UPDATE NO 344 22 March 2019

Regional Improvement Plan for 2019-20

We have produced a Regional Improvement Plan including Annexes which will underpin activities in 2019-20.  It was launched on Friday 22 March with welcoming speeches from Cllr Antoinette Bramble (Hackney, Chair LGA CYP Board); Kos Wireko (DfE Regional Improvement Lead) and Stuart Gallimore (DCS East Sussex and Chair of the SESLIP Steering Group) 

It will, of course, be a living document which will change and develop in response to circumstances. If you have any questions, please contact Richard Tyndall (details below). 

SE19 and AD Education Network Joint Meeting 5 April 2019: 10.30-3.30

Alison Rendle and Tracey Maytas (contact details below) have been planning for a joint education/SEND workshop on Friday 5 April.  The programme will cover

• SEND strategic high needs review and budget
• Building capacity for inclusion in mainstream schools and colleges
• Place planning and regional commissioning
• 16-19/16-25 provision

We have planned a full day agenda with an opportunity to learn from colleagues and to explore opportunities for joint working.  We hope that each local authority will send two representatives to the meeting – your strategic leads for education and for SEND.  The event will be held in central London.

Please contact Alison or Tracey (details below) to indicate who will be representing your local authority at this workshop.

Peer Challenge Triads – Planning for 2019-20

We are now planning Peer Challenge Triad sessions for November 2019; this is a move to late autumn to avoid clashing with Ofsted Annual Conversations which are planned to run from January 2020.

East Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Slough, Southampton, Surrey, West Berkshire and Windsor and Maidenhead 2019 self-assessments have been uploaded onto DCS-only area of website. We look forward to receiving Ofsted Annual Conversation letters as when they are available for circulation here.

For access to this page please consult your DCS or Isabelle Gregory (details below).

Triad 1 – East Sussex, Surrey and Wokingham on Thursday 28 February 2019

Triad 2 – Kent, West Sussex and Portsmouth on May 2019 tba

Triad 3 – Hampshire, IoW, Milton Keynes and Slough on Friday 15 February 2019

Triad 4 – Medway, Oxfordshire and Windsor and Maidenhead also on Friday 15 February 2019

Triad 5 – Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire and West Berkshire on Tuesday 26 February 2019

Triad 6 – Southampton, Bracknell Forest and Reading on 10 April 2019

Please contact Isabelle Gregory (details below) for further information on these events.

Complex LAC Project

Complex LAC Project – Further to discussion at the SE DCS regional meeting, there have been some significant developments in the project. There is agreement that all 19 South East Authorities will work together on a single bid for the DfE Improving Commissioning and Sufficiency Planning to Increase Stability and Permanence for Looked After Children project. This will focus on the following bid criteria (those that accord most closely with the established aims of the complex LAC project). 

• Sufficiency planning at scale, with a view to increasing stability and permanence;
• Improved commissioning practice, including joint commissioning arrangements;
• Gaining a better understanding of the relationship between children’s needs and placement costs to ensure greater value in spend on placements;
• Models that create or strengthen links between different types of care placements, e.g. supporting children moving between residential care and fostering;
• Enabling children on the edge of care and their families to gain earlier access to foster care through support foster care

The DfE are also interested in projects that consider

• Recruitment and retention of foster parents, particularly based on the results of needs analysis;
• Building the capability of foster parents through training in order to reduce placement breakdowns and/or increase capacity of specialist provision;
• Introducing fostering respite to enable looked after children to return home.

We also want to gauge if there is an appetite for a separate project to focus on these aims. If you are interested in working on this second set of criteria with other authorities and partners please advise Mark Evans (contact details below) by the 3 April. If sufficient interest exists we will identify how a second separate project bid could be resourced in this area. 

As part of the next stage of the project we will also be writing to DCSs in the 7 authorities who did not participate in the first round of data collection to offer a second opportunity to contribute data (Bracknell Forest, Buckinghamshires, Medway, Reading, Slough, Surrey, Windsor and Maidenhead). More information on this will be forwarded directly the authorities concerned over the next couple of weeks.

We are also seeking opportunities to work with authorities to involve children and young people in the development of our needs analysis for the complex LAC project. We would particularly value contacts with your participation teams/leads and children in care councils to identify how best to progress this critical element of our work.

The DCS group also provided a clear steer that the ultimate vision for the project is to develop shared commissioned arrangements in specific themed and focused areas (driven by the evidence and commitment to partnership), rather than a comprehensive approach for all complex LAC in the region. 

The project has also secured full funding for the financial year 2019/20 and will concentrate on delivering the following objectives: 

• To have a detailed understanding of models of joint and strategic commissioning implemented elsewhere in children’s social care and to learn from the outcomes of these models
• To have a detailed and documented analysis of alternative models of provision for complex LAC (e.g step down provision)
• To engage with users of the service (children and young people who are looked after), to understand their needs for effective residential provision and how they would want to be involved in developing good quality services for the future;
• To engage with providers, understanding issues they currently face, how services are developing to meet changing needs and how collaborative working could be undertaken in the future
• To produce a detailed analysis of need for the authorities participating in the project, using existing collected data and setting it in the context of wider demographic and published LAC data; feeding in information collected from users and providers
• To feed content into LA level sufficiency statements for those authorities participating in the project
• To engage with key other stakeholders (e.g. health agencies, education) to determine the feasibility of joint commissioning arrangements (or at least more joined up arrangements)
• To develop and publish a strategic market position statement for the most complex looked after children in the region
• To develop a costed business case for the development of joint strategic commissioning arrangements in the future (this will be focused upon the areas or themes where there is the greatest potential for collaboration between authorities to be successful and may not cover all LAC with complex needs).

If you have any questions or would like to know more about the project please contact Mark Evans or Rosemary Perry (details below)

Educational Isolation – the challenges for coastal and rural schools

If you work in an area with coastal or rural schools you may find recently-published research report of interest.  It considers a range of factors including the quality of the workforce and availability of school improvement support and makes recommendations for policy makers.

This report should be cited as: Ovenden-Hope, T. and Passy, R. (2019) Educational Isolation: a challenge for schools in England, Plymouth: Plymouth Marjon University and University of Plymouth

It can be accessed at www.marjon.ac.uk/educational-isolation or www.plymouth.ac.uk/schools/education/coastal-schools-and-educational-isolation 

South East Strategic Partnership for Migration (SESPM) UASC group – 29 March 2019

South East Strategic Partnership for Migration (SESPM) UASC group invites LA reps responsible for UASC to attend a strategic leads meeting.  The purpose of this meeting is

• For SESPM to communicate effectively relevant updates and information from the Home Office regards UASC.  
• Share good practice, to strengthen and build consistency across the region.
• Identify strategies to overcome barriers and pressures; providing practice examples to inform future policy and decision making.
• Data sharing to assist in identifying patterns of movement across the region. 
• Consider the needs to EU national children in LA care applying for settled status post Brexit.

The first meeting will be held 1.30-3.30pm on 29 March 2019 at Mary Sumner House, 24 Tufton Street, Westminster, London  SW1P 3RB.  This meeting follows our executive board meeting, where there will be a networking lunch provided between 12.45-1.30pm, please feel free to join us. 

Please respond to sarahspain@secouncils.gov.uk to confirm attendance.