LAMB INQUIRY: SEN AND PARENTAL CONFIDENCE Brian Lamb OBE

Background to the New Approach

What is driving the Reforms?• Greater focus on Outcomes in SEN:“We know that the educational achievement for children

with SEN is too low and the gap with their peers too wide. This is a hangover of a system, and a society, which did not place enough value on achieving good outcomes for disabled children and children with SEN” Lamb Inquiry.

Greater Parental Involvement and Choice:“The empirical evidence shows that parental involvement is

one of the key factors in securing higher student achievement and sustained school performance.” Harris 2006.

OUTCOMES

Deaf Children-the Outcomes Gap• Over three quarters of deaf children (77%) are starting school having

failed to achieve a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment.

• The gap between deaf children and children who have no identified SEN is widening the gap was 38 percentage points. In 2011, it was 40 percentage points.

• Over half of deaf children (55%) did not achieve the expected level for Key Stage 2 English and Maths, no change since 2010. Nearly two thirds (64%) of deaf children did not achieve the expected level for the 3 Rs at Key Stage 2.

• Nearly 2 in 5 (39.7%) of deaf children achieved 5 GCSEs (including English and Maths) at grades A* to C compared to 69.5% of children with no identified SEN.

• Since 2009, the proportion of deaf children achieving this GCSEs benchmark has jumped over 10 percentage points – from 29.4% in 2009 to 39.7% in 2011 but still lags far behind children without SEN.

Parental Voice

“ In the most successful schools the effective engagement of parents has had a profound impact on children’s progress and the confidence between the school and parent. Parents need to be listened to more and brought into a partnership with statutory bodies in a more meaningful way.” Lamb Inquiry

PARENTAL INNVOLEMENT

“Parents confidence in the SEN system and in schools and local authorities in particular, is significantly coloured by the quality of communication with them. The worst communication generates significant levels of hostility. The best engenders impressive levels of confidence and a sense of partnership”

“I expect that the introduction of the core offer (Local Offer) to education will bring about a profound cultural change in the way schools and local authorities relate to parents.”

Lamb Inquiry

What do parents want? • Appropriate and timely recognition of a child’s needs by

professionals;• Knowledge and understanding of staff about a child’s

difficulties and needs the willingness of the service/school to listen to their views and respond flexibly;

• Parental beliefs and views, are important for their confidence in a professional’s approach to concerns about a child;

• Access to specialist services and someone who understands “my child” is crucial;

• Decisions are transparent and information about entitlements and what is available is crucial to making informed decision and “choice”;

From this…..?

Welcome to the Special Educational Needs and

Disability Maze

School Action School Action Plus

Statements

Health and Social Care second exit on the right

To this….?

With a little of this…?

What's in the Bill?

• New Plan to replace the statement covering Education, Health and Social Care

• New role for Health included in the SEN plan• Joint Commissioning of Services • Personal Budgets for those with a plan • School Action and School Action plus disappear to be replaced by new school based category

• Local Offer-includes all Stakeholders

It’s about changing the culture of Provision!

EDUCATION, HEALTH AND CARE PLANHow Statements are being replaced

How Plans will work• Replacing SEN statements and Learning Difficulty Assessments (for

16- to 25-year-olds) with a single, simpler 0-25 assessment process and Education, Health and Care Plan from 2014.

• Decisions should be made openly and collaboratively-views of parents, children and young people have to be sought at every stage

• Plans should be focuses on what children and young people can do• Clear Concise understandable and accessible • Evidence based-focus on aspirations and achievement • Should be focused on Outcomes and be SMART-Specific,

Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound • Education, Health and Social Care should be integrated• Direct Payments or Personal Budgets can be made available as part

of an EHC Plan

EHC Plans

The Children and Families Bill includes the health commissioning duty: “where there is provision which has been agreed in the health element of the EHC plan, health commissioners must have arrangements in place to secure that provision. All provision reasonably required by a child or young person’s special needs must be included in the EHC plan.”

Patients can now use the Health Complaints procedure to complain if a health service specified in the plan is not delivered.

EHC Plan-Health and Social CareOther health care and social care provision reasonably required by the child or young person, which is not linked to their learning difficulties or disabilities; •The local authority and CCG may also choose to specify other health care and social care provision reasonably required by the child or young person, which is not linked to their learning difficulties or disabilities. •This will enable the local authority to include in the Plan health provision for an illness unrelated to SEN, where this treatment has been assessed as necessary and where coordination with the Plan makes sense. •For social care, this might include child protection or safeguarding information, where it is unrelated to the SEN but appropriate to include this.

THE LOCAL OFFER Addressing confidence in the SEN system/Changing the culture of provision?

Local Offer• Parents, children and young people must be involved developing the local

offer: co-production of the offer with parents and young people,• It must set out what families can expect from local services and where they

have eligibility criteria and/or thresholds for accessing services, • What services are available to support those without Education, Health and

Care Plans, including what children, young people and parents can expect schools and colleges, to provide from their delegated funds

• What specialist support is available and how to access it and to give details of where parents and young people can go for information, advice and support.

• Each service will be accountable for delivering what is set out in the local offer and if families are unhappy with what they receive or what is available they will be able to take this up with those services.

• The local offer will give details of how to complain about provision and about rights of appeal.

• It must be reviewed

Health-General Responsibilities “One area where there is a particular need for improvement, working in partnership across different services, is in supporting children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities. NHS England’s objective is to ensure that they have access to the services identified in their agreed care plan, and that parents of children who could benefit have the option of a personal budget based on a single assessment across health, social care and education.” NHS Mandate 2014-15.

“With CCGs assuming responsibility for Special Educational Needs commissioning from September 2014, they will need to work closely with Local Authorities and schools to meet the wider pledge for better health outcomes for children and young people.” NHS England Operational Plan.

Co-operation Duties The draft Code of Practice describes the role of health bodies, clinicians and providers, including:•Health bodies must co-operate with the local authority in commissioning integrated, personalised services and designing the local offer (including ensuring relevant contracts with providers reflect the needs of the local population).•Clinicians and providers will:

• support the identification of children and young people with SEN, particularly at key points such as in the early years through the progress check at age 2, the integrated health check and through the healthy child programme;

• respond to requests for advice for an EHC plan within required time limits;

• make available health care provision specified in the EHC plan as per their commissioned role;

• contribute to regular reviews of children and young people with EHC plans where requested/relevant.

Schools Offer

Early Years Settings

Local Offer (Local Offer)

JSNAClinical

Commissioning Groups

Social Care

Schools

Education, Health and Care Plan

Joint Commissioning

Post 16 Provision

Direct Payments

-Personal Budgets

Health and Wellbeing Strategy

Health and Wellbeing Boards

SEN SUPPORTWhat replaces school action and school action plus?

Graduated Response-Implementation Issues School Action and School Action Plus going-Schools will need to think about;•Working with teacher and SENCO to establish if there is an SEN need-linked to progress and attainment measured against peers, views of parents and child taken into account •Reviewed against further progress following the interventions which have taken place•Involvement of specialist support if there is no progress, differentiated provision and provision mapping•Consideration of a Plan depending on need and continued lack of progress

In short rigorous quality first teaching and early intervention

Audiology Context-No different? Step 1: Consider the grade-level content standards for the grade in which the student is enrolled or would be enrolled based on age.

Step 2: Examine classroom and student data to determine where the student functions in relation to grade-level standards.

Step 3: Develop the present level of academic achievement and functional performance.

Step 4: Develop measurable annual goals aligned with grade-level academic content standards.

Step 5: Assess and report the student's progress throughout the year.

Step 6: Identify specially designed instruction, including accommodations and/or modifications, the student needs to access and progress in the general education curriculum.

Step 7: Determine the most appropriate assessment option.

(ASHA Standards)

OFSTED-review of services for Deaf children-lessons • Specialist staff across all professional groups and agencies working with deaf

children had the right skills, experience and knowledge, and a good understanding of the needs of the individual deaf children they worked with.

• Parents worked in partnership with professionals and ensured that they were equipped with the right knowledge and skills to support their children.

• Staff working with deaf children displayed empathy and understanding of the impact on children of being deaf.

• Staff had a strong commitment to multi-agency working based on trust, good information sharing and regular communication.

• Specialist knowledge and expertise and understood clearly the benefits that this brought for children and families.

• The Newborn Hearing Screening Programme ensured very early diagnosis of hearing difficulties in babies. Communication between health services and specialist education support services for deaf children was good, enabling prompt support to be put in place for families by teachers of the deaf and, in some cases, by other professionals.

(OFSTED 2012)

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Achievement for All-Impact on Improving Reading, Writing and Maths 2011-2012

Student Progress(Average Point Score*)

(May 2013)

Reading and Writing Maths

Achievement for AllBaseline to Term 3

Source: PwC

4.2

50% above national results for special educational

need students

3.8

50% above national resultsFor special educational need

students

National SENSource: DfE

2.8 2.5

National Non-SENSource: DfE

3.2 3.0

*Average Point Score (APS) is the number used to indicate assessed progress within National Curriculum levels, national expectation is 4 within each school year)

Not lose sight of the Aims

•Children and young adults with SEN achieve better outcomes and attainment

•Parents have more confidence in the system

•Better joint working across specialists in Education, Health and Social Care

Important Links • http://

www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/sen/a0075339/sengreenpaper

• http://www.education.gov.uk/a00221161/children-families-bill• http://www.afa3as.org.uk/ • http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20091207163458/dcsf.gov.uk/lambi

nquiry/

• http://www.education.gov.uk/complexneeds/ • http://www.sendpathfinder.co.uk/ • http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/ • http://www.ndcs.org.uk/professional_support/news/develop_local_offer.html

Appendix-Key Guidance • SEND Pathfinder Information Pack. Introductory Version

2, September 2013 – 0-25 Coordinated Assessment and Education, Health, and Care Plan.

• Assessment and Planning- the role of the Assessment and Planning Coordinator. SE7.

• National Pathfinder website: http://www.sendpathfinder.co.uk/

• The Children and Families Bill can be accessed via the following link: http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2012-13/childrenandfamilies/documents.html

• Draft Regulations on the EHC Plan at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/251844/Consultation_on_draft_0_to_25_Special_Educational_Needs__SEN__-_assessment_and_plan_regulations.pdf

CONTACT DETAILS Brian.publicaffairs@gmail.com