UPDATE NO 184 19 February 2016

SEND Peer Support Event A: 1 March 2016

Designated Medical Officers (DMOs) and Local Authorities “Developong Joint Working” at Coin Street Community Centre – 108 Stamford St, South Bank, London SE1 9NH. Organised by CDC/SE Region. For more information please contact Luke Nunn at the Council for Disabled Children at lnunn@ncb.org.uk or Tracey Maytas (details below) 

3 places per Area, a working group of; 1 or more DMOs, representative with links to Adult Heath, LA strategic manager and/or others working on Health involvement in the SEND Reforms. Booking through: https://dfehealthsoutheast.eventbrite.co.uk by 23 February 2016

SEND Peer Support Event B : 10 March 2016

Taking Part in the New Ofsted/CQC Inspection Framework – Sharing the Pilot Experience at Winchester Guildhall. 10:00 to 14:30.

Hampshire have kindly offered to present their experience and learning from being an Ofsted/CQC SEND pilot inspection Area last autumn. They will also include some of the key features from Kent’s early pilot experience last spring. 

Organised by SE Region. Contact Tracey Maytas (details below). 4 places are available per Local Area. There will be feedback on what you need to be thinking about ahead of the inspection process and an opportunity to develop a self-evaluation framework to help structure this. N.B. As the focus of Hampshire’s pilot inspection were children and young people with a status of SEN Support you may like to include your lead for this group. Book via the booking formattached to the invitation. Return to Sue Burke (sue.burke@portsmouthcc.gov.uk)

SEND Peer Support Event C: 23 March 2016

The Inspection of Local Areas’ SEND Responsibilities: The New Ofsted/CQC Inspection Framework. At St Luke’s Community Centre, London EC1V 8AJ

DfE, Ofsted and CQC are hosting a regional workshop focusing on the new framework for the Inspection of Local Areas Special Educational Needs and Disability Responsibilities. This is your opportunity to get an update on the outcome of the consultation that closed on 4 January 2016 and reflect and evaluate on progress with implementation in you local area. There will be input on the day from DfE, Ofsted and CQC. 3 places available per Local Area.

Each Local Area is invited to bring a 3 member team. Ofsted/CQC are asking for the following representatives:

• 1 x Local Authority representative (responsible for local area inspection)
• 1 x Health representative – the lead representative for SEND Reforms (Children’s, Adult, Public, DMO/DCO, CCG)
• 1 x Parent Carer representative – invites are being issued separately to the parent carer forums through Contact a Family and the NNPCF.

Booking for this event is via eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ofstedcqc-inspection-framework-workshop-south-east-region-tickets-21447198147 It is important you select your local area from the dropdown menu when signing up, indicating whether you are a Local Authority representative, Health representative or Parent Carer representative.  Please note: If your local area representative type is greyed on the drop down menu (LA rep, health rep or PCF rep) this indicates that all spaces have been allocated. Bookings should be placed by 9th March.

Leadership Development

From April 2016, we will provide courses to LA’s at full cost recovery and we are delighted to say a number of LA’s who have been very positive about our programmes have already booked courses at full cost post April.

Evaluation of the ‘Coaching to Improve Performance’ Programme: At the request of the SESLIP Steering Group an external evaluator David Goosey was commissioned to evaluate the impact of the 2 -day ‘Coaching to Improve Performance’ programme. The executive summary of his evaluation is here. It says:-

The Coaching to Improve Performance course was professionally delivered leading to a high standard of satisfaction amongst the delegates. After several months those who responded to a survey were still able to remember the salient content of the course, had retained enthusiasm and had put the skills learned to use in practice. A remarkable achievement for a two-day course!

The costs of our courses from April 2016 are as follows 

• Coaching to Improve performance – maximum number of delegates 24 – £2960
• Embedding a coaching culture in your organisation (for senior teams) – maximum number of delegates 12 – £775
• Leading Change in Times of Austerity – maximum delegates 30 –  £2960
• Step-up to Leadership (for TM’s and ATM’s) – maximum number of delegates 30 – £2985

The costs quoted above are for the maximum number of delegates so there will be marginal adjustments if fewer delegates are booked.

We are pleased that the following LA’s have already booked our courses at full cost:

• IOW – ‘Coaching to improve Performance’ x 2 and’ Embedding and Embedding a  Coaching Culture in the Organisation’
• West Sussex –‘Step-up to Leadership’ x2 and ‘Leading Change in Times of Austerity’
• Surrey – ‘Step-up to Leadership’ – following the positive evaluations from our pilot programme in Surrey  

Please contact Di Smith (details below) to discuss how the SESLI Leadership Development programme can help your service.

LGA Children’s Services Efficiency Project

The LGA has this week launched a programme to support councils to develop the efficiency of their children’s services.  Councils will be supported to develop and implement innovative and sustainable approaches to transforming children’s services that will help to make savings, while improving outcomes for children and young people. Learning from the project will be shared for the benefit of all councils and partners.

Heather Wills of LGA writes:

The full prospectus can be found here. Deadline for return is 11 March.

Grant funding of £20,000 will be awarded to a number of council led projects to enable them to procure external challenge in undertaking a robust diagnostic review of current services and approaches, which will be used to inform an efficiency plan. This will involve reviewing progress against existing savings plans and identifying further ways to make savings and deliver them. Bids can focus on any area of children’s services expenditure, including the broad areas covered by the Section 251 return: The criteria for participation are that:

• councils are willing to dedicate resources to support their participation in the programme
• participants are open to the prospect of external challenge and input
• councils are open and willing to share learning with others
• there is corporate buy in / support from relevant lead members and chief officers to take part in the programme.  

If you have any questions please contact amanda.whittaker-brown@local.gov.uk. More information here.

Regional Adoption Leadership Board

The ALB was well attended on Friday 12th February, where much of the discussion was around the development of the Regional Adoption Agencies and the letter from the Minister of State.

There is still some concern about how all the various groups fit together and what the role of the ALB should be in supporting the RAA agenda.  Judith Ramsden is pursuing this with the national ALB and also CVAA and the DfE.  Alastair Lee reported back on the last meeting of the ALB data group, where there is a proposal for the collection of a number of new indicators for Adoption

SE SEND Benchmarking Data Collection

A revised (v2) data collection template has been issued for the March 2016 data.

Please can you return the revised (v2) data collection template to joseph.hutchings@eastsussex.gov.uk by 31st March 2016

Coaching to Improve Performance – Train the Trainer 14 March

14 March 2016  Easthampstead Park RG40 3DF 

The last opportunity for LA’s who have participated in the in-house course to send along up to 5 delegates to our Train the Trainer Course designed to support LA’s to embed coaching within  their organisation.

We were delighted to hear from the East Sussex team who came on last year’s training that to date they have trained a further 106 colleagues.

This one day course  is aimed at ensuring LA’s will have the capacity and capability to deliver the two day ’Coaching to Improve Performance’ programme themselves and delegates will receive all the resources we use on the programme together with a training notes and the opportunity to practice the delivery of the programme.

Delegates should have attended the full two day programme and have training experience.    

To register delegates and to receive further details please contact Di Smith mob 07960 513474 tel 01243 514805  

Early Help

The Early Help project has published a draft Evaluation Framework and Literature Review.

Please can you give the draft document your consideration in advance of the next SEADCS meeting on 11 March, when the question of its adoption and publication will be discussed. If you have any questions, please contact Patrick Leeson.

Wednesday 2 March – Memorandum of Cooperation – Guildford Institute

The next meeting of the MoC Implementation Group is scheduled to take place on the 2nd March 1.15p.m -3.15 p.m. at The Guildford Institute (Ward Street, Guildford GU1 4LH). This will be a critical meeting in the development of the MoC and we encourage all authorities to attend. The aim of the meeting will be to finalise the arrangements for Phase 2 of the MoC, which will include:

• Launch date
• Agency pay rates
• Cooling off period for SE permanent staff moving to agency work
• The outline of the SE Regional Workforce Plan

Please contact Mark@markevansconsulting.co.uk to confirm attendance for representatives from your authority, if you are unable to send someone please contact Mark to arrange a time to discuss your authorities views about development of the next stage to of the MoC.

Thanks to those who have already completed the MoC Phase 2consultation we are working to collate your views to plan the next stages of the implementation. We want to get as complete a picture as possible,  so if you haven’t returned it yet there is still time. The consultation is contained at the end of the MoC Phase 2 November 2015 update. We will include any responses returned by 19 February 2016.