Case Study: Providing a team of SEND officers for a local authority

7th March 2023

Solution: Special educational needs and disabilities teams
Industry: Local Authority

Providing a team of SEND officers for a local authority

Our client, a local authority, works with partners across the county to ensure children, young people and families receive the best possible services. The SEND (Special educational needs and disabilities) team deliver all the local authority's statutory duties in relation to SEND. i.e., managing the statutory education, health and care (EHC) assessment process, and reviewing the education, health, care plans (EHCPS). EHC plans are used to actively monitor children and young people's progress towards their outcomes and longer-term aspirations. They must be reviewed by the local authority, as a minimum, every 12 months. Reviews must focus on the child or young person's progress towards achieving the outcomes specified in the EHC plan. The review must also consider whether these outcomes and supporting targets remain appropriate. The team have been engaged to deliver these reviews.

The challenge

The local authority required a service to enable the completion of the backlog of EHCP annual reviews, over an agreed time frame. The expectations for this project were that the team would deliver all associated work relating to the backlog of EHC annual reviews - about 1,200 annual reviews. The quality and performance of the service provider, the availability of funding and other factors may also have an impact on the demand for services.

The solution

We worked in partnership with the local authority to supply a specific team to support on this backlog.

A specification of performance management was agreed between Consultancy+ and the council's director of services.

This included:

Identification of the long-term aspirations of the child/young person and their family.
Gathering and assessment of relevant information.
Outcomes were reviewed.
Interim targets were reviewed.
Special educational provision was reviewed to ensure its effective.
Health and social care provision, where it relates to the SEN and/or the special educational provision, was reviewed.
New long-term and short-term outcomes were considered.
Year 9 and onwards reviews, including a focus on preparing for adulthood and transition planning, were carried out.

We have established strong lines of communication with the relevant stakeholders, enabling effective management of the contract. Along with communication, key to our service is visibility of both spend and performance. We provide weekly and monthly management information reporting that provides the client with relevant, accurate information on spend versus budget, spend per assessor and performance of each assessor. This enables us to track spend and performance to ensure we deliver the required outcomes.

The result

By delivering the service through the YPO framework, we ensured all requirements were provided with complete transparency and compliance. This has meant that, since we have been working with the client, they have continued to hit targets around volume and quality. As an outcome of this project, we have developed an effective partnership with the client and delivered a quality service in line with their initial budget.

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