Summary of the January 2025 Board Meeting

This is the tenth meeting of the Local Area SEND Partnership Board

 1. Review of Action Log (tasks given to the subgroups and members of the Board)

Seven actions from the previous meeting are now closed.

Four action that are not yet due remain open.

2. Update from the Continuous Improvement Subgroup

Progress made since 4th December 2024

• SENDSTART group inductions are taking place for the 16 new caseworkers and support officers. The team is now almost fully staffed. The new team structure is now on SENDLO.

• Work is continuing at pace on the new operating model for Preparation for Adulthood.

Next steps for the month ahead

• A Strategy Planning workshop will take place on 11th February. The workshop will cover current priority areas.

• Make sure that social care advice for a Child in Need is contributing to Education, Health and Care Plans.

• Carry out an appraisal of the new system for Preparing for Adulthood. The new system is currently in progress and the Local Area SEND Board will review it later this year.

Any issues escalated to the Local Area SEND Partnership Board

The group requested that the sign of for the new SEND Strategy is to move to April. This is so the feedback from the Wirral SEND Annual surveys can be used to inform the strategy.

The Board agreed to delay the sign off of the new strategy to April.

3. Report on Schools Commissioning of Speech and Language Therapy and Referrals to the Neurodevelopment Pathway

The Board asked for this report so it could understand how private speech and language services are commissioned for schools. The Board also wanted to understand the reasons behind the higher number of referrals from schools for a neurodevelopmental diagnosis.

The report recommended developing a plan for a new speech and language model. The new model will come to to the Board in April.

The report also notes the activity that is currently taking place to make sure that the right level of support is provided earlier in the process in schools and settings. This should lead to a decrease in referrals as support needs are met. Some of these initiatives include:

• The Neurodiversity Profiling Tool

• Coordinated support

• The Graduated Approach

An update on the progress of the Neurodiversity Profiling Tool will come to the Board in April. The Board also asked for a workshop on the profiling tool so that members can see what it looks like.

4. The Wirral Neurodevelopment Business Case and Improvement Plan

This report is the result of listening to parents/carers and children and young people.

The report includes information on a  3-year recovery and improvement plan from NHS Cheshire & Merseyside. The plan aims to reduce waiting times for neurodiagnostic assessments and appropriate diagnosis.

5. EHCP recovery plan update

This report gave an update to the Board on the EHCP Recovery Plan that was approved in April 2024.

It gives an overview of current performance measure for EHCPs, updates on the new staff and process reviews for SENDSTART. Board members from education said that schools are already seeing a positive difference in the process. They also noted that there is a big improvement in the consultation process for phased transitions from years 6 to 7.

 4. Report on Children’s Speech and Language Service update on waiting list management

This report provided the Local Area SEND Partnership Board with an update on the Speech and Language recovery plans.

The current average waiting time for an initial assessment is 31 weeks. This is a drop from 37 weeks in November 2024.

Initial assessments are expected to be completed within 18 weeks by mid-August 2025.

5. Update from the Strategic Performance Subgroup

Progress since 24th September 2024:

• Timescales agreed for the planned performance improvement work.

• Performance analysis and deep dive of the neurodevelopmental pathway taken place.

• Agreed the draft inclusion and alternative provision metrics.

Councillor Robinson commented that she had had some questions from residents around CAMHS. She asked if data could be collected on this from the group. This data will start to come through to the Board through the Branch reporting.

Next steps for the month ahead:

• Agree the sufficiency score card data sets.

• Agree quality assurance score cards data sets.

• Review the speech and language therapy score cards.

6. Update from the Participation & Engagement Subgroup

Progress made since December’s Board meeting:

• The Wirral SEND Annual Surveys for parents/carers and children and young people have been finalised.

• The communications activity plan was presented to and agreed by the subgroup.

• Some subgroup members attended the Neurodiversity Profiling Tool training on 7 January.

• SENDLO continues to be updated.

Next steps for the month ahead:

• First edition of SENDLO newsletter to be issued at the end of January.

• Face to face support for the surveys to be provided via SENDLO drop-ins.

7. Update form the Written Statement of Action Impact Group

The group brought five recommendations to the Board this month.

The members of the Local Area SEND Partnership Board were recommended to:

1. Ask the Continuous Improvement Group to make sure stakeholders understand what the impact of the SENDSTART team will be on timeliness and quality of ECHPs, and include when they can expect to experience improvement.

2. Ask the continuous improvement group to initiate the coproduction pilot as outlined in EHCP recovery plan.

3. Agree that the LASP Board should do a deep dive into annual reviews and an action plan produced and monitored.

4. Ask the Participation and Engagement Subgroup to agree a flowchart showing how posts/updates on SENDLO will be shared through the different platforms and comms channels.

5. Through the joint commissioning group, the Strategic Joint Commissioner for Children and Young People is required to lead the development and implementation of a joint commissioning strategy and plan. This plan is to be informed by lived experience and analysis of local data.

8. Update from the Delivering Better Value in SEND Subgroup

Progress made since December’s Board meeting:

• Inclusion training sessions have been delivered by Inclusive solutions for practitioners and leaders – 150 staff were involved in the training.

• A redesign of the Graduated Approach for early years has been completed and has been passed to the council’s internal design team to be included Wirral’s Graduated Approach.

• Capacity has been awarded the contract to carry out work on mapping the health offer within the Graduated Approach1.

• A neurodiversity pathway school survey has been produced and will support the work linked to the Neurodiversity Pathway.

• The primary and secondary schools who will deliver 104 resourced provision places in September 2024 have been agreed.

• A deep dive workshop into transitions took place on 22nd November. An approach has been produced and approved by the schools that attended the workshop.

Next steps for the month ahead:

• Two planning sessions will take place in January for the 39 Graduates who will support the embedding of the Graduated Approach across Wirral settings.

• A workshop is planned for February to help support the development of the Digital Platform.

• Development of provision for September 2026 is taking place to make sure that pupils have provision to transition to.

• Meetings to support transition activity will continue throughout spring 2025.