instance the Early Help co-ordinator or Inclusion Officer at Rutland County Council will support the referrer to the appropriate services or intervention.

Where the assessment identifies early help that cannot be met by a single agency or service, there needs to be a coordinated response with

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local agencies working together to support the family. The Team around the Family (Taf) model is used in Rutland to bring together a range of different practitioners from across the children and young people’s workforce and where necessary adult services.

If a child’s needs are too complex to be supported successfully through the early help offer, then the child or young person, their parents, school or college can request either an assessment which may lead to an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) or a Single Assessment. Both assessments should be conducted in a timely way, with all partners providing effective support and provision towards the best outcomes for the child or young person through regular review. Strategies and planning should be in place to promote independence and ‘stepping down’ of provision if support is no longer needed or appropriate.

Conclusion

The ‘Local Offer’ for children and families across the partnership in Rutland continues to evolve and grow and there is now a greater need for ensuring that our offer to children with SEN and disability is progressed and for our actions to be robustly driven forward by the Children and Young People’s Partnership. Parents and professionals have expressed a real commitment to inclusion development and progressing services and support for children with SEND in Rutland.

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References

1. Working Together to Safeguard Children — A guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (March 2013, revised 2015) httos://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uplo ads/attachment_data/file/779401/Working Together to Safequard- Children.pdf

2. Field, F. (2010) The Foundation Years: preventing poor children becoming poor adults

3. Allen, G (2011), Early Intervention: The next steps

4. SEN and Disability Code of Practice 0 to 25 years — statutory guidance for organizations which work with and support children and young people who have a special educational needs or disability (January 2015) httos://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-code-of-practice-0-to- 25

5. Keeping Children Safe in Education — statutory guidance for schools and colleges (September 2016) Equality Act 2010 http:/Awww.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents

6. Children and Families Act 2014

http:/Awww.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/6/contents/enacte d

7. Care Act htto://www.legislation.gov. kj 2014/2 8. DfE Guidance on Equality Act for Schools May 2014

httos://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_dat a/file/315587/Equality Act Advice _Final.pdf 9. SEN and Disability Regulations 2014

http://Awww.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/1530/pdfs/uksi_20141530_en.pd f

10. Transitions Guidance (Statements to EHCs)

httos://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-managing-changes- to- legislation-from-september-2014--3

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Useful Contacts:

Rutland County Council http://www. rutland.gov.uk/

Rutland Family Information Service http://www.rutland.gov.uk/education_and_learning/family information servic

@.aSpx

Rutland Children’s Duty Team Email: childrensduty@rutland.gcsx.gov.uk

Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (Lscb) www.I|rsb.org.uk

Thresholds of Access to Services for Children and Families in Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland https://Irsb.org.uk/uploads/view-the-llr-scp-thresholds-for-access-to-services- for-children-and-families-in-leicester-leicestershire-rutland.pdf

Working Together to Safeguarding Children (2018)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/upload s/attachment_data/file/779401/Working Together to Safequard-

Children. pdf

Nspccg http://www.nspcc.org.uk/

Citizens Advice (Riass) https :/Awww.citizensadvice.org.uk/

Rutland Parent Carer Voice https://www.rutlandpcv.com/

Sendiass Rutland https://sendiassleicester.org.uk/sendiass-rutland/

East Leicestershire Clinical Commissioning Group https://eastleicestershireandrutlandccg.nhs.uk/

Leicestershire Partnership Trust http://www. leicspart.nhs.uk/

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