UPDATE NO 373 11 October 2019

A system in crisis? Ombudsman complaints about special educational needs at alarming level

On October 4, Michael King, the LGSC Ombudsman published a report, “Not going to plan? – Education, Health and Care plans two years on“ in which he reveals he is now upholding nearly nine out of every 10 (87 per cent) cases it investigates – compared with 57 per cent across all cases it looks at.

In 2018/19 the ombudsman received 45 per cent more complaints and carried out 80 per cent more detailed investigations about EHC plans than in 2016/17. It also warned of “poor planning and anticipation of needs”, such as council areas without any specialist provision available to them, poor communication and preparation for meetings – including regular stories of non-attendance and no, or insufficient, paperwork being submitted, and inadequate partnership working – with EHC plans regularly issued without advice from health or social care services. It also criticised a lack of oversight from senior managers, with cases “drifting needlessly” and “attempts to farm out responsibilities to parents”. The full report is available here.

UCL Study of Care Records for Looked After Children and Care Leavers

The MIRRA (Memory – Identity – Rights in Records – Access) project, led by Professor Elizabeth Shepherd (UCL Information Studies), collected interview and focus group data from more than 80 care leavers, social work practitioners and information professionals.

Researchers found that the voices of the children and young people who lived in social care were often entirely missing from their own records, causing significant distress and upset. Furthermore, despite care leavers placing huge significance on their records, the research found that the importance and value of effective recordkeeping was not widely recognised or understood by local authorities, who act as gate-keepers for these records. 

Professor Shepherd said: “Social care records are a vital resource for memory-making and identity for adults who were in care as children.” The full press release is available here

To address the findings the project has set out a number of recommendations for local authorities, information and data professionals, and social workers:

• Records should be co-created by all those involved in a child’s care. They should include the voices of children themselves, taking into account their life-long needs for memory, identity and justice.
• Best practice guidance for records creation and management should be established for all organisations with safeguarding responsibilities and guardianship of children’s memories.
• New standards for access to records for all care-experienced persons should be developed. New standards should address the rights of care-experienced people and the responsibilities of institutions.

Leadership Development in the South East – Needs Analysis

Please follow this link for the The Staff College report on Leadership Development Needs Analysis in the South East, published this week. Many thanks to 71 colleagues who responded either by questionnaire or phone interview. 

Alison Jeffery (DCS Portsmouth) will be working with the SESLIP team to develop the repsonse to the report. If you would like more information please contact Mark Evans (contact details below).

Welcome to Alison Michalska, new LGA Children’s Improvement Advisor – South East

Alison Michalska (contact details below) has now started work as the LGA’s Children’s Inmprovement Adviser in the South East, and was introduced to the SEADCS Branch meeting in Brighton this morning.

Alison is getting to know the region and welcomes invitations to visit over the coming months. Please contact her (details below) to arrange a visit. One her first tasks will be consultation with Lead Members across the region about their support needs. An introductory email has been sent out by LGA.

Multi-agency Safeguarding Reforms

Katy Block of ADCS writes

Our rep on the DfE’s national working group overseeing the reforms to LSCBs and CDOP arrangements shared a short presentation from the DfE at a policy committee meeting last week.  

It summarises how the new MASA arrangements have panned out nationally in terms of make up, membership, remits and scrutiny arrangements, it’s actually very helpful! Here’s the link again

Association of Colleges – Contact List

Katy Block of ADCS writes

A rep from the AoC attended the most recent meeting of the ADCS Educational Achievement Policy Committee to discuss all things further education with the group. 

It was an interesting session and committee members asked for regional AoC contacts to be distributed more widely, see document attached, to allow these discussions to be picked up and built on at a regional level.

National Missing Person Conference, Hull, Wednesday 29th January 2020

The staff support officer for the national policing lead on missing people has been in touch to invite ADCS reps to attend a free conference on missing people in the new year.  An emerging agenda is attached here, all police forces in the UK have been invited to attend, the audience will be Missing Person leads (Supt level), investigators and teams, CSE teams, charities and NGOs. 

The speakers will be: 

ACC Catherine Hankinson, National Police Lead for Missing, West Yorkshire Police 
The charity Missing People
Ann Coffey MP
UK Missing Persons Unit
Other related Police speakers on Missing Persons.

Please get in touch with Katy Block at ADCS to book a place or find out more.

Early years research request

Senior researchers from the Education Policy Institute have recently been in touch with ADCS to seek members’ views on the most helpful areas of future focus, particularly in relation to the early years.  They have some broad ideas, see right, but are also open to suggestions.  Please can colleagues contact Katy Block for more information/ with any thoughts. 

Broad ideas are

• mapping local services: what services for young children and parents exist in different areas? how joined-up and/or integrated are these services? What is the best geographical level for planning early years services (local authority, regional, etc)?
• food poverty and hunger: local food bank usage and school breakfast and holiday hunger programmes
• local availability and usage of libraries and book clubs; availability of affordable EAL books; 
• early years and SEND.

November – January 2019-20 Peer Challenge

The cycle of preparation for the November – January 2019-20 Peer Challanges is underway. We have brought forward the start date by a few months to avoid a clash with the Ofsted cycle of annual conversations which are due to start in 2020.

New data profiles are now available for each participating authority from the Peer Challenge Library restricted area.

Please go to the Peer Challenge in the South East page if you want further information.