Transcript

everyone today to this meeting of the children from the East Langton Learning and Culture Select Committee. We have a lengthy meeting today, and we will be having, because we have three substantive reports, and we will be taking a break at around 1230 until 1 o'clock for lunch. We will then aim to finish between 2.30 and 3 o'clock, and I know that most people will hope that it's closer to 2.30 than it is to 3 o'clock. First of all, some housekeeping. Mobile phones may be switched off or put on silent. This meeting is being webcast, and a recording will be made available subsequently. In case of a fire, exit through the door through which you entered and exit the building using the door to your left. Please can attendees indicate to me if they wish to speak, and when called upon, please depress the right hand button on the microphone. Speak clearly and directly towards the microphone. If a microphone cuts out, do stop speaking, press the button again, and continue. And I know we always have lots of fun with the microphone, particularly me. But I would also ask all attendees to mute microphones when not speaking. In line with our guidance on the use of social media, I'm happy for anyone attending today's meeting, including members of the committee, to use social media provided this does not disturb the business of the meeting. We have apologies from Councillor Chris Tynesend, Councillor Mark Sugden, and Alex Tier from the Church of England Dioceses. I'd like to ask members if they have any comments on the factual accuracy of the minutes from our meeting of the 30th of July. If there are no comments, then does everyone agree to approve the minutes as an accurate and true record of proceedings? Thank you. Do any members have declarations of interest to declare? No? Okay, thank you. There were no public questions or petitions received. There was one question from myself on behalf of the select committee, and it was about the budget allocation for play and leisure. Everyone will remember this subject. It's close to our hearts. In June 23, we requested that funding for play and leisure for children with additional needs and disabilities should be restored in 24/25 to the levels of 22/23 because they had been cut very dramatically. Now, it transpires that we didn't use quite the right term when we asked in June 23 for this funding. I mean, I'm genuinely surprised. So there was a misunderstanding about the sort of play and leisure activity for which we wanted additional funding. I mean, if I'm honest, I am genuinely surprised that this was mistaken. We had a number of conversations about the fact that the Department for Education had provided additional funding for one to one play, but actually we were concerned to have multi-access play back to the levels of 22/23. So I am amazed at that misunderstanding. But misunderstanding there was, and when the situation was clarified in July this year, when there was still an unallocated budget available, I'm afraid the cabinet member decided not to fulfill our request. So I think we just move on from that situation. If we look now at the actions and recommendations tracker and the forward work plan, which is item five on the agenda, our recommendations on home to school transport from the July meeting and the Tusk and Finish Group report will be going to cabinet on the 24th of September. I think we're up to date on all other actions. Do members have any queries on the responses to our actions requests? Okay, thank you. If not, then we'll move on to the first substantive report of today's meeting. It's item six on the agenda, and it's on pages 41 to 168 of the agenda. So the purpose of this session, I'll just read out the formal purpose first before I say some things about this report. So the purpose of this session is for the select committee to receive the findings and recommendations of the additional needs and disabilities, parent care experience task group tasked with considering what changes could improve the council's support of parents and carers of children and young people with additional needs and disabilities. A subject that is very much in the news at the moment, both the national news and the local news, and in fact, we set up the Tusk and Finish Group, which produced this report in the early spring, excuse me, of 2024 in response to issues reported by Surrey parents through many different channels. I mean, I can't believe there's any councillor in this council who hasn't had multiple issues reported to them in terms of how we deal with the families and children with additional needs and disabilities. So what we wanted to do is to hear the experiences of those involved in the system. So the focus of the investigation was on how well Surrey County Council supports and communicates. The task group was chaired by Councillor Jeremy Webster, who's a vice chair of this committee and the other members involved were Councillor Jonathan Essex, Councillor Bob Hughes and Councillor Mark Sugden and support was provided to the by the committee's scrutiny officer, Julie Armstrong. I would like to thank all the members of the task group for their efforts and to pay tribute to them for an extremely insightful and illuminating report. I know they've been very affected by what they heard. I mean, who could fail to be? This report has opened up an area that has been in the shadows for far too long. It presents a very sobering and sometimes distressing picture of the day-to-day reality that families of children with additional needs and disabilities have to cope with. It also presents a picture of Surrey County Council services, which is troubling and I think we all feel for the staff who appear to have been recruited into an admin role with a high workload and precious little training or support and actually, it's not really an admin role, I would argue. In my cabinet statement on the Offstead area send inspection December 2023, I noted that for change to be successful, those involved would need to stand in the shoes of service users. Change their perspective and put families at the centre of their activity and to engage with them as active collaborators. This report confirms that despite pockets of good practice and there is good practice, we haven't, as a council, made any real progress and this is absolutely no longer acceptable. I think it's fair to say that at our pre-meeting, the question all members asked was, given the long-standing issues in this area, why are the very many recommendations of this task group not already in place or not already underway? We recognise that there are significant national issues in this area, but most of our recommendations relate to local issues, matters that we could sort out locally and that leads to the question, why has it taken a select committee task group to recommend all these changes? Why is that? So, in order to begin our scrutiny, I'll ask Jeremy Webster, who chaired the task group, to give his reflections and then I'll ask members for questions. So, although there's a significant overlap between this item and the next one on this end end-to- end recovery plan and the review of the end-to-end process, can I please ask members to focus solely on the task and finish report for now, which is not about process, but about the experiences of parents and carers who come to Surrey County Council for support and help. Thank you, Jeremy. Over to you. Well, I've three points to make and a coda. The first point I would make is it's impossible not to be affected by meeting both the parents, carers and the staff and at times it was very moving. However, we have kept it in proportion and I hope that the recommendations we've made, there's seven subdivided, indicate that actually there are solutions to these issues. Okay, so that's the first point I'd make. We're affected, but we kept it in proportion. The second is to do with engagement. There's a lot of talk in this council about engagement and being with the customer and so on and so forth. Here you have a workforce of 80 people who day by day are in the closest and most intimate contact with our customers and clients that you could imagine. And we were very moved when we had a focus group with these staff. We were moved when we met them in the field. This is one of the most difficult roles I can imagine because what's happening is that the parents and carers see these people not just as administrators, but actually as advocates or people to guide them through a labyrinthine process which they don't understand. And I have to pay tribute to these people in what they do day by day, but remind the council actually now that actually talking about effective engagement, we need to get behind these people and give them the tools of the trade to enable them to do this. That's my second point. The third point is, and Fiona's already alluded to, there is some excellent practice around. Julie has put a paragraph in which says what good practice looks like, and it's very clear that when calls are answered, when officers are empathetic, when records are properly kept and referred to, that things happen and they're much appreciated. So I need to emphasize that, and in particular, I would like to pay tribute to the work of the L-SPAR. I think the highlight, if you could say that, of what we did was going to the L-SPAR and seeing what happens when you build a good team of capable people who know what they're doing and have the variety of skills necessary to do the job. So I'm quite open here in saying that was a great afternoon we spent there. I'm sorry if we took them away from their roles, but I really enjoyed that, and I can see that as a way to the future. And connected to that is the PINS project. It's disappointing. So for those who may not know, Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools. So we heard a lot about PINS at the L-SPAR and were disappointed that this will only affect 43 schools, but we met the people who will be responsible in those schools and were heartened by their enthusiasm for what they're about to do. And although it's probably the most difficult with recommendations because funds won't be available, but this to us is the future. You know, partnering properly with schools, putting our people in there, and then ensuring that there is good practice. So finally, I feel like a coder. So one of the things that's affected me throughout is the worry, and I'll be very open with you, that someone here or in another place will say, Ah, but if only you knew, we're doing it all. And that has been on my shoulder the whole of this time and has affected me. So I'll be very open with the officers opposite me now and my colleagues that I want to see, we want to see some progress. We're not being destructive. We want to see some progress made here. And I know, because I participated in the RIC only this week, I know that you in particular, both of you, Julia, and you want to make this a worthwhile career for the people who are doing it, and that's to be applauded. I just wish it could happen quicker, that you could do the work that you need to do to give these people proper career path. So that worried me throughout. The other thing is, what is the role of a counselor? So everyone here around here who is a counselor knows that our work, our email boxes are from the sublime to the even more sublime. So yesterday I was hearing the intimate details of three families who want school transport. I moved on to, you know, finding out how we could clear a footpath for some elderly people to walk to a burial ground and finished it by wondering how we put toilets next door to a children's playground. This is the meat and bread of being a counselor, okay? So I'm not going to apologize for moving into an operational space in some of our recommendations, because that's where our job is. So, Madam Chairman, those are the things I would say in support of what we found, so thank you. Thank you, Jeremy. I think that was very heartfelt, and I think it was an incredibly important thing for you to say. Thank you. Julie, I believe you'd like to say something. Thank you. I just wanted to reiterate Jeremy's thanks to the parents and carers who took part, because what we heard was not easy to hear. It was uncomfortable and at times emotional, and by the end of the day, we were just listening, and they've actually lived it and had to relive it for us. So thank you for that. And also, the case officers, when we spoke to them, because they're hearing these things on a daily basis, and they don't just have to write about it. They have to do something about it, so that puts them under immense pressure, I'd imagine. So thank you to them as well. Thanks, Julie. I'll now open the floor to questions from members. Bernie, I believe you'd like to ask something of the witnesses who are in effect, Jeremy and Julie, on points of process. Right, two of the things that, well, so much in this report isn't there, but two points that I wasn't clear of the reason for is, one, it says on page 56, item 34, that the SEND communications protocol does set out the expectation to respond to an email within five working days with an acknowledgement email sent within one working day and a phone call within two working days. However, despite, and this is the bit I'm not clear about, however, despite having key performance indicators in place, there is currently no way of monitoring compliance. And I find that's extraordinary. So did anyone explain to you why there is no monitoring, no way, it says, of monitoring compliance? Did anybody cover that? I think that will be explained in the next item, the process. No, I sort of read, I haven't found an answer to that exactly. And, you know, we come, I've come across, I come across this a lot, actually, is that we keep saying in various different departments and various different strategies, whether it's adults or children or whatever, how often it is, you put in the system, but it falls short because we're not in a position to monitor. And I mean, that's come up three or four times in this pile of papers. And it's certainly come up in a few other things I've been involved in lately. And there's no point having KPIs if we can't do anything with them. It's just gratuitous. Anyway, and then point 35, which is the one below, which is about, so basically, I'm taking from this that the code dictates this decision on whether to assess must be made within six weeks. And this is met 99% of the time. However, the problem is, if information arrives even one day after that period, then we have a problem. And that information, if it could be the key to what we are, should or shouldn't be doing, this is item 35, page 56. And quite some time ago, I raised this a few years ago, actually, and I was told that the flexibility was there. But the, it would seem that according to this, and I didn't, I said it wasn't according to the parents that I was dealing with. And it seems that it's still still not there. So and it would seem fairly crucial to the right outcome for that flexibility to be there. So do we have an explanation for that? I mean, I'm kind of reluctant to get into the process, because I think what we should do is, is, is to really focus on the experiences that are reported. But I think I think it's a reasonable question to ask. So the reason I'm asking both of these is because this is a systemic problem that we have elsewhere, in both cases. Yeah, and you're absolutely right, it is a systemic problem. And, and, you know, it's, it's absolutely the case that what this report demonstrates is that communication is not a priority. And if communication were a priority, we would have the systems in place to make this happen, because it happens where we have priorities. But I think it is fair to, to perhaps, to perhaps ask Julia, or to ask Liz to explain what the issue is, because it, it leads to outcomes for parents that are entirely unacceptable. Thank you. So on the question about monitoring KPIs of communication, at the moment, the system we have is that each case officer uses a mobile phone as their, as the number that's shared with parents and carers. And we don't have a way of monitoring the calls in and out from those mobile phones that are made. So we can't accurately say, yes, calls are returned within a set amount of time. And with email addresses at the moment, each case officer has an individual email address, which creates the same challenge. What we're doing and work that's currently underway in order to resolve that challenge, because I agree with you, we need to be able to measure the KPIs in order to be clear they're having an impact. I'm currently working with the team corporately that's been rolling out the new phone system which uses Teams, which would mean that we would be able to monitor the traffic in and out from those individual calls. This is separate from L-SPAR calls. Any calls that come into L-SPAR are tracked and are measured and we can record. So we're working on moving across to a different system which will enable us to then measure those KPIs. And with the email addresses, we're looking at two solutions. One is using a group email option, which will enable oversight of the inboxes, and the other, which is a slightly longer term but more future-proof sustainable solution, is looking at building a parent portal connected to the system so that communications in and out aren't done by a separate email. They're done within a portal, which then automatically records into the system any of those communications. They're two active pieces of work happening at the moment, but we need to make sure we've got all of the background technology, et cetera, set up before we can move across to those new systems. Thank you very much for that. I think what I would say is, in Surrey, and I have a background in IT, there is huge optimism about how quickly IT can be delivered. Mostly it's not delivered in anything like the timescales. So what I'm wondering, Liz, is what is your expectation of having this technology in place? Because I would then add at least six or nine months to that, frankly, based on our current experience. In terms of if I talk about the portal first, if that's okay, we first need to build it. It exists as a package in our database system, but it needs to be built to make sure it's actually doing what everybody needs. So we need to work with family groups on what that looks like, what that feels like, and how they interact with it. And at the same time, we need to make sure that we've got the backup so that if someone can't get in, if they can't get their password, if there's an issue when they're trying to log in, that we've got the appropriate support in the background. We're confident that we can build prototypes for working with families fairly quickly. I've got a team working on that. I met with them yesterday, actually. I've got a team working on that at the moment, so that part of it shouldn't take too long. What we must do is make sure the support is there, because if we roll it out without the support in the background, it's not going to result in a more positive experience. But we'll need to test it on a small scale to see what those issues are, because we can see what we think they'll be, but until we actually have families using it in real life, we're not going to know what all of those issues might be that need the support. So I think that's the bit that will take a little bit longer. With the phones, the system is rolling out at the moment in other areas, and so we're able to benefit from the experience of the rollout that's already happened. And so the information I've had from the corporate team is that once we've sorted out all of the background details, who needs numbers, what numbers they need to be, what group boxes are they going into, that can happen within a couple of months. But we need to make sure, again, that we've communicated that properly first. So we want to make sure that we don't switch off mobile phone numbers without making sure that everyone then has the appropriate numbers to be able to contact when they need to. And we've also trained our staff. So not massively long-term projects, but I couldn't say to you that it would be done in a couple of weeks. Thanks, Liz. I mean, I love your optimism. I'm afraid I don't share it. We are at least, I would say, six months away from getting anything in place to remedy this situation. And I think that's shocking. Liz, I appreciate it's not your decision, but why haven't we made this a priority since it has been recognized as an issue for so long? I mean, I really -- I love your optimism, and I know that you really want to make this happen. But the history in this area is that things do not happen quickly or effectively, and I see no evidence that that's going to change, despite your determination to make a difference and your optimism. I just don't see it. I think I have a question, first of all, from John and then from Rachel and then from Jonathan. So can we take the questions in that order, please? Thank you, Chairman. First of all, as a sort of lay member of the committee, I thoroughly endorse and think that the task group's done a spectacularly good report. I'm sure this committee will unanimously adopt it. It's very powerful and persuasive. So my congratulations, if that's the right word, to the team for an exceptionally good job. The process, I think, is that when this committee adopts it, it will then -- the report will go to Cabinet for a formal response. So that leaves only this opportunity for us as a committee, perhaps, to ascertain, even in broad terms, what Claire is the portfolio holder and the officer's initial reaction to this report is. Do you accept it? That there is something that really -- stuff that really needs to happen to improve the performance of the process, particularly for the families concerned? And I think that, you know, I think we do need, if we can, even at this stage before Cabinet gives a formal response to the report, some indication as to whether we are on common ground here and our actions will be taken. I would just say, in passing, and the chairman -- Madam Chair is absolutely right to say, we'll leave the second item to talk about the second item, but there's a lot of common ground between the second item and this item in terms of improvement. And specifically, I'm just going to put this out onto the table as a question to the team and I would be very interested in the responses. In paragraph 54 of the report and summarized in 1(b), it says, increase the number of permanent customer-facing case officers by 50% to 120 to help ensure EHCPs are both trial-centric and timely. In a way, though it doesn't encapsulate the entirety of the report, this is a critical feature for improvement, sustained improvement. Yes, it requires a considerable number of additional staff, but this will help the process, given that at the moment 81 colleagues have a casework of 200 and the ideal one is 130 or thereabouts, so we're way above what we should be and I think that's recognized. So the question -- two questions. One is, overall, do you accept the thrust of the report that something needs to be done and needs to be done soon? And second, or more specific, are one of the ideas that's been put in the report, namely the increase in customer-facing case officers, is that something that the team is minded to agree or not? And if not, why not? Thanks, John. Can I ask Claire to comment first and then I'll ask Rachel for comments? Thank you, Chairman, and thank you for that question. I don't believe it's any secret to any member of this Council that I am really concerned that there are many families across this county who have children with additional needs, who are not getting the support and the service that they -- that their children need, and I apologize for that. I have apologized for that in the past, and I do so again. I think that I and every member of the team in the Directorate want this Council to be in a position where we are a provider of outstanding services to all children, and I know that you all share that. That is our ambition. It's in line with our mantra of no one left behind, and that is our ambition. You know that Cabinet voted to invest 15 million pounds of additional money into our SEND system, particularly to address the backlogs that we were seeing last year, which were devastating on the experience of children and families, but also to ensure that there was money to right size the service, which we have been doing, and also to make sure that children who were waiting those 20 weeks were getting some support in their mainstream schools, and I know that you'll hear in the course of the next report about the action that's been taken. So in short, and to summarize, yes, of course I appreciate that things are not right in the service. I absolutely acknowledge that there is a lot more work to be done. I'm glad that both the Chairman and Councillor Webster and in the report have acknowledged that there are good -- there are pockets of good practice, and that there is good work done with families, but yes, I acknowledge there is still more to be done. We need to get on with that urgently, and you're going to hear from officers about what steps are being taken, but absolutely I acknowledge that some families, some children, have not had the service that they need. Thank you, Claire. Rachel, would you like to speak on behalf of the service? Sure. So I won't add anything to what Claire has already said by way of response overall to the report. What I would confirm is that action related to these issues is already underway, both as part of the ongoing service improvement that we've been engaged in as part of the service response to the additional investment, as part of our response to the Ofsted Area Send inspection, where we're working, obviously, not just within the service alone, but with our health and schools partners, and you recognised in your report that this is a whole system issue as well as a, sorry, county council issue. So we're engaged in that work, and that covers a lot of the ground that we've described here, including a core element of the improvement program, which is specifically around communication and co-production with families. So we can take the findings of this report into the work that is already underway and use it to strengthen that. On the specific example of the caseworkers, we haven't fully costed what that would entail, but I do have a general rule of thumb when talking about expansion of any services, about the worker to manager ratio and what a team of six workers and a manager is likely to cost. And on that basis, this is probably a three and a half million pound pressure to increase by that number, and we would need to take that into consideration as part of the budget planning for next year and understand what would need to be removed from the service in order to cover those costs if that expansion were to be delivered. So we take the suggestion seriously, but that's how we would consider any kind of service expansion. We would need to cost it and balance it against all of the other requirements of the service in building the budget, so I hope that feels like a reasonable response, but we will certainly take the suggestion away with us. Can I just ask a quick supplementary, please? Of course. Yeah, thank you so much. And it's recognizing what Claire and Rachel have said, still more to be done, absolutely. But you know, and I'm not asking you for necessarily for percentages, but in terms of the contents of this report, how much of it, you know, at this early stage, do you believe will comprise of that which needs to be done in terms of the recommendations here, many of them or three pages of them, do you believe even at this stage that the majority of them will assist in addressing? We need to do more. So I think it is early stages. Certainly the majority of them address areas which are already part of the improvement plan, and so drawing them into the improvement plan does add value where they don't currently align with the improvement plan. And the example that I just gave was that increase, further increase in staffing. That is something that we need to look into in a more detailed way. So the areas that you have drawn to our attention are areas that we already recognize and are already working on. So in that sense, there is nothing in this report that isn't an area that's already under consideration. I suppose the one sense in which I would push back against, not against the report, but in a way the sense that it's been characterized today is the suggestion that there has been no progress, and that isn't the case. We can clearly evidence progress that's been made within the service. I recognize some of the statistics that you have brought into your report, but there are certainly percentages which don't change very much, but where numbers do, and evidence that we could bring forward in relation to domains of improved performance, which it feels important to recognize, not least for the morale of the workers working in the service who are working so hard and making those improvements. So I do, I have to say, reject the charge that there has been no improvement, but I absolutely concur that there is still further work to do. Thank you. I think Jonathan has the next question. Thank you. I'm afraid it's not a question, it's more a contribution as a member of Jeremy's task. Apologies, Jonathan. Of course you were a member of the task group. If that's okay. So I just wanted to bring a flavor of that to you today. For me, I'm just going to read out the first word, the first sentence of the report. The Select Committee has noted the profound dissatisfaction of some parents and carers with the way in which Surrey County Council administers the education, health and care plan procedure. And, you know, I accept that, you know, we're looking at the time that that process takes, but this is the way in which it's done, and I think that's why I think it's right and proper that this report is separate from the report that follows. I understand that out of scope was the scrutiny of MindWorks, but I think it is relevant to note this is context. So if you are a parent and you've been asked to attend a course to improve your parenting, and then your next direction is to MindWorks to join the ND pathway to get some kind of diagnosis, and that diagnosis that informs the EHC process, and that takes over two years, and it's frustrating, and it's beset with delay and adversity. And that's the experience of a parent even before they get to the start of this EHC process. That's how a parent might feel at the moment before they start talking to any staff member of Surrey about what we're talking about today. So imagine what it's like to be that parent. Imagine it's like to be a parent of special needs, which is a different challenge, I think, in and of itself, and what that might be in Surrey. And I wonder if you can imagine, as you read this report, every time you get to a bit, which is in italics, which Julie has highlighted, you just then imagine that that's someone speaking to you, rather than just some words written in italics. And you pause for a moment, as the paragraph space bar suggests that you might do before you read on, and then it's that which you bring to the table. And I would flag three things for me. Firstly, the tribunal failure rate. Now, it's easy to justify a way why 98% failure is somehow whatever it happens to be. But I think it is indicative of where we are now, even without the backlog, that there are things that need to be improved. Progress, I'm sure, has been made. I'm sure Rachel is correct in saying that progress has been made internally. But we were primarily looking outside for the views of the parents in terms of how they felt. And clearly, it takes time for that progress internally to drip feed out to change the experiences of those on the outside. Secondly, I think that the point on staffing numbers raised by John by Councilor O'Reilly is key. A 50% increase in sending case officers, I assume that that's roughly to the level that we're operating now to deal with the backlog continuing into the future, and being supported by an experienced case officer role. So case officers aren't seen as administrators, and then whenever they get good at their role, they get promoted to somewhere else in Surrey County Council. But there is a recognition of the key role they play and to have sort of cluster leads, if you like, maybe reflected in the one to six ratio, Rachel, that you talked about there. And thirdly, when we look at the process and getting the process right, which the next item does, we look at the overall process. We include Mind Works. We include the bits which are outside of our control, but in the purview of our influence, so that we might try to experience that. Because clearly, when parents are coming to us with their frustrations, it isn't just the EHCP itself they're frustrated with. It's the wider battles they have, the special need parents, and whether they feel those battles are also with Surrey County Council, or whether first they feel supported by Surrey County Council. So my pitch to those in the cabinet that have the responsibility of taking these recommendations on is that you go beyond looking at them as a set of individual recommendations, but also look at them in the round. That only by their entirety, piece by piece, do you get the full jigsaw of experience that the parents brought to us. And it's about changing that experience, that process, as well as changing the outcomes. And my question really is, you know, what would the litmus test of good enough be if we were to take this on, take this on in its entirety, and change not just how we perceive it from the inside as being good, and Ofsted hopefully too, but also the experience of those we serve in Surrey. Thank you. The empathy that you show for the parents and carers. I think you raise a very interesting point, and that is that there is a huge amount of introspection within Children's Services, and we will see that when we come to the end-to-end review. It is startling and worrying, and I don't see any evidence that that is improving. But thank you. I think what you've said is very timely, and I think it accords with how many people actually feel. I'll move on now to Rachel Lake. Rachel, you'd like to comment? I would. Thank you very much, Chairman. Yes, an excellent report and the things that's gone round, but I'd like to just concentrate on one bit where I think we should be doing something, and that is on number 36, and it talks about AHCPs once they're done, and they use the expression Holy Grail, that we've got something to follow, but it goes on to say about understanding the parents that they may not need, their child may not need an AHCP. I'm still reasonable about that, but we go on to say that, you know, this is a national problem. This requires the upskilling of teaching staff, as well as the national investment to be sufficiently sourced. Now, depending on the teacher's training college you go to, the time given to training new teachers is exceedingly small. I think someone said to me, they get a half a day. Somebody else said they had a talk for two hours, because I've actually asked a few teachers. Others said it was a general discussion for a while. I can't even remember most of it. So I'm seeing, and it's obvious looking at the children's response, who was it that gave them support? The head teacher was a big difference to my mental health and my experience. Senko in the secondary school saw me as a person. They stood at my side and fought for what I needed. So the schools can pay that part. I would be concerned when a child that has a need moves from a school that is supporting them like that, or her like that, and then moves to another school where maybe the support isn't there and they don't have an EHCP. That I have a little concern about, but where do we stand? This isn't an operational thing. This is a national thing. What are we going to do to encourage the training of teachers to have more in on special needs, on everyday special needs in school? I mean, they make comments, which I'm sure with a little bit of help can be done now, is that they'd like to see more supervision in their general playtime or, say, sensory rooms for those that are dealing with a family where the mother is absolutely terrified, and she hasn't even got her school allocated yet because of the sensory needs that her child's got on where there would be a place eventually when this goes through. And when I say she was in tears just telling me and the child doesn't even have a place, Mindy's not waiting for a place. The process has just got to that point, so it's not as though there isn't a place for the child. It's just got to that point. So everything that's said here I can agree with, but what a way as members going to do about that additional change to teacher training and getting on to government. It's a very good point. I'm not sure how much we can do as counselors. I think we can probably, oh sorry, Rachel's going to make a point. I think certainly there are vehicles. As individual counselors, I think it's difficult to pick that up, but I think that Surrey County Council through the County Council's network through the LGA can certainly make those points to government. And obviously the Association of Directors of Children's Services will have something to say about this. And Rachel, I know that you're a vice chair, so you might want to comment on that. So that's a nice segue into perhaps you can provide a response. If I may, Chair, I was going to make a suggestion about some things that members could get behind. So you alluded to the County Council's network and to the LGA. They recently published in collaboration with an organization called ISOS, a report that they commissioned into the SEND system nationally, which very clearly articulated some of the elements of the system which cause many of the problems which build inherent points of conflict into the system. And you allude to that in your own report. They set out a range of recommendations which, if adopted, could transform the SEND system in the interests of children and their families, including significantly emphasizing and reinforcing the responsibility to secure an ordinarily available provision in schools that meets children's varied needs, even when there are additional needs. So a much greater expectation of mainstream schools being able to respond to additional needs other than the most complex. So that's an important, I think, report and its recommendations are worth getting behind in terms of advocacy to government. And the other thing is, and I acknowledge Councillor Lake's point about the professional training for teachers and other staff in schools. There was an education bill under the last government that did not become an act, and it's included significant provision for teacher training and development, including a dedicated stream that was around understanding special education and developing teachers beyond the CENCO. And that sadly, because the that bill never became law, that hasn't become part of teacher training pathway. But the provisions in that act are in that potential act are important, and it would be nice to see them be revived in another form. So advocacy behind that, I think, would be welcome as well. We'll certainly do that as an association of directors and children's services, and I would imagine CCN and LGA likewise being behind it. But every individual voice raised in favor of those recommendations is important. I think that's a good point, actually. So yeah, we should pick that up. Absolutely. I know that Liz Time's end, you wanted to say something quite a lot earlier, so let me give you the opportunity now. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. I mean, I would like to also extend my thanks to everybody who worked on this, especially the task and finish group, and to Julie as well. And, you know, and to everybody, the case officers and everybody. I must admit, when I read this agenda, I did cry. I mean, it is a really harrowing read. And, you know, but unfortunately it is not an unfamiliar read, and that is the really worrying thing, is that whilst, you know, I've had parents who've, you know, children who have been suicidal, you know, I've had parents this morning, dealt with two, one parent whose child's been out of school for 14 months, another parent whose child's been out of school for three years, you know, the system is failing these children. It is without doubt the system is failing these children. And the parents, you know, when you're reading through this, they are traumatized, they're in despair, stress, anxiety, they're exhausted. They've got PTSD from this. They really have some of the reports. These parents are really, really suffering, and the children are suffering as well, and they feel blamed. They feel that the way their brain works, that they are the reason why their parents are suffering so much stress, the parents and carers are suffering so much stress. And I take the point, and I'm, you know, what Rachel is saying, that the improvements, you know, are being looked at in the system, and, you know, the improvements in the HCPs and the issuing of that. But that seems to be at the detriment of other things, of escalating tribunals, of annual reviews. You know, we're only doing about, I think it's something like 55 percent of annual reviews. So whilst things are improvement, other things seem to seem to be knocking off at the other end of the system. And it does feel, and I know that perhaps it shouldn't, but it does feel that nothing is changing. We've sat here in this meeting, and I've said it time and time again, communication. We've said again and again how we need better communication with those parents, whether it's bad news, whether it's, I haven't gotten any more news for you for a week, you know. And the, when you read through our recommendations, and Jeremy said this about it being operational, it is, you know, people not knowing the code of practice, not some people having like Senkos. One was a PE teacher one day and was a Senko the next day. I mean, you know, the actual pathway that people are actually moving along, the professional development, there doesn't seem to be a structure there at all, and it's sporadic and what the parents get is sporadic. And, you know, basic things for people contact me, and they're in the system and have been for months, and they haven't got any basic support. They haven't heard about the Surrey offer. They don't even know the website exists or anything like that. They don't know about other support that's available to them, just simple things like Family Voice Surrey. They don't even know about it. There is not a consistent approach to how we deal with parents, and that is really worrying. And, you know, whilst I recognize the 15 million pounds that's been put into this, you know, and the money involved in IT, you know, the basic record keeping where some people want to use the iDrive, you know, some people are putting notes here, and some people are putting notes there, and then when it comes to tribunals, paperwork is missing, and those parents then suffer again the trauma. It's all about a consistent process-led approach, but also, and this is what I feel from reading through the actual report itself, is the need for that early intervention, that early stages. You know, the schools are talking and saying, Oh, we're the fourth in the Urgency Service. You know, expectations are so high now. Is it that? Is it that? Or is it just that the children's needs have changed and we haven't changed with them? That we are still putting that square peg into a round hole. We are still forcing children down a certain route when their needs have changed. Lots have changed since COVID, but children's needs seem to have changed, and we're not changing with them. You know, looking at this early intervention, looking at the support for the schools, basic things like speech and language therapy, you know, within those schools, and also other things as well. Mental health support within those schools. We've got some schools that are doing amazing things like the, we read about the one in here, which is, was it the Fremantle or something within here? You know, the schools are doing amazing things, and yet that isn't consistent. In the East, there were several, you know, I'm from Cranley, there were several comments about there being nothing in the East of the borough, and that's what I find. I do find that, you know, it is a bit of a postcode lottery, but I would like to see, you know, we're looking at the middle of this issue. We're looking at creating more case officers. We're looking at putting, you know, increasing the number of customer-facing case officers 50%, but what about the early intervention? What about those early stages? What are we doing to try and prevent children from getting into this system? A lot of parents feel, reading through this report, that actually the problem's got worse because of the system, because they're not identified early enough, because children are having to go to, perhaps, you know, suffer from no intervention at all for months and months, maybe years. What are we doing to try and prevent children entering into this system? And from the traumatic experience that a lot of parents and children are going through, and I think that, you know, we can't sit here in another six months' time, please, having this same conversation. We can't. We are failing. We are failing parents. We're failing children, and none of us feel good about it. So, you know, what are we going to do to change the system fundamentally from the inside? Change what we're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. I think your passion is very commendable, and I certainly empathize with a lot of the things that you've said. I mean, I remember sitting here in October '22, and I raised the issue around timeliness of the HCPs, and we were constantly told, you know, it's being sorted, it's being fixed. You know, we got to December '22, and timeliness on the HCPs was, in that month, was nine percent. You know, and yet, in the early spring of '23, changes are being made, you know, things are improving. You know, really, we have seen some progress in the last year by comparison with that period from the summer of '22. I absolutely acknowledge that, but it's not enough, and I think that what you've said just about sums it up, actually, Liz. Can I just add a very short thing? The EHCPs, the numbers have improved, but parents are saying the quality isn't as good, and so, therefore, you know, again, we're chasing one statistic, one number, and other things are just falling by the wayside. I mean, we'll come on to that later, actually, Liz, but I would argue that having an EHCP which is inaccurate and incomplete is worse than not having one at all is what I would say. Can I please, I know that Kerry Oakley, who is joining us as a witness for the next session, would, Kerry, would you like to say something? Is that what you indicated, or are you going to wait for the next session? I don't mind waiting. It's already in my place, so I just, but I wanted to just mention, because you're talking about schools, and some of the training needs and things that come through schools, and I wasn't actually going to talk about that in what I was saying, so if I can contribute something and you don't mind, and I totally agree with you around the training in schools. We receive ITTs and ECTs that come to us. They're beginning teachers, or they come from professions into the school, and they have a very limited amount of training, and it's down to the schools as ourselves, as a body, to recognize what they need and whatever the group that look after them, how much they need. So it is very sporadic. It's not necessarily universal, and you have to trust that the schools see that as an important focus, and in the main, I think, as we've identified, schools want the best for young people, and they try to do that, but it comes down to money and time. Very often, when we talk about ECTs, you know, they will get six periods a week where they're not teaching their non-contact time, and in that, they may be planning lessons for up to six groups which have 30 children in each. I currently have 297 young people sitting on our SCN register of a school of a thousand, and I have 39 children with the HCPs. Each of them are being taught in classes of 30 because that's the funding that we have as a school and where we can be creative. We try to do so to lessen some of those numbers, and we utilize funding that comes to make that available. It's a really hard job for teachers to manage the ever changing needs of all of the different kinds of youngsters that come through their doors. Those that are registered alongside all of those that come in with a very different need by circumstance, they're very able or not so able and don't hit that register. So I think that there are challenges that schools are facing as well that make that challenging and difficult. We don't have a Senko. We have struggled to recruit a Senko. We have a Senko at the moment. That's a very, that's a national problem. They're very difficult to come by. People don't want to go to be a Senko these days, and I think a lot of that is the administration that sits behind that person. You know, it's a lot of paperwork, a lot of writing, a lot of politics that only I'm beginning to really understand through being invited to these meetings, and they have no clue. The qualification to now be a Senko has moved to the MPQ, the national professional qualification. Sadly, all those qualifications used to be free, but they've just stopped the funding for those qualifications. So as a school, our Senko who needs to do theirs will now have to pay for that national professional qualification, and that's just another challenge and a barrier. And again, we have to do it. We put it into the budget, but I think it might give a bit more of a wider perspective on the whole system if that helps. I think that's really interesting. I'm just going to, I'll ask Julie to comment in a moment, but you know what's really stark actually Kerry are those statistics. In a school of just over a thousand children, you have what 290, 297 who need SEND support and 39 with EHCPs, and they are being taught in classes of 30. I mean this is, this is the national background, isn't it? And you know, I think one of the problems is, and I know Rachel that you know it is government policy to encourage more children to be taught in mainstream and that's obviously desirable, but I think what we're also seeing is that the needs of children, partly because there hasn't been any early intervention and the needs of children are actually becoming more significant. And so mainstream will not necessarily be the panacea or the right solution. So, but I was very, very struck by the numbers that you quoted. Can I please come on to Julie and then to yourself, Julia? Thank you. Thank you. I was going to make exactly the point Kerry has just made about the concerns about the training for SEND codes. I think it's absolutely right that there is an expectation that they're trained to that level given the demands, but it is unfortunate that the costs will have to be borne by the school. So going back to the question earlier about what can we do, there's one area where I think some pressure could and should be exerted. I would like just to come back though to the initial teacher training because I recognize that that has been an issue in the past that teachers have been coming into our schools not necessarily familiar with or having had any training. But I am aware that now there are some initial teacher training providers that are particularly in the primary sector are offering SEND alongside the subject enhancement. So it is now an option from some ITT providers. We might argue it's come a little late, but at least some of them are beginning to offer it. My concern would be less so at secondary level where again the assumption is that you're the teacher of a subject and I know it's a well-worn phrase. My background is secondary. A well-worn phrase that teachers in secondary forget that they're teachers of children and they focus as teachers on the subject, but I think there is an ongoing concern about the formation and training that it happens in the secondary sector, but I am aware of changes in the primary ITT training provision. Well, that's a little ray of sunshine in what is otherwise not looking to be a happy picture in schools. So I hope something changes in that arena, but I'm not optimistic in the short term. Liz. Just quickly, I didn't want to imply that there aren't highly competent and qualified CNCOs out there, which there are, but what my concern is that there needs better support for those and a professional pathway for them and then to be recognized as a professional part of an critical part of the team. Thanks Liz. Julia, I know that you wanted to comment. Thank you. It was prompted by Councillor Townsend's comments around early intervention and prevention, but obviously for is very much on from what colleagues have talked about support for schools. So just to agree with the point that Councillor Townsend was making around the importance of early intervention and prevention work and clearly what we want for every family, every individual family and you're right that the report is really moving around those direct experiences. We want to make sure that children receive the right support at the right time. So if we can get in early and ensure that that support is provided often through the school, then clearly that is the best outcome for everybody. So there is a lot of work happening looking at our early intervention and prevention offer, which won't necessarily be picked up in the report that we're talking about later today, which is why I wanted to mention it. So LSBA has been mentioned as an example of good practice. That's part of our early intervention prevention work. Also our specialist teachers for inclusive practice, our team around the school work. We've got a speech and language therapy offer. We've got a new team who are looking at supporting children reception. So there is a range of services which, because we're focusing on the EHCP process, won't necessarily be covered today, but it would be good, I think, for that information to come back for the important part of this complex system. I think that's a really good point to make. Thank you for that, Julia, because it's not something we're looking at today. Absolutely. Thank you. I think at this point, I think this draws to an end our allocated time for the subject. So I think it's -- unless there are any other comments, I think it's appropriate that we move on. And the subject that we're moving on to actually has a lot of overlap with the task and finish group report that we've been discussing. So just before I'm -- sorry? Oh, yeah. Just before I move on, I just wanted to understand if there are any other comments that members would like to make before we move on. Jonathan? Just very briefly, we've heard about the parent experience. I wonder if we might say something about support for parents. I feel we've covered the recommendations quite well about what we need to do, what we feel we need to do within Surrey County Council as sort of the task group, but maybe there's more to say what needs to happen outside of Surrey County Council. We've talked today about parents. We've talked today about the role that teachers have, the funding constraints that schools have, the SCN training not just for Sankos but for classroom teachers who have high numbers of special needs children to look at. I wonder if there's something wider there that we might mention in our recommendations. I think I absolutely understand your point, and the task and finish group report looks at a small piece of a much bigger and interdependent picture. But actually, there are many things that we can influence locally. We recognize the difficult picture nationally. We recognize the issue with schools, but this task and finish group report identifies that there are many things that we should have been doing within the council that is within our control that would improve the experiences of parents and carers that have not been done. Maybe they're in process now, but we've been told for at least a year and a half that they're in process, and yet we haven't seen demonstrable outcomes. I mean what I would like to say to officers before we move into the recommendations is that I appreciate that this has probably been a very tough session. As Councillors, our responsibility is towards residents, and I cannot tell you how many emails, phone calls, messages I get from parents explaining heartbreaking situations that do not get sorted. And there's so much more that we can do locally, even against what I absolutely accept is a very difficult, challenging national situation, situation in schools, and I just don't think that we have actually made sorting the things that we can do locally, despite the enthusiasm and determination of officers to actually get a real grip on this. You know, I'm getting more correspondence from residents, not less, and that is deeply worrying. It is my responsibility and our responsibility as Councillors to represent their interests, and their interests are not being well taken care of by Surrey County Council at present. Jeremy. I mean, we've talked a lot about communication, so I committed at these meetings that we would go back, and we would talk to the people who contributed, one of whom I think is sitting here today, was very, very helpful. So I think it's Monday, I'll be going back and talking to the parents and saying, well, look, we've had our sessions. We did the report. These are things that are coming out, and I think in general, I can probably, you know, give favourable responses to them, and that something will happen as a result of what they said. So I just thought I'd mention that. Thank you, Jeremy. Jonathan. So maybe I can be corrected whether this is correct or incorrect, but my understanding is that funding for - this is from a website, so maybe incorrect - funding for pupils in special schools has been frozen at £10,000 per pupil since 2013, with the value being steeply eroded in recent years by high inflation. Now, if the funding for sending schools is frozen, then the demand for EHGPs is going to be going up with, you know, fixed funding budgets, and this is a way, almost it feels, for schools and parents to sort of try to fix a problem which sits beyond Surrey County Council, but yet we have got an even greater pressure to fix because that wider issue hasn't been addressed. Now, I accept that that's not within our task group remit, but in how we frame this going back to Kavanagh, I think it's worth highlighting that, you know, we can do this, but hey, unless the wider system is addressed, then the pressure on Surrey County Council in this space is probably going to get more and more severe going forward. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but that's my section. I absolutely think that the pressure on Surrey will increase because things aren't particularly going to ease up in the short term, but as I say, this task and finish group recommend, these task and finish group recommendations are mostly things that we have control over ourselves, and that's what we must focus on. We recognise the national context, but what we say is, in terms of our residents, the people to whom we have a responsibility and the people whom we represent, these are the things that must and need to be done without delay and they are in our control. It is not acceptable for us not to be fixing things that are within our control. Rachel, sorry. I don't particularly recognise the figure that you described, Jonathan, but I do recognise the general principle, which is that school funding has absolutely been squeezed over that period, and the ISOS report that I referred to earlier sets out very clearly how that's one of the factors that has generated some of the challenge in the system. So the reason for stepping in to say that in response to you is also partly in response to Fiona, which is, it is of course true that there are elements of this that are under our control as a council, but when the broader challenges squeeze the system harder, all of the steps that we take to respond to the presenting need can be subsequently overwhelmed by the increase in pressure in other parts of the system. So some of the time when what you see is no progress is actually this council completing more good quality EHCPs than almost any other council in the land in time, but also having more out of time than many other local authorities because the demand has so significantly increased. And so all the time we're trying to respond to the situation as it is now and also the increased pressure that is being driven through the system by those national constraints. And that's why when I made reference to percentages and absolute numbers earlier, I think it'd be very helpful for this committee to continue to look at absolute numbers so that you can see when we are doing more of something well, even if proportionately we do still have problems because that feels like an important thing to be recognized for the service. Oh sorry, I did take your point Rachel. I think what's deeply worrying though is that it took the select committee last year to suggest that sent case officers should be asked to provide an out-of-office message when they weren't available. Communications is an area that does not appear to have improved and yet I don't think it falls into the category that you've just been discussing in terms of things that are out with our control. And that's what's really concerning. I think we recognize there are many things that we're unable to do very much about, but even the things that we can do something about do not appear to have been prioritized and that's what that bothers. I think it bothers all of us. We will come on to statistics. There is clear evidence of improvement in the statistics, but as you'll hear in a few minutes, unfortunately, you know, there is also a downside to it apparently. So you're right, there has been some improvement, but not the scale of improvement that's really, really necessary to meet the needs that are presented to us as counselors. That's the issue. I'm sorry, John, did you want? No, no, okay. So I think what I'd like to do now is to ask the committee if they endorse all of the recommendations of the task and finish group. Thank you. Well, I'd like to say that our next item, which is the end-to-end review and recovery plan, I'd like to say that it's going to be, you know, a happier or a lighter topic, but I regret to say that we are in the same arena. So it's difficult. It's a difficult topic and I think it will produce some of the same issues that we have discussed, albeit from a slightly different perspective. So I'd like to say a couple of things first before introducing the witnesses and asking Councillor Curran if she would like to make an introductory comment. So we've been exploring the experiences of those involved in the system and we're now looking at progress on the review of the EHCP end-to-end process and the EHCP recovery plan. So we scrutinised EHCP timeliness in July 2023 and the recovery plan in October 2023, but this is our first opportunity to scrutinise the EHCP end-to-end review. The review is really a condition of the safety valve agreement that Surrey entered into with the Department for Education and which produced a hundred million pounds of additional funding to offset the additional spending that Surrey had made over a number of years, because we were spending more than we were provided with under the high needs block by government. And amongst other objectives, remembering that this end-to-end review is a condition of the safety valve agreement, the end-to-end review has the aim of achieving a 20% reduction in requests for education, health and care needs assessment based on strengthening ordinarily available provision and better send support in schools. So there are other objectives of the end-to-end review, but it has that aim of reducing the number of EHC requests. The review has been underway since May 23 and the report to the committee identifies changes that have already been implemented. So a couple of points worth making before we introduce some of the witnesses. The end-to-end review is purely focused on the statutory 20-week EHCP process period from the initial request to the ELSA bar for an EHCP needs assessment to the issue of the completed EHCP. So we're looking at a small slice of a much larger process. So I think it's important that we recognize that. There has been clear process, progress on the EHCP recovery plan, absolutely. You know, as I said, I think we were at 9% in December '22. The latest performance statistics show that we have EHCP timeliness at 71% in July and that is absolutely to be commended. That's absolutely where we want to be. However, and here's the sting in the tail, in the same month the audit sample report cited that only 16% of the EHCPs delivered as part of the recovery plan merited a quality rating of good or outstanding. This is down from 22% in May. Now I appreciate that we're only looking at the EHCPs which are delivered as part of the recovery plan, but I find that statistic, that sample statistic, quite shocking. So we're improving our performance in delivering EHCPs, but those EHCPs which were delivered as part of the recovery plan, not as part of business as usual, but as part of the delivery, as part of the recovery plan, are of shocking quality. I will move on. So I will first ask the Surrey County Council witnesses to introduce themselves. We've all read the report, so after that we'll go straight into questions following a short introduction from Councillor Karen. So after I've asked the witnesses to introduce themselves, I will also ask, after I've asked the Surrey County Council witnesses to introduce themselves, I will also ask our external witness, Kerry Oakley, who's head teacher of Carrington School in Redhill, to tell us about her experiences of the improvements she's aware of as a result of the EHCP end-to-end review and the additional support for schools which have, which has happened as a result of this review before I open the floor to questions. If you remember, Kerry spoke to the joint CFLLC and Adult Health and Social Care Committee about the impact on schools of MindWorks essentially giving up on Eurodevelopment assessments and handing the process over to schools. So can I please ask the Surrey County Council witnesses to introduce themselves first of all. Julia Catherine, so I'm interim director of Education and Lifelong Learning Council. Thank you. Liz Bone, I'm the Send County Service Planning and Performance Leader. Steve Tunner, interim Assistant Director for Inclusion and Additional Needs in the Northeast. So thank you Chairman, if I can just say a very few words of introduction because I know that everybody will have, has read the report and will be eager to get into questions to the team. Thank you for joining me today and thanks to Kerry as well for coming along. So I'm pleased to be back with the update on the recovery plan. I well remember the debate that we had last October and I do recall there was a little, maybe suspicion amongst some of the members of the committee that actually this plan could be driven through to conclusion and I'm glad that you acknowledge Chairman that the huge progress that has been made in achieving a really commendable level of timeliness. We certainly want to be in or around 70 percent now and ultimately you know the ambition is that except in very very few exceptions every plan should be done within the 20-week limit, wherever feasible. We also have in this report the detail of the end-to-end review. This has been a really important piece of work for the Service. It has been a very important piece of exploratory work because I think everybody in the Service and I'm sure you really, you too acknowledge that we do need to do some reorganization, we need to streamline our processes, we need to make our decision making and servicing, if I may use that technical term, of this process absolutely as effective as it possibly can be for the benefit of families. We need to give a clear structure to our workforce so that they are able to have the space to invest in the relational work with families that we all want to achieve and to meet the needs of children. Of course the end-to-end review and the recovery plan are not things that are happening in isolation. We've already spoken about the improvement plan that was devised on the back of the the joint inspection of the SEND system last September in September 2023, an improvement plan that is approved by itself, approved by the Department for Education and monitored by the Department of Education. They come back regularly and assess our progress against that plan and also as you have mentioned, Chairman, it's in the context of the conditions that we have to adhere to for our safety valve agreement, bringing in additional money into our SEND system. So whilst this is important work, we also have to see it in the context of that improvement plan which we are continuing to deliver and the safety valve conditions to which we also account three times a year to the Department for Education. So we do have external scrutiny on the progress that we're making as well as regular scrutiny by this committee. I'm going to hand over to the officers and I know that you have many questions from members of the committee, Chairman. Thank you. Thanks very much, Claire. What I'd like to do now is to introduce Kerry Oakley who's come as a witness and what we have specifically asked Kerry to give us an update on is, you know, what's your experience of the improvements that have been identified as a result of the end-to-end review? You know, are things in terms of your relationship with Surrey County Council, in terms of the support you're getting from Surrey County Council, has that improved? That's really what we're interested in understanding. So Kerry, you are head teacher of Carrington School in Redhill. We know the statistics about your school because we've just discussed them so I think you're in an excellent position potentially to give us some feedback. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for inviting me to speak today. I've written down some things. It may go a bit off task but you can direct me if I can but I think again, as we've just discussed, it's a very wide area and there certainly have been improvements within the system since we last spoke and, you know, the situation for some of our students was dire for a very long time and we have found that the backlog, particularly of outstanding cases, has been through. There's been a flurry. There has been a flurry through the summer which is always interesting when you remember that teachers don't work 52 weeks a year and that is something I think that's worth considering, that whilst all the case officers are getting their work done through the summer six weeks, my Senko was supposed to be on some break and has been challenged by parents who have said this reports in what's happening quite a lot but it's been great to see that those things are there. The other thing that's been really key is the stability in the sort of caseworkers and the key workers. I see the same name on the emails coming through with the reviews and I've seen that same name since about May, June time and I've come back and I've still seen the same name of the person that's dealing with our specific school and that's really good because that relationship is really important. My Senko knows who to go to and it's a one point of contact whereas before we had a whole variety of different people and you could never get a straight answer for what you were looking for so that certainly has improved. As a school we've also seen many more successes in outcomes for EHCPs. Equally we are seeing those that are now being refused as well and that comes back to Councillor Townsend's discussion around what schools are doing and the preventative work that schools can do to get an EHCP. There is a cultural issue around EHCPs as well because that's what parents want. They believe that having the title of an EHCP will open many more doors to young people and we often tell them as a school that we're doing all what an EHCP would bring to your child but that still is not good enough. They want the EHCP to get the exam access arrangements and to carry forward for other aspects of their child's life so that balance is really difficult to get and I think we're going to see an increase in requests for EHCPs. With the 297 that I've got on our SEM register there are probably a good 40 percent that would if given half a chance be pushing us for an EHCP because they won't necessarily see the progress that they want to see from the school. They might then go to their GP or in other areas and any child we know they're still getting the same message and if they go with a mental health concern there will be a suggestion that they should be assessed for an ASD or neurodiversity. That then leads as soon as they get one of those the parent will say and now can we get an EHCP and and that's an education from our point as a school with our parents to talk about our SEM more. We do now have a page of what we've changed I suppose is we now have a page sharing with parents what we can do as a school what our offer if you want for SEND and mental well-being and all those areas looks like. We talk about the service we've had a very good service with the STIP team at Carrington and they provided us with mental health support for young people small workshops for young people that have all then support that sort of intervention and preventative work that we go through as well. If I may just talk about some of the challenges that still come out and then I've got a couple of recommendations that maybe might be for a discussion. The first challenge is it's the message from from the wider services about assessing and going to GPs and getting that assessment and going to MindWorks. There is still a 20-month delay as far as we're aware for MindWorks and we're still not able to refer to MindWorks as a school and we haven't heard otherwise so whether that is the case or not that's what my team are telling me they've had no communication to suggest otherwise so when you talked earlier about communication I think that's really really important. The consultation process for us is still a huge issue as a school on our role we were expecting 14 EHCP students to come into our school in year seven five did not appear we don't know why we haven't been given any information two of those five were allocated to us by Surrey County Council within those that we took three pupils were allocated to us despite us stating on consultation that we could not meet their needs and there was no consultation around how we might meet their provision if we were being expected to take them and one pupil is on our role without any consultation at all now we have shared names as they were coming with us in the spring but we weren't necessarily given any answers as to who and how those children would be managed we've also had funding and actually Surrey have set up to the funding so we identified that the students with the EHCPs were not being correctly funded throughout parts of last year and when we looked at our budgets we were looking at sort of nearly ten thousand pounds which is a lot of money that we were having to try and unpick as well so it's a very complicated system of how funds come into school and it probably needs to be streamlined they did guarantee that we would get most of that fund well that funding by the 31st of July because it's not a straightforward process we haven't been able to identify but we did certainly get more funding but I couldn't honestly say with that whether that's met all of the funding that we were expecting at this stage and then just the final challenge for us is obviously the availability of specialist places many of you will know that we as a school have a project underway with Woodfield School offering potentially 40 places over the next five years and that that was one of the capital projects that was taken out of the the plan sadly due to finances and what I suppose we were really worried and expressed our concern when we met with the council was that there was a lack of transparency about this we didn't know what the budget was and we could have put in another plan if we'd have been talked to and we would have loved to have done that and as a result we've now got 16 students because the decision came with eight already on site and eight already on roll 16 students and no guarantees of that provision being able to continue we can see those students through and there's found revenue money for the porta cabin that we have but we can't continue to offer those places and the issue then is that those children will end up at my school because there are no places and some have been refused places at Woodfield because they haven't got enough capacity and then they end up on my role as a mainstream child which is very difficult to manage um so if i could just recommend four things mind works we just like to keep the communication open and really get the knowledge of how the referrals are going um and and what can be the offer we have our own provision we use lots of counselors we employ two counselors full-time ourselves as a school and we have been able to use um sorry for their extra provision which has been great i'd like the funding to become more efficient so that we can track the use and the money coming into the school and know that we're getting the right amount for each child that attends um i'd like um when there are consultations and if we say no and that person still has to be directed that there is a meeting arranged to discuss how that might happen if there's any extra funding available and support for that young person so that it can be a successful transition and we know what we can do because i think somebody said earlier about they might get a really good deal at primary and then they come to secondary and that's often because the dialogue hasn't happened or we've said no and then they still come to us and then the final thing is more about an organizational shift in how funding and the revenue that would be going to nmi's um may be considered uh going forward and that there is some flexibility to work with the head teachers who are prepared to have provisions and ideas to support young people with scn needs in their schools and that that's not put upon as to how people think it should happen but that we could be creative around how some of that funding could be used because as we know schools are very complex and one model does not fit all and we would hope that we could be part of the process of moving some of these projects forward to support further places and additional places for scn students and to do that we would need the backing obviously of the cabinet here today to support and work collaboratively with that thank you thank you very much kerry i think that was incredibly insightful for us um it's always useful to have um feedback it's very very encouraging um that you are seeing benefits from the end-to-end review um the allocation of um of step um personnel um the fact that i've written them all down actually that um you're actually seeing um you have better better consistent um relationship with one individual who will understand your school and understand the situation um that there was a flurry of ehcps during the summer is obviously not what you're looking for and i i find it astonishing that we haven't taken that into account in terms of managing the hcp process but i think i think overall like it it really feels to me as though you are deriving benefit and seeing advantages it bothers me hugely what you've said about um about children essentially being allocated to you without your agreement i mean that can't be good for anyone the funding also bothers me um our next session um after this current um report is about um children not in school and i think the very fact that um you know you're missing you've got five children didn't appear you don't know where they are or what they're doing um is worrying um the fact that you know you're allocated children that you refused um you know this is this is a very this is very worrying in terms of what we're doing around inclusion and around understanding what's happening to children and i have to say that hearing that from you before we have our next session is is actually quite quite interesting because you know we don't we don't get the impression that these sort of things are happening all of the time from from the report that we've received so that feedback is very useful so i think what we'd say is probably a mixed picture um the other thing i should say to you is and i'm sure everyone is is um is taking it we'll take a deep breath on this but our next task and finish group is actually going to be about the scnd capital program and whether we have the right places um in the right geographies um so that will be our next task and finish group um what i'd like to do now is i'd like to ask if are there because i'm very conscious you know that you may need to go back to school are there any questions that members would like to ask kerry rachel thank you chairman thank you very much that was really really helpful um and yes i enjoyed visiting you at the school um of the five that didn't turn up at all have you any idea did that have anything to do with transport no i'm afraid i wouldn't know and i did they never turned up so at some point through the time where we did induction where we had our sort of list and we got our numbers from sorry to say who was on our role and the start point they have been removed um which often happens but it's just that not necessarily i suppose officially be informed that they have taken a place here or here is that it's again it comes down to communication i suppose as to where they're going but they have gone well we believe they've gone somewhere else thank you very much bony amateur um um the three that were delivered onto you when you said you could not meet their needs when when was that we get um applications and consultations from about the middle of january in the year of the september that the students are due to start so at any time they come in um batches but you haven't got those three yet those three no they started because when was that so they would have started with us in september in september right and since then what has happened with your discussions between you and surrey county council over meeting the needs of the or or whoever you you're discussing with so you've these children arrived despite the fact you said you couldn't meet their needs what has happened with you and the relevant bodies since that time well the only people that we would have met with would be the parents and the families um i am so i believe that one of the families has refused to send their child to us which is obviously a great shame so we're in discussion to try and at least try and get them onto site because they believe their child should have specialist provision and they've been allocated to us the other two are in our system and they are being supervised managed looked after we have ta's we put teaching assistants alongside their we love follow their ehcp basically and we will keep going and and continue to look after them we will obviously do their annual reviews and if we feel that our annual review time if they need a specialist placement we'll make an emergency annual review and recommend a specialist placement but those specialist placements are far and few between and so a child may wait a year two years or in some cases never actually get offered a specialist placement and so just remain in mainstream and so can i just have a follow-up here because i'm not really clear how this works so you informed surrey county council that you couldn't meet the children's these children turn up three of them so after that there is no further discussion about the fact you can't meet their needs is that what you're saying there's no further discussion with us about the fact you can't meet their needs but you just landed with them yes that's that that is the case and not just landing that we don't make needs we we make our own provision but there we've never had maybe i'm wrong and i have need to go back and pursue more of a conversation but we've never once we're directed to take we are directed to take so we then take that young person and and try to make the best package and provision possible for them okay actually is it possible for someone to comment on this i think i think liz was just the right to comment on that thank you so i thought it'd be helpful to explain what how the process works what should happen and the changes we're we're looking to make within the consultation process so absolutely as as kerry described where a child with an ehcp is being allocated a school place a consultation is sent to the school and it will always be sent to the parental preference school and the nearest appropriate school as identified in accordance with the child's ehcp and we receive those responses back and in that response it's the opportunity as kerry said for schools to indicate if there are any concerns around meeting the needs of those children or young people what should then happen if a school has come back and said we're concerned about meeting these needs is a conversation to say and what reasonable adjustments would you need to put in place in order to be able to so what would need to be different what additionally would you need to would you need to do that conversation should happen on a one-to-one basis in relation to any children or young people where a school has come back and said they have concerns about meeting need so that then a conversation a meeting exactly as you've described kerry can happen to to see what can we do you know is there a different type of support is there a referral to a different service within surrey or is there or do we need to look at some either short-term or long-term additional funding in order for the school to be able to meet those needs and that conversation should happen before then then the school is is informed whether or not that child will be joining so from kerry's point of view from from a service level i'm sorry that that didn't happen in your experience what we are looking to do in the end-to-end review is simplify the process of consultations so that for schools and for everybody it is actually the person holding the case that is the person that you go back to to have that conversation because the consultations will be done within the send team rather than in a team outside of the send team which has created some unintentional confusions about some aspects of the process so we are looking to streamline how that happens and i hope that will mean that you're not in that situation again but what i will do outside is is just make sure that there's real clarity on how that process should be working now so i appreciate you raising it i think i did know the way it should work it's never been that way and my i suppose what i would say to you then is i've got three students that we've been directed to take and yet to have a conversation and to hear that there's some funding can my senko get in touch with the caseworker and seek that funding to support those three to ensure that this first year is good for them until we get to the next review absolutely so and the senko would complete the reasonable adjustments form um and speak with the case officer and then that conversation would happen thank you um i think what's deeply worrying actually is that one school three children how many schools does that situation has that situation happened in this term i think that's really really really concerning and you're saying kerry that this is not the first time this has happened it's never happened i've been at carrington for six years now we've never had that opportunity we've just been directed to take s-e-n-d children that we say we can't meet need for and because i've been under pan i've always had a few extra i'm absolutely astonished absolutely astonished that it has never happened and how many schools is this happening to incredible thank you thank you chair i mean i'm quite appalled to be honest i'm appalled that it's taken this forum for kerry to sit there and to find out that there could be some additional funding and to find out what the system is and it's not good enough to say you're going to provide clarity it really isn't it really shouldn't come to this you're working with schools all the time this is a process it's a system it isn't good enough to say that you know oh well i'll speak to you outside and we can discuss this you know as as the chair said you know how many other schools are in this position how many children are not getting that extra funding and are falling between the cracks you know i'm really disappointed and one thing you know i'd like to ask ask kerry was you know um she mentioned about um ehcp's and i would be interested to see if she's seeing that within her school and the request for ehcp's and seeing whether the trend is increasing or decreasing or staying the same but also what what why she feels that parents feel that need to to have that and i she mentioned about putting something on a on their website you've got a page and is it because parents do not know any other way and they just see that one doorway and they can't see any other provision working for their child in which case you know we're not providing enough education again early intervention what else can be provided for these children in order for parents to feel i mean you know you know what it's like as a parent you know you want the very best for your child you're in a state of anxiety sometimes you've never been a parent before you know it's your first child and you really are worried that they are being disadvantaged you're desperate absolutely desperate to get the very best for them and you're going to fight for that absolutely going to fight for that but also you're going to be very anxious and if somebody's if the solution is presented to you that is the solution then you are going to go hell for leather at that and it is what else is available and that doesn't seem to be be there for for the stuff that we were talking about early for the earlier for the parents that were talking there some of them said i may not have needed an ehcp if i had known this and i think that that you know is it a culture you know have we is that culture now embedded how can we change that culture how can we provide other avenues for parents that they still feel they feel that that they feel supported in making a different choice as opposed to being forced down a particular pathway um because they feel that is the only choice for their child so you know it is a sort of question to kerry you know as in and what does she feel is is the reason behind that and the the prevalence obviously of those requests thank you kerry please please do answer that and then i need to come to um bob and then to ashley yeah i mean i think i said earlier that it's a cultural thing around the ehcp is for sure and it's a it's a wide uh aspect to take that we need all schools to buy into and talk to and and work with the council and how we look at what the other options are i said that and that just comes from trust as well building the trust of parents within the school that you're going to do the right thing for their young person and and them seeing that uh happen as well so there's you know there is a lot of work for schools to do to to ensure and assure and many of us are already looking at those areas to do that um and i think the other thing to say is yes there is going to be a continual increase there are wide ranging needs and more than we've ever come across before um and that is just a change of life and as schools we're having to adapt our class way we've set our classes the way we teach in classes to meet the change of our new generation of young people that are coming through so again that's a continual piece of work that we would just need to continue to do liz would you mind if i um asked uh rachel to come in at this point actually thank you thank you chair i just wanted to make a suggestion so it's always very unsettling to hear in a forum like this that the way that something should be working hasn't worked in the situation that's been presented and i think we as a service want to do some follow-up outside this meeting um to assure colleagues in this room about this about the status of those cases where we have directed a school to take a child even where they have expressed the view that they can't meet needs so we do regularly direct um and and that is a fact of uh life i suppose in a system which expects a lot of needs to be met through ordinarily available provision and but that absolutely should be done in discussion with the school even if not in full agreement so we'll take that offline thank you rachel i mean i i think it would be um really interesting to know in how many other schools have been impacted in that way i can't believe that it's just carrington and i suppose you know i very much appreciate your offer to look at this um i think it would be very helpful to us if you could extend that investigation perhaps in respect of of all of those um places that schools initially declined to take the student because i think it would be interesting to know how many schools have the same problem that that kerry currently has potentially without the funding that is what i was proposing to look at to look at but sorry for all schools where we have directed thank you that's very helpful what i'd like to do now is come to um to bob and then to ashley and then we need to get into our program of questions i think but but i think this is a is a is a very rich scene for us to discuss uh thank you chair um i think that uh all of us that we've expressed are very grateful to kerry for coming along giving her insights and all i would add is two things one is that i think the children at her school with special needs are very lucky to be there and secondly the reason i say that is that two young uh small children in my family extended family are um very happy at school they have special needs and ehcp's and the reason they're happy now and were distinctly unhappy before is is because they are happy their needs are dealt with and i think you know it shows you what good and bad is and plainly that's good i want to turn to one specific area that kerry raised which is training when i joined this committee about 18 months ago i asked a specific question at my first meeting which was about training and i was assured there are masses of training we do a lot of training intensive training and we've heard from kerry today that that's not her experience and i've heard that from a lot of head teachers that that doesn't happen and i think what i do want at some point during this discussion is an explanation of firstly what training do we provide and maybe a paper to members of this committee explaining what it is because as i say a whole number of head teachers i've spoken to didn't recognize the thought that there was massive training going on for them thank you bob um ashley yeah thank you chair um i i was interested that you said that of the 297 send children you have a lot of their parents would actually like an ehcp because you know we've heard before there is this perception that that's a sort of golden ticket to to to further support i i just wonder whether as a school would you prefer the parents to go down that ehc needs assessment route or would you prefer because you obviously you know as a secondary school teacher myself you get to know your children and their needs very quickly when they come to school would you prefer it that you actually just give them the ordinary available provision or would you prefer it that you've got the ehcp which rather more spells out what their special needs are um i think we do that anyway to be honest we write uh a provision plan for all of those 297 youngsters will have their own provision plan uh the challenge is being able to implement them all when they're all slightly different to each other um and that does come down to now training staff about everybody has to be individual in how you manage them there's not one sort of method for all students the ehcp brings a little bit more funding very often and and can identify in a bit more depth than maybe we have the experience to do sometimes with some of our youngsters and i suppose they're the ones that we do transition and move towards assessment if we find that what we're doing in school with our resources doesn't work then actually they might need something different and that can be sought from the services of surrey and others within that um but we have to assure the parents through our practice and through our outcomes that what we can do for their children will still get them the end result which is primarily to get them to college and and to be happy um and and that's an ever sort of increasing challenge i suppose that will never go away so that's fine but i'm not sure i've answered your question but i don't think there's a definitive answer around whether they should or shouldn't it is on a neat basis but needs are increasing yeah thank you so yeah i i can understand so there's a balance isn't there you can identify some of those children where an ehcp would actually be quite useful yeah but a lot of them you just want to get on with ordinary available provision the teachers get to know them they've all got their individual plans and and that suits the majority of children with scmd and we have to have an educational psychologist assessment which is done in school prior to the and they make a recommendation as to whether they'd be successful that is also another better aspect that is as a service we can now actually get educational psychologists into school whereas there's a period of time where you couldn't at all and so we are able to make that's an early intervention assessment and make those decisions and that often appeases the parent if a an external voice has said no it's not needed right now or yes it is that helps kerry thank you very much um i think i'd like to echo what bob said i think the children at your school are very fortunate to have suggested um dedicated head teacher who is really wanting to do the very best for all of the children and trying to ensure that we don't we don't um characterize too many children as having special needs when maybe they could be dealt with in a mainstream environment um so thank you so much for your feedback we have really appreciated it um and yeah thank you very much for coming along what i'd like to do now is go to the oh john nothing for kerry i'm just booking my a space for the substantive john you have that john you will have a space we're just going to go into our main questions i promise you you'll have a space okay so we'll we'll go to the we'll go to the main questions we wanted to ask so i mean i've got a couple of questions initially and then um we'll go into the rest but i will not forget you john i promise and i know that you won't let me forget you either so don't worry um the first question that i wanted to ask was you know parents some parents have wasted a long time to get their ehcp and we heard very movingly from jonathan um the sort of state they're generally in at the point at which they apply for any hcp you know years often of frustration concern disruption but our recovery plan the quality of our recovery plan ehcps and i'm not talking about the the business is usually hcps but the recovery plan ehcps is the quality of these ehcps is something that many many parents are protesting about and they complain that it's impossible to contact the send case officer there's no phone um they also say the emails are not being responded to and the conclusion of many of these parents is that actually they thought they that getting the ehcp was going to be helpful but then they find they've got one which is inaccurate incorrect and they have to start the merry-go-round again so if a sample suggests that only 16 percent of our recovery plan ehcps in july met you know only ehcps met the criteria of being good or outstanding what are we doing to fix that and what are we doing for those parents who have been so let down by the recovery plan ehcp that they've they've been delivered liz thank you um and it can i clarify just one point before i answer your question if that's okay so the end-to-end review is looking at the 20-week and statutory process but also the ongoing annual review once plans exist in the system there are the two statutory elements of the center system i just wanted to just to clarify um the scope of the of the review in terms of the information about the quality of ehcps from the recovery team we receive monthly feedback from the quality managers of the assessment of plans and what we have seen in relation to those specific plans produced by members of staff in the recovery team is an improving trend of quality across many of the sections in fact in the last set that was sent to us one of the plans was highlighted as having the most number of outstanding features that had been seen in the year so far in relation to plans audited where we continue to see issues in relation to the quality of plans tends to be focused around the description of health and social care needs and also the extent to which the voice of the young person is captured in the ehcp and alongside that we continue to see across both recovery and also actually all plans errors typographical errors mistakes they're totally unacceptable and shouldn't be in those final plans but what we have seen is that the needs of children and young people are being expressed appropriately in the ehcps in order to allow schools settings other professionals working with the young person to be able to understand how to meet their needs and to make sure their needs are met what we do have though is two separate sets of issues then in relation to the response to a draft plan from families the first one is where there are mistakes and they absolutely rightly raise those those concerns there's a 15-day window of time where any amendments suggested by parents are taken into consideration by case officers and where there are significant numbers case officers will reach out to arrange a teams meeting to talk through those but we also then have as well where parents and carers don't always agree with the outcome of the panel decision and what it can be quite tricky to unpick is the difference between a mistake in a plan and a disagreement in a plan and that's where it's so important that the elements that the previous report was talking about around working co-productively with parents comes in and those relationships come in because it's not necessarily the case that there's something wrong with the plan sometimes this is a disagreement with the content of the plan and then we need to go back and have those conversations it is correct to say that the team working on the recovery plan and developing ehcps aren't using phones we haven't given them mobile phones but they do regularly arrange teams calls with families in order to talk through concerns and we do have the track and log says so we are keeping a centralized record specifically for that team of of the replies that they're giving to concerns that come in it's part of the contract in terms of the the work that's being provided so i think that there is a mixed picture you also mentioned about if there are elements missing from plans that have been produced and we absolutely know that in some cases we've taken a a child's case to panel for decision about whether or not to issue an ehcp and there is an element of the information that is not yet available in relation to that child so at that point the panel will make a decision about whether there's enough evidence to demonstrate that this child needs an ehcp even without that piece of missing information and therefore we can build the framework of support around what we know and in that case there's then a very specific note and it's included in the information that when the late advice comes in the plan will be reopened as an early annual review that will be added to the plan and then any changes to provision can be made so we can pick those up at that time but it was it was a decision that we should consider whether the other needs are sufficient that actually what we want to do is put in support in relation to what we know now rather than wait for all of it before any support is put in place in terms of those caustic provisions so so it is right to say that there are some plans that have missing information and we do know about that so there is a plan in place to resolve those concerns here's my problem is i mean i absolutely understand that you won't parents parents and the service won't always agree but i cannot tell you how many emails i've had from parents where the issue is completely incorrect information irrelevant information information that has been provided multiple times that is not in the ehcp and i i absolutely understand you know how it should work but here you have somebody who's been waiting a long time the information is incorrect or not included they're unable to get hold of the send case officer they can't phone them they don't get their email responded to maybe maybe that person has moved on so now they're completely hanging i absolutely understand how the system should work i think what i'm saying is that in more experiences you know in more instances um than than you might recognize i genuinely do not believe this is happening i mean in much the same way you know that kerry has explained that consultation with schools isn't happening i genuinely think that some of the things that you believe are happening and should be happening in terms of dealing with parents with ehcps that are inaccurate and correct i genuinely think the process isn't working i really do just because of the sheer number of emails and messages and the sheer number received by my colleagues you know i i hate to say it less i just don't believe it i really don't i don't believe the process is working as you would want it to work and that is deeply deeply worrying for us thank you so i think that there's there's no question that we we acknowledge and have identified that there are inconsistencies in the system and we know that things are not always happening in the way that they should we are absolutely seeing improvements um in the way the system's working and the end-to-end review is looking to make sure that we're removing the opportunity for the additional inconsistencies in the system but i don't think that it's accurate to say that across the recovery plan the quality of all of the hcps hasn't been as it needs to be i acknowledge that we have issues across the board where we're not producing plans in the way that we would want them to be in the long term but i do believe that the vast majority of what is produced is is sufficient to be identifying the needs of children and young people and that's not where we want to be you know as as claire said earlier we want to be outstanding we want our service to be one that is trusted and held up as a service that that is outstanding and we've got work to do to get there absolutely and and i don't want to be sort of misunderstood that i'm suggesting that everything is fine um but i don't think that in it is the case that everything that's been done in terms of the recovery work and all of those ehcps that have been issued are problematic um that there will be cases where there are errors there will be cases where there's disagreement but i i don't think that the the entire of that the recovery work and the work of the recovery team is being done in a substandard way that's that's not the evidence that we're seeing within service i mean i i wouldn't i wouldn't claim for one second that all of the work done by the recovery team is is is below standard i think i think though i will beg to differ with you the the information and the evidence that i see is that more of it is below standard than you would probably want to have i mean i i absolutely hear what you say and i don't believe i don't believe it's all of those plans but the fact of the matter is that a sample audit identified only sixteen percent met good and outstanding criteria in july i just can't get away from that i really can't i guess we'll move on to next rachel please i do feel this is something that we'll also want to respond to outside this meeting because i don't think i can let that lie there is a distinction between a plan that delivers the content that is needed to make good provision for a child and a plan that is judged good or outstanding at audit and both of those things are separate from a plan which contains which fails to contain important information or which contains wrong information which a parent has challenged and you've described communication with yourself and with other members that might indicate any one of those things which isn't clear my assumption is that when members receive correspondence of this type that is referred into our complaints arrangements that you don't sit on them you do escalate them i'm sure that that's so and i recognize that many of you have at various times sent sent correspondence through to myself and others and so we will have a check on the numbers of those concerns raised against the number of plans that went through the recovery team because it's clearly important and we'll evaluate where there is a challenge which was caused by plans that did contain incorrect information or incomplete information and where this was a matter for disagreement because i sign off many of the items of correspondence that do pass through my office on this subject and frequently they are about disagreement not information that is incorrect or things that parents would like to see in the hcp about their child but which are not essential information for communicating to the provider about the child's educational needs and i understand the desire to paint a full and rounded picture but the purpose of the hcp is to secure the provision that the child needs so so um if you're in agreement chair we can provide back to this committee and information on that specifically because the volume that's gone through the recovery team versus the level of correspondence even though i absolutely respect the fact that members are distressed when they receive correspondence that suggests that the quality is poor but it feels important to have that balance no i think you're i think you're right about the balance but you know when we're when we see a statistic of 16 we have to say that that seems to indicate problem now you know if if the criteria you know aren't appropriate then the criteria for what's what's what constitutes good or outstanding probably needs to be changed because i think what you're suggesting is that 16 percent is misleading all i'm suggesting is that the criteria for being a good or an outstanding ehcp require more than simply um being what what's the language we use for something that sits below i'm in danger of going into officer judgments do you want to correct me julia this if i can and so just to it might be helpful to understand the audit um tool that we use which is one that's commonly used by other authorities but it looks at each individual section of the plan so to get good or outstanding across the board would be that every individual section has been judged to be good or outstanding and and as liz outlined we know that we have issues with certain sections but not the sections that outline the child's needs and therefore enable us to secure the provision so the three sections where we know that we need to improve quality and i think this is a really good example of this complex system are those sections that outline health provision which comes from the health advice advice from health professionals the section that outlines the social care provision which is the advice that comes from social and or care professionals and the section which describes the child's view so in terms of the the description of the needs and the description of the provision those sections are not one of those three so i think it's a good example of it's typically said you can you can you can write a bad plan if you've been given good advice for all those sections but you can't write a good plan unless all of the advice that you get that feeds into that is of good quality so i think what we recognize is there's further work to do right across the system in terms of all agencies continuing to improve the quality of the advice provided so that we can get that good or outstanding plans even better right across every single section i think it'll be interesting to to see the investigation you know as i say we we get we see the statistics we hear from residents one thing i should say is i know a lot of residents who aren't willing to put in a complaint i know a lot of residents who are unwilling to get into what they feel is simply going to be an other tussle so i think that the number of complaints we receive significantly on the unhappiness and dissatisfaction that is actually out there and and there are a number of residents with whom i have dealings who are not able to use the complaints process it is it's it's not something that comes easily to them and therefore they just don't do it but i think i think we should move on with the questions um i mean i have a next question but i think really you've heard enough from me so i'll hand over to bernie at this point um on the first page page 169 on the one two three four fifth paragraphs down starting the end-to-end review consisted um it basically states that there were 720 investigative beatings interviews and discussions now that seems to me the the the process took a very long time and um that seems to me an extraordinary number because normally in most um reviews the direction of travel and the understanding the problem would have emerged long before 720 investigative meetings were required um it does seem a large number and to me that explains why the process took so long and and the resulting changes um you know are that may happened or haven't yet happened um a result of the delays caused by this number of meetings can you explain why um the process was one involved that number of interactions and why it took so long um thank you so in terms of the number of 720 there weren't 720 individual meetings there were there were some groups where there were multiple people in one action group meeting for example so the information in the report seeks to show the scope of reach of groups that were involved in participating and they were a mixture of individual meetings and interviews and research research-based tasks and also larger meetings so we we haven't actually had 720 individual meetings but um this is an area that and as we've heard already this morning is very complex in terms of the range of different interdependencies and into the review so it was really important that we did make sure that we were reaching out to those to those groups to those right people and to participate in the end-to-end review including those areas that were not specifically in the scope to be changed as a result of the review but are important in terms of the way the send service operates but also areas where and i think we've said before we seek to work with to influence and to change alongside other areas as well so it was a combination of things it was the the scale and scope and wanting really being deliberately mindful to make sure that we were including all those people that were relevant and then the complexity then of where send sits within that system and staff engagement in this we've we saw this i think in in jeremy's report and thank you jeremy because i found your report really supportive so i appreciate it shows that we really do need to make sure that we're bringing our staff with us in terms of this change process we've got some astonishingly dedicated members of staff working in the send system and and we want to make sure that they're part of the the solution but also part of the review and so that we don't have staff feeling that change is being done to them but rather that they're involved in and part of and moving things forward positively and so hopefully that answers that question if i could just come back on that and yet already today there are three different things that have cropped up that rachel said that she would follow up because she was unaware of so and are given the state of oops given the state of given the sort of interaction or i did did anyone actually speak to head teachers about about this because um you know what happens in that process because it certainly i have to agree feeling that an awful lot of um i mean i am aware but do you understand i am aware that progress is being made um my problem is that in in a normal corporate environment some of this basic process stuff we'd be in serious trouble for if we didn't get that sorted at the beginning and and i sat i sat um through four meetings with the residents the the the the mother became mentally ill actually um and the father was desperate because they literally were talking into treacle they couldn't literally get and this is current and and we had four i i attended they insisted i attend every meeting with them because they needed someone to witness that they weren't that it was it was it was like they were speaking swahili to someone who doesn't speak swahili um and there were so many mistakes mischaracterizations um the parents the treatment of the parents were who who you know are highly academic um was extraordinary um i sat through the governor's meeting and the report back from the governor's meeting made me wonder if she had been mentally present in the meeting because it borne our relationship with any of the problems that have been outlined there was a surrey county council representative there by the way and um quite frankly it was impossible for them to speak to anyone other than this person who the sec person said said they were only there to take notes not to participate in the meeting sorry bernie is this is this directly in relation yes it is because they're like five different processes it was all to do with ehcp ehcp and what i'm saying is that given this 720 investigate investigative things that were done there was at least well i counted 15 process errors in the experience of this parent that represented the experience of eight other parents who by the way wouldn't come forward um and were banking on this particular case working and that they would get the spin-off from it and they were processed basic process errors that i would have thought your investigations would have uncovered so it it's it's not just how many meetings or interactions you have it's and my experience in several meetings i've had in relation to this is that the wrong people are at the table um you know they've got half the people they're blankly not aware of the case so um i hope that these investigations are with the right people because already kerry's mentioned a few things for instance that um apparently we were unaware of i think i think probably um we should probably leave that question now because i think i think we don't know exactly the circumstances of it so i think it'd be very difficult for you to respond to it because we're not quite sure exactly what the circumstances were and we can't really share the personal circumstances but but would you like to say something in response if i could just um clarify one thing so so absolutely we did involve schools and schools have absolutely been involved in the end-to-end review and we held some really informative sessions at the schools conference where we invited all schools were invited to participate we had a really broad participation in that group and part of the work that we're doing now which i think is going to address some of the issues we're talking around is i'm leading co-leading with a head teacher a task and finish group involving schools where the phase council leads have nominated members to join to look at how we collect the information from schools at the beginning of the process to make sure that we're getting the right information at the right time to support the right decisions being made and that we're not overburdening senko colleagues with requests so i in terms of specifically the point about schools being involved as as the chair said in terms of the other aspects i'm not sure i can answer but in terms of school I'm sorry to come back on this can i come back on this because if you can do it very briefly and this is only starting i don't understand surely this would be i i don't get how we're starting this now at the end of an 18-month review this is what i do this crawling space things that are affecting people's lives i i i'm rachel i just have to say that we are not starting this now and what is being described as a process of engagement over time with making change over time so we're not waiting 18 months before doing things as this process has unfolded we have been making those changes that we can in the service there are some which rely on structural change in the service which will take longer because they need things like an hr consultation and that's why the 18-month time frame has been placed over the completion of all of the elements but it's not the case that the service has simply been pursuing what you described as investigative beatings i think councilor muir but but this has been engagement with people who are either delivering the process or on the receiving end of the process over time to make change and it's that that that that takes takes time but it's absolutely not standing still i think we'll move on to our next question but i have to say that i also thought 700 720 meetings was extraordinary i mean i managed a process change for a multinational drug discovery process with less than half of 720 meetings so the number of meetings isn't correct rachel no they weren't meetings okay okay they weren't meetings what what what was the 720 that's actually in the report so there were there were meetings that took place and in the report it shows a number of participants in various meetings so it was it was the range of people involved in a number of different ways some were one-to-one some were group sessions and some were focus group meetings so there were individuals engaged as opposed to a number of people do you know that's incredibly reassuring you know because i mean as i say you know i managed a change process for drug delivery and we certainly didn't have anything like 720 meetings although i'm sure we had a few more than 720 people so that's that's reassuring sorry if it's in the text that they were about the 720 individuals then we're all going down a blind alleyway talking about meeting this is a 720 individuals into our interactions so that probably um that's probably the misunderstanding then interactions it's quite clear it says participants attendees individuals observed it's all about the number of people not the number of events okay my apologies then let's let's move on um rachel thank you chairman um thank you for clearing that um piece of that it was participation but on the participation we've heard from parent and carers um and none of them seem to be i mean they were vaguely aware that there was an internet review going on we can't find anybody that's actually taken part in it so i'd just like to be reassured that there were parents and carers as part of this this um process and also i mean are there any notes that we could be um seen so we can see what actually happened is it oh then i've missed it on the list possibly you could tell me what sort of percentage thank you yeah absolutely so um yes parents and carers were involved we had parents and carers and who had individual user research meetings with our with our researcher we we have family voice sorry who are in our ehcp focus group which is a monthly meeting we attended the family voice sorry event specifically to um to be there to answer questions and offer the opportunity for parents to speak to us in relation to the review and we also have regular meetings with family voice sorry um in terms of sharing the notes of the meetings it's a yes and no answer without meaning to be difficult i absolutely am happy to share after this the findings from the digital design team but part of the agreement between researcher and participant is the confidentiality of information and so the individual notes from those one-to-one meetings are not available to be shared but the learnings and notes and findings from them plus the anonymized participation are so we can make sure those are shared there's a there's a link to the um digital design team and discovery report that we can share sorry i have bernice has just shown me i've got to admit sticking on a dark blue background with tiny white papers wouldn't have helped um me pick a bit up that well but um it was definitely there so thank you so if there were specific notes that we like to look at they are available thank you very much bob thank you uh chair uh question four uh in our task and finish group the review of parents and carers they they highlighted that co-production with parents is not a priority for the service how is this being remedied and how is the process being simplified um thank you um and it's really disappointing um that that families continue to feel that co-production is not a priority because it absolutely is a priority of service but it's also an area we recognize that we have improvement work to do um and there was a comment earlier on in the presentation around case officers and the administrative work that case officers are doing which is why one of the aspects of the review is seeking to make better use of technology to undertake some of the administrative tasks that case officers are doing in order to create more capacity for earlier and more effective co-production meetings with families so it's our intention and this is um this this will be post reshuffle and reshaping of our of our team to have co-production meetings in advance of the panel discussion and decisions about whether or not to assess a child or young person for an ehcp and then again in advance of the panel meeting where the decision is made about whether or not to issue an ehcp and we're hoping that this is going to be supportive and positive in a number of ways we obviously want to make sure that families feel engaged in the process that's that's enormously important we want to make sure that that you don't hear from families that are telling you that something's missing or that there's an error that they haven't been able to have corrected because we can have those discussions in advance but we also want to be able to create a space where we can have those discussions around and some of the needs that your child absolutely has you know we recognize that your child has needs we would expect to be met under ordinarily available provision where an ehcp would not be needed but actually to have that conversation in a meeting with parents and carers in order to enable a discussion and questions from parents about what that means and so we would hope that that would reduce then the number of concerns that come in afterwards which are really questions about why why was this the answer and this is this is not what i i think it should have been because that discussion will have been had so so absolutely there's a plan in place and we're looking at how we can as i said make use of technology to reduce some of the administrative burden on the case officers in order to create the capacity and for those discussions to have to happen in in all instances thank you very much in paragraphs 27 and 28 you describe how parts of the widest team don't have confidence in the process so i think that's understandable but i think what we what we were getting from parents and carers um and indeed from case officers they felt excluded from the scheme but particularly parents and carers and i know that from personal experience um so it wasn't surprising what they said they felt that their view wasn't expressed in in that long 20-week process uh as did case officers so i think it's really important to include them as well maybe i've missed it but i couldn't see the parents and carers in relation to this process included in the report and i think they should be i'll just say what one thing the 20-week process when you very kindly described it to the task and finish group and it went on and on and on along the wall it it rather reminded me of the governmental processes described in little dorrit and if anyone hasn't read it please do because it describes a lot of what happens i don't mean in this department necessarily but but but in governmental processes i have read little dorrits and i was in that meeting um so in terms of parents and carer involvement i said we're having a task and finish group with schools to look at the application process at the beginning we're doing the same involving parents and carers and also all other advice givers so that we can really work together and initially to address their separate and individual needs and then bringing them together so that we can develop an agreed process which will be supportive then of the technology use and enable those meetings to happen in a really productive way so i completely agree and we absolutely are doing that involving our colleagues in family voice sorry to make sure that we've got a good parental representation in that group and enabling them to reach out to parents and carers we're hoping that those meetings will be established in october november the process needs to be in place in advance of the new school year in terms of the applications because we need to make sure that we're giving enough time to work with our colleagues in schools around supporting any changing process to do that in the middle of a school year and would be potentially quite disruptive to to the process as it is so we're doing that mindful of of that of that school year but bringing everybody with us and and yes we're also looking to take out some of those cul-de-sacs and loops in that process that we described so that we can make it as as straightforward as possible but also produce guidance that explains your route through it because even if we've got complicated processes that we need to undertake that doesn't mean it should feel complicated for a family they should understand that this is the route that they will take through and here's where we'll we'll meet with you and here's where the support is if you need support through that process so i can i completely hear and i understand your reference so thank you i think i'm very grateful for the answer liz time's end thank you um on um page 174 of the report there's a list of um the um changes that have already been made and in servicing communications and and there's a very long list there of sort of some internal um changes that have have taken place and um i note within the report that um you know that you you really want to create a system that is you know a key sort of person-centered system for parents um and families and providers as well and we have heard you know today unfortunately you know that communication is still not there and that you know we've heard from obviously from kerry from school perspective and some some evidence from counselors as well on on people that are contacting us so that so there's still a lot of work to do um so how have you um how does this communication work with making sure that parents and carers are the focus of um of this communications and that they're given priority as well within this process um you know obviously it's really good to have internal meetings and internal changes as well but the priority on on the communication between those parents and carers because there's still a significant number of complaints coming through i think it's about 36 percent so you know how how within that when you look at that it does look very introspective and i'm sure there is um you know external work going on so so how is that being captured and monitored as well thank you i think you'll be sick of my voice by the end of this it's me again um so absolutely it is a core focus of what we're doing you're absolutely right and we want our system to be person-centered it's about people it's about children and young people having their needs met and it's about all of us working together families schools settings professionals send everybody working together for that to happen one of the core focuses across not just send but all of our area is our relational working practice and we've been having significant focus on training in relation to relational practice and how we embed that in our day-to-day communications with families so i i understand what you're saying about the report it looks at processes and but those processes are supported then by the way we expect them to be implemented in a person-centered way and we have ep colleagues who already work with us who are excellent at person-centered approaches and will be furthering the training that we've been receiving and looking at how we can we can further embed that in in the way that we're operating we're looking to create more opportunities for face-to-face meetings so part of the work we're doing around reshaping our team is looking at increasing the time that case officers spend physically working in schools so that we can better develop relationships with sencos but also if there is a tricky meeting that needs to happen you know there's a family that needs some support actually let's try and arrange that at the school where they're comfortable where we know they they regularly go to with school staff with staff from sen together so having those meetings collaboratively and working together to resolve issues and the other aspect is not being defensive when when somebody's upset because when you and i think we any of us who are parents in this room will feel this but when you're talking about your own child you are not being objective about about it because you're not supposed to be because it's your child and your child is the most important thing to you and making sure their needs are met are the most important thing to you and that's also our role in corporate parenting as well and so we need we need to really develop the way we listen and listen beyond the upset and listen beyond the the difficulties in communicating how somebody's feeling to actually then be able to work together and work with families on solutions and ways that we can support them moving forward so in terms of that that not being in the report the report does tend to focus on the process changes within send the systems within send but across our whole service there is a huge priority around relational working and that is absolutely at the center of everything that we're doing moving forward thanks miss we have a few more questions and i'm very conscious that we're over running so i'd like to get those questions in pretty quickly um the next question's from rebecca thank you chair um what feedback have you canvassed on the changes made so far as a result of the end-to-end review um which groups and organizations have you approached and what has the feedback been please um thank you um so we have been having um regular meetings with our ehcp focus group throughout the end-to-end review the ehcp focus group has colleagues from schools from health from social care from third sector organizations from family voice sorry and we've been regularly canvassing responses to elements of change so it was fantastic to hear kerry telling us that she has felt the improvement in relation to communication with the individual case officer and it was really it was lovely to hear that in this meeting but for me that wasn't a surprise because that's what we've been hearing in the feedback we've been receiving as the reviews been ongoing so we have been regularly taking that feedback we also look at trends in relation to complaints data that comes in to see if we're if we're noticing that where we think improvements are making that that that also appears to be following through in that data and we also have an annual survey that we undertake with parents and carers which is scheduled for um now actually um so some of the questions in that are going to give us some really useful information about whether the impact of what we're doing is starting to be felt also out with families and the reason that we we appreciate that that's probably going to be the area where it takes the longest for us to hear those feedbacks is because families will carry with them the experience that they've had understandably carry with them the experiences that they've had and so we need to be really mindful when we're looking at the changes and the impact of changes is making sure that we're asking about when did something happen is that is that something that's recent or is that something that's happened previously and is that supporting us in understanding the improvements in terms of internal communications and working within our team and we have a monthly assistant director drop-in session which enables us to gather feedback from not just send but other services connected to send and we also have similar meetings across our health and social care colleagues as well so that we're able to take that internal feedback so we have been hearing the responses as we've gone on but as i said we've got surveys and other elements to go out as well obviously there's the data as well so in terms of the performance of the send team against statutory standards but i think we we've covered that earlier and i guess are you hearing that that people feel that this process has been going on since may 23 has actually delivered progress or is that what you're hearing that that people are more confident now on the whole yes we obviously we're still hearing about areas that we know still require development and the areas that we're still working on and that's not that's not surprising and it's areas that we are you know we're aware that we we still have work to do but yes and what we've been receiving in terms of feedback is a recognition that there is a genuine direction of change so although there are some elements that haven't completely resulted in everybody receiving that that better outcome that better service there is that that recognition that that we are moving in positive directions and that the changes we've embedded are having a positive impact so far thank you just quickly where possible is that feedback available for us to see um i think we i think what miss was doing was describing kind of a number of different sources of information so i'm not sure it's it's currently in a form that's easy to share but certainly we could look at doing that and i think the results of the survey um which um will be going out this term would be really useful to share with secretary because obviously that's um looking at um uh you know a large and representative uh number of parents views so that would be really important information to share i think if you could do that that would be great including the other feedback as well next question to jeremy and then jonathan and then we will break for lunch getting dry okay sorry can i go ahead um i've been looking at appendix three and you've got the um requests beg your pardon who's there sorry am i me or you thank you very much i've looked if you look at appendix three you've got the ehe request for assessment are there records somewhere i've looked at the compendium just now and i can't find other records of the no to assess a notable issue by month compared uh for the same of applications you know going back to 21 22 and 22 23 are there records being kept yes so um so uh we so the the decision around yes to assess or no to assess is made by the elspar currently and elsewhere i've been mentioned in this meeting um and we did a piece of work um approximately 18 months ago to look at our decision that we were really robust and consistent in our decision making at that point um and we um so we did a piece of work to uh review to look at the decision making we reviewed and updated our guidance which was republished um and we also uh launched our ordinary available provision guidance at the same time so that we were really clear so um we uh prior to that our um percentages were um our percentage of notes were much lower than national and they were brought in line with national we're now much more confident that those percentages are being applied consistently and i think that um so we can provide information i would suggest that we provide it sort of um across a whole year while the requests come in in a cyclical way with school terms across the year but we can look at okay so we can have that yes thank you i wanted to make a couple of comments on follow-up to what's been said already and i've got one particular question um on the comparison of complaints to the quality of the audits i wonder if that may be more about trends and complaints rather than absolute numbers because in the same way as you wouldn't expect the number of complaints that sorry residents have to correlate the number of potholes that exist you'd expect the number of polls to be greater generally not everyone will write a letter but many more people will have concerns i wonder if it's possible if you're looking at that in more detail to compare um the benchmarks to other similar audits done by other councils to see whether 16 percent is indeed not good or whether it is good in some way shape or form and the particular point i wanted to make was about the process and changes which may or may not have been related to the process which happened already so while this meeting was taking place i had a an email from a resident saying that they and others who are parents of of send children had a surprise email on the 12th of august saying that their deadline to name the send provision was by the 12th of september this year second week of term rather than in october as previous years and i wondered if there have been any any feedback from parents and carers to your ehcp review process on that the reasons for that and whether that this is a one-off or a thing to do going forward i mean if if you've got sends children then i would think second week of term sounds like a bit of a strip an added stress to name your school for the next year by that data there might be a reason for it and my third and final point was at the very start of this discussion kerry came up with four suggestions of what we should make from the school's perspective and i just wanted to make sure that they were either picked up in action points or recommendations thank you sorry rachel the service may want to say more about this but um i will say that we um don't have a deadline for parents expressing a preference in relation to key stage transfer there are nationally set deadlines for submitting an admissions application in relation to the normal admissions round and those are firm deadlines if you don't meet those deadlines uh then you will not be allocated to school place and you must express a preference or you will not be allocated to school place for key stage transfer we're working with uh children who have an education health and care plan in place who will have had an annual review in year five and who are asked to express a preference if they have one for the school that they will attend um so what has been brought forward this year was the letter that went out to parents giving them a month to let us know what their preference was if they had one and that was a target date to receive them back so that we can spend more time in consultation with schools and ensure we reach the deadline there is a deadline in the key stage transfer process which is issuing the information about the schools to parents by the 15th of february and or if they're post 16 students by the end of march and so the letter went out to parents earlier and therefore that did bring they had a month to express that preference but we will continue to have consultations with schools if parents express a preference after that point in time because we have to consult on schools for children with the hcp's all throughout the year at any point in time that they that they need a school place um so i want to be really clear that it's not a deadline not a statutory deadline in the process i can't say this more clearly um in terms of the response to that we tested this uh with our contact center um and uh in the uh first week of the school term which is our absolute high point of contacts into the contact center around education there were just under 2 000 contacts in on the subjects of the education hotline and the else bar there were 112 contacts in relation to the key stage transfer process and of those there were 15 uh for uh that related to that letter and so that gives you the scale and i can't say what the nature of that contact was so it might well have been a response to that that letter but insofar as that letter was the subject of calls in or expressions of a view or any kind of contact we had 15 in that week when there were 2 000 contacts broadly across the education and else bar thank you for that clarification rich i'm sorry jennifer i need to move on sorry it was very briefly comparing 15 to the 2000 doesn't seem the fair comparison to make i would think the fair comparison to make would be the number of people who receive letters against the number of complaints or contacts received on it and my question really was was more of a process question we've made a change the change asked people to respond within two weeks at the start of term and the letter implies that we would like replies within a month that looks like it puts additional pressure on parents with special needs it might help us get information earlier but sending a letter in the middle of the school holidays when people may be on holiday they return from holiday they may feel they have two weeks to respond if a letter is received by a school parent who doesn't go on holiday in school term time because you get fined for that they would have four weeks to respond if we consult the public during the school holiday we extend the public consultation periods to us to reflect that i think if we contact school parents in the middle of the holidays we should be as considerate for parents in this kind of way as we are as when we may be consulting them on things like planning applications so maybe consult them earlier but i really think a deadline a week into the school term on a letter sent on 12th of august may be misplaced and maybe it would be good if you could share those 15 contact center responses and see whether you know after making that change that is an appropriate change and one that's supported by parents or not i don't think the comparison to 2000 calls into the call center is really fair and an appropriate comparison to make i'm sorry okay thank you jonathan i think i think you've made the point i mean it i think it definitely needs reconsidering may i please make reference to the number of children in the key stage transfer process if that is a fairer comparison which is three thousand thank you rachel i think we have we really do have two last questions but you know this has been a topic that counselors feel very very engaged in so i would like to ask john to ask his question i will then ask ashley and then we will absolutely close the session with our recommendations thank you very much indeed um i suppose the role of scrutiny in two words is to be a critical friend i'm afraid you know there's been a lot of if i may say so criticism i'm going to be a little bit more friendly because i think the presentation and the answers that liz julia and rachel have given fill me with a degree of confidence and particularly as carrie has said i'm not going to put words in her mouth that she has seen and her school has seen um demonstrable improvement even though there's a long way to go and i think that needs to be recognized and certainly i recognize it the second point i'd make and it was the one i was going to raise right at the beginning until uh the chair and i said take your time it was actually the question that uh fiona uh asked you i'm not going to go into any detail because that did take some time but i would like to make this point when the meaning is that the right word i think these days of that improvement in quantity of ehcp's is some then how somehow connected to a deterioration in quality which has been you know not just here but elsewhere and i think if i may say so that the service was absolutely right rachel too and um julia i think it was to in a sense push back on that and i think it was really important because we don't want that mean to become an established reality now as far as i can remember recall rachel has said and i think this is the right way forward rather than discussing it further is that there are a qualitative mechanism an objective mechanism to ascertain whether the quality of the recovery ehcp's is what we want them to be or as fiona had said in you know the sample that it has deteriorated and i think that form some form of if you like objective criteria to measure the quality of ehcp's is fundamental yes of course we absolutely accept the parents who are unhappy and that's not to dismiss their views at all but we do need to have if it as far as we can to have some objective measurement that in fact i mean the ideal outcome so i will stop on this point because i've got a softball question afterwards is that the quantity the 70 percent we're now achieving is also accompanied by an increase in quality that's what we're all aiming for but we need some form of objective assessment as to whether that ambition is being made and i think rachel has promised it my question and it's a kind of softball but it's not entirely softball and it relates frankly to our first discussion when reading the paper again whilst we were talking i just referred to the uh final paragraph on the summary on page one and i won't quote the entire paragraph but i will quote this because it was the topic of some conversation um at uh jeremy's report when it goes central snd leadership team meetings with a single assistant director and service manager leading change and setting priority and the enhancement of send staffing from 81 to 126 full-time equivalent staff to reduce active case holding first question am i is this we're talking like for like or is this a different 81 a different 126 if it is uh pat should explain but it is the same 81 to 126 that seems to me a kind of commitment semi-commitment at least that the recommendations of the task group that indeed numbers do increase from 81 to about 126 is high on your priority is it so if if i can say that um increasing uh staff capacity to improve uh processes practice outcomes and experiences uh would all always be high on my priority list but i recognize the requirement to balance the budget in children families and lifelong learning and balance the budget as a council and so we'll need to make all proposals about staffing expansion or contraction in the light of that i know that probably sounds like a bit of a hedging answer but it's as candid as i can be i don't know if liz wants to add anything about those numbers specifically um yeah so the you are correct the 81 represents our substantive current case officers who are in where there are full-time permanent roles the addition up to 126 are the additional officers that have been taken on um in response to the recovery work that we need to undertake so the funding for that for that that additional capacity is um from the um the money that was allocated to the service in order um to resolve the backlogged issues so that that is not currently substantive changes to the staffing numbers and they're part of the current recovery funding thanks john at the very last question to ashley uh thank you chair i'm aware of time i'll keep it quick um paragraph 18 of the report states that the secondary aim of the end-to-end review is to look into the effective effectiveness of annual reviews of ehcp's but i can't see any data or very much comment at all about annual reviews um their timeliness you know are they being done on time how many are being missed uh you know it's a vital part of the process to review to to make reviews of ehcp's as children develop through their different stages um i can tell you from the performance statistics that um the the last information that we have that we'll look at later states that 55 percent of annual reviews were conducted on time in july liz would you like to yeah absolutely so um in july 2023 and the records on our systems showed that only 25 of our annual reviews had been completed on time and that's a combination of issues with reporting but also the completion of reviews we've been working on recovering that position and the data that i looked at yesterday which i know is slightly different to the data for this meeting shows that we're currently operating at 65 timeliness in terms of annual reviews and that percentage is increasing and we've got work ongoing at the moment in order to to resolve that number and we're committed to we're committed to that number significantly improving as we move forward and absolutely annual reviews are central to the work of the end-to-end review and one of the things that we're looking at again is is the processes around how we gather the information for annual reviews and how we make sure the right people are involved do we have the right people attending the right meetings in relation to those annual review processes and then what actually happens in in the background to make sure they're recorded because a significant part of our issue was around accurate recording on our systems and we've been doing a lot of work that is is not necessarily going to be something that anyone outside of the service would notice other than our reported numbers around use of our internal systems so that we genuinely do have that one one view of the child a single view of the child that is accurate and up to date in the system some of that's not so exciting to report on though no i mean i i have to say i think there is a question over the quality and the timeliness of those annual reviews um i think i think we we probably don't have enough information but apocryphally i hear a lot of parents queer and schools queering the quality of the annual reviews so it's good that timeliness has improved i hope the quality of those annual reviews is commensurate um i think i'm really sorry i think we need to i think we need to close actually i mean i would just say you know i don't think we know anything about the we don't have any data on the quality of annual reviews apart from the apocryphal information sorry i know you want to draw this to a close i wonder if i could just um say a few concluding words if that would be all right i i think this has been both this item and the previous one actually has been an incredibly useful and informative discussion certainly for me and um and i just go back to what i said beginning up i think everybody knows there's still loads to be done in particular about the end-to-end review i did just want to summarize by saying at the beginning chairman you you you were saying that a lot of this work was very introspective and and i think you know it has to be almost by definition because it is an internal review of our processes it's an important and i think we've all seen from what we've heard what we've all understand from what we've heard that it is necessary because we need to create better processes we need to create a better working environment a better working conditions and better working practices because that will be better for children and their families this is going to be work about relationships i know we talk about relationships a lot but it is about relationships it is ultimately about better relationships with parents and children but it's also about better relationships with our crucial send system partners not least relationships with our schools where so much of this work takes place but not just schools also colleges and also our early year settings and critically with our multi-professional partners in the health system and i think it is going to be a long journey it's taken time to get we are to where we are now and it is still going to be quite a long journey to get to where we want to be not least because organizational practice and cultural change takes a bit of time but also a long journey because parents families and counselors never forget about experience and it takes time to win over people who have a poor opinion of our services i think you've heard today from the leadership from liz from julia and from rachel that there is commitment and there is determination to get this right and there is capital there is financial investment behind it that's really what that 50 million pounds over the three over three years is about it's wide ranging it's multifaceted and multifaceted because the sen system as i think bob said is incredibly complex and it's highly regulated and it's a statutory framework and you know all this is under the watchful eye of the dfe it's under the watchful eye of the leader and the cabinet this committee and ultimately ofsted cqc but actually also under the watchful eye of parents and carers and while all this is going on we also have the promise maybe something on the horizon that there will be a systems change because one thing we do know and i know rachel referred to it and i would encourage you to read it if you have time this that isos report which is prepared by the lga and the counter councils network together is really insightful of this of the changes to the system that we need because at the end of the day this is a send a national sense system that really doesn't work very well it doesn't work very well for councils like this it doesn't work very well for schools and it really doesn't work very well for children and families it's placing us all in a really unfortunate and very adversarial position when what we all really need to do is work in the very best way together for children and families and we need as a council as this local authority we absolutely need to do what we can do the very best we can because there is children and their families deserve that from us thank you claire i think that was very well said um i just just summing up myself um i think i would what i would say is that in terms of the recovery plan and the end-to-end review it's been going since may 23 um i would say that we are seeing benefits from it you know we've we've heard some of them um i take the point about change being complex organization just complex we have a very difficult national background i think what i would say at the end of it is that it is moving at a snail's pace which suggests to me that it's not although i absolutely believe it's well intentioned i absolutely believe that i really think the pace needs to pick up you know i'm i'm sure we're probably doing the right things but those things aren't coming through as quickly as i think we need them to come through in order to instill confidence that we really do have a grip of this because it doesn't feel that we do have the grip of it and increasing the pace seeing more results will provide confidence that we really are getting to grips with those things that are within our control because i absolutely agree claire there is a need for a wholesale change at the national level but hey we need to work at pace it doesn't feel like it although i absolutely understand that there are very very well-intentioned actions happening i think we now need to look at the recommendations please what i was going to suggest was that we take these recommendations if everyone is is comfortable with them that we append to these recommendations and the recommendations that kerry has identified and we reconsider we reconsider our own recommendations alongside the recommendations that kerry has suggested and we look at them as a bundle is is that acceptable that we we we come back to everyone and ask for their view of whether what we are proposing is an acceptable set of recommendations is everyone comfortable okay right i will bring this particular session thank you all um both officers and members for your engagement in this exercise um we will reconvene at 13 45 um and thank you once again for your contributions for your patience thank you and potentially online as well um i'd like to restart our session which we ended up about 13 15 um this afternoon um we have one substantive report and some other items but we will start first of all with a report on children not in school it's item number eight on the agenda and pages 193 to 216 in the agenda pack and before i introduce the witnesses um i'd just like to make some comments on the report the report provides a great deal of information but it also presents um to my mind a fragmented and rather unsatisfactory picture perhaps because there is quite what appears to be quite a vague legislative framework so while the local authority has a responsibility for ensuring that children receive an efficient education suitable to a child's age ability and aptitude and to any special educational needs he or she may have a number of agencies are involved in ensuring that this happens from our alternative provision session in april we are aware of how unsatisfactory alternative provision can be although education in an alternative provision academy appears to work well for many children so of a school population of around um 174 000 in surrey around 700 7165 or four percent of children and young people are not in school the level of persistent absence amongst children with ehcps is at 35 percent in july as reported in july and for those with sen provision in july it was 27 and rising and this provides another dimension of the send picture and it is very concerning i wonder how many of these children are are persistently absent because they don't have an appropriate school place so i would like to ask the witnesses who have not already introduced themselves to do so now and once we've done that i will ask claire as the cabinet member if she would like to introduce the report so sandra kelly over to you santa morrison i'm assistant director for inclusion and additional needs for and responsible for the southeast quadrant kelly lancashire and i'm the education and inclusion service manager for the southeast quadrant thank you both and welcome claire can i hand over to you for a few words yes thank you very much chairman and it will be very few words um this is a comprehensive report looking at children who for whatever reasons are not in a full-time education at school college where um at what school or college and members will have read the report and see there are very many different categories um for and and reasons for this obviously we know that um it is widely accepted that for a child being at school is a really protective factor strong families good schools are really important protective factors for children and so when children are not at school i think it's right that we're concerned not only are they missing um an education provision but also there are really there can be significant safeguarding concerns when children are not at school and we don't necessarily know where they are so when i have when i was um pre-reading this report before it came to you one of the things that was on my mind was it is important that we bring out as a message here not only what is happening for these children in terms of education provision but also what are the safeguarding implications for children when they are not in a full-time school place and i hope that that message is coming through this report as well as um the education side of it i'm very grateful to sandra and for kelly who are here and i know the committee will have questions so i'm happy to uh to embark on those thank you chairman oh claire you can absolutely guarantee that we have questions but your point on safeguarding is is absolutely on the on the ball because you know it was something that we worried about in terms of um not not alternative provision academies but alternative provision you know academies as i said in the introduction they seem that seems to work quite well potentially very well for pupils but the other alternative provision seems to be a bit of a lottery um okay so the first question is with rebecca thank you so for each category of absence identified in the table on page 207 what are the comparable statistics for our statistical and geographical neighbors um so what we what we um did following uh that question that key line of inquiry was to compare our rates of absence or not in school with with national so in terms of children that are permanently excluded even though our figures are rising and it's a national issue we are lower than national for children missing education we have a very small number of children in surrey that have no provision um we are lower than national for those that have been tracked you know in the report we talked about children who might have moved into the borough and they seek in the place we track them for 28 days and if they're not in school we move them over into cme we don't have comparable data for that because that's not something that every single local authority does um in terms of children who um have their needs met through an alternative package um those that are severely absent from school are lower we're lower than average than national those who electively home educate even though our figures are rising we're about the same nationally as other local authorities children are medically unfit and those who are on part-time provision is not a national statistic that's collected so we might need to raise that at our southeast region and ask our authorities if they would be willing to share data with us and we might be able to get back to you at a later damage um in terms of children accessing alternative provision as council davison alluded to we're higher than national not by much but we are just slightly in comparison to other local authorities and in terms of children accessing alternative provision that's commissioned by schools so they're on the role of a school they might not be attending full-time but the school has made other arrangements of them we're lower than national so we so for the majority of the data that you in the chart we are lower than national other than the use of um commissioned alternative provision thank you can i just follow along from that and and ask is it possible to have i mean how difficult it would it be for you to get data from our statistical and geographic neighbors if it's not if it's not published is it something you would have to ask them for sorry um we're part of the southeast regional group and we would just ask our key contacts in those other groups if they would if they would be willing to share their data with us if you would be willing to do that then i think we would be really interested to understand i mean i think it's it's good it's good to hear that we are performing well in terms of nationally but actually i would expect sorry to be performing rather better maybe than nationally but you know it may be that our geographic and statistical neighbors you know are in exactly the same position as us so that would be interesting to understand i'm sorry i didn't make it clear where i'm saying we're lower than national that means our performance is better than the national picture sorry yeah and i think we can see it and i that's reassuring to know yeah but it would be interesting to know what our what our region what our regional neighbors are are doing sorry next question was with jonathan thank you i'm going to continue on the theme of numbers um so i mean on on those numbers that rebecca has requested i'd be particularly interested to see what the the ap commissioned by schools commissioned by us and how those numbers compares the overall levels of missing children as ratios are for us compared to other authorities i think having that comparison will really help us to understand the numbers better as outsiders otherwise their their numbers on a page but without any comparison without any benchmarking it's really quite hard to for me to look at them is that oh is that number too high is that number too low um but but just going on from there maybe could you just test out for us you know what is the criteria that defines someone severely absent from school so should we be concerned that there's 2287 sorry children severely absent from school again is is that back to the question is that normal is that okay um and and this report you know might raise headlines in newspapers but unless we benchmark ourselves to others in these kinds of reports we might set hairs running unnecessarily and and then so you know how does this compare really and then particularly of those who are missing school um and those or severely missing education and are those who are choosing to home educate how many of those are on the waiting list for mindworks and how many have um special educational needs either with it with or or not with an ehcp and again some indication as to whether that is in line with or not in line with others and if you're able to share data after the meeting if you don't have it now that'd be really helpful because i think if we're to understand and scrutinize something it's really good to understand the numbers first otherwise it's hard to progress beyond the numbers and then wrestle with the idea is is it good enough and from what what should we do better in questions like that thank you i'll respond to the questions you raised counselor about ap and then hand over to kelly to talk about the absence so in terms of um commissioned alternative provision that we commission as a local authority we are definitely higher than national not by much by 0.07 percent but we do use alternative provision more than than the national average in terms of ap commissioned by schools our schools use alternative provision at a lower rate than the national rate and we that's the data that i will ask the regions colleagues in that southeast region if they can so going back to your question about severe absence and the criteria for that and so the criteria for a child being classified as severely absent from school would be that they are missing 50 on more of their time in school so of their education and any child that is severe absent from school would be a concern to us and we would be aware of those children and monitoring their attendance and their absence from school with those directly with those schools that they're on roll out um we know that that group of children are more vulnerable to um exploitation and other risk factors as well um hence our robust and regular monitoring of this group of children um we we do have the data so the positive thing is we do have the data we know who these group of children are um and we're able to have those robust conversations with schools about what procedures what they've got in place for those children and how they're supporting those children to return to full-time education or indeed if they do need something alternative to to kind of make those inquiries with us as the local authority um we do know that some children who are severely absent do have very genuine medical conditions that means that they're not able to attend school regularly or even in some cases at all because they are very very poorly children and ultimately it's a very small proportion of our population so 1.3 percent of our total population of children are severely absent from school which is as Sandra's already mentioned previously better than our national benchmark and in terms of the southeast region we're actually better than the southeast region as well in terms of that data you asked the question as well about mindworks we don't have the data around um children that are on waiting lists for mindworks okay so so the the second part was very much looking at mind work special needs and ehgps to see you know are those to try to understand you know a little bit as to why children in the surrey might be absent from school or choosing to home educate so we heard earlier on from the head of carrington that the percentage of of a school attender but that was in that was special educational needs it'd be really good to see how that compares to those who are absent from school and and you know mindworks if we know who those are on what mindworks dating list or or who those are that are choosing to a home educate as opposed to be just being severely absent to know whether they have ehgps or or scn i think would be really useful and mindworks i think was just indicative of of those that maybe aren't quite registered to have either of those so in terms of children that elect to home educate there is work done when they first come off the role of the school in terms of de-registration activity and to understand and the profile of that child and and what the parents intentions are and as part of that work we would be highlighting um cases where parents are withdrawing due to unmet or unidentified need and we would try and facilitate um with the school whether or not there is a way we can keep that child in school and make sure that appropriate reasonable adjustments are being made for that child um we would also be identifying very quickly whether a child because we've got the data around the children whether a child has an ehcp or whether they've got any sort of scn need and obviously working with internally with our colleagues in um scn to look at whether or not the parents are able to meet the needs identified in the statement if they do wish to continue to home educate so we do have some we do have some data we can share now yesterday of our cohort of ehe children of 2 185 this is from yesterday's data 146 of that group had a plan and 602 were at send support and in terms of children who were severely absent the figure is slightly different because it's updated itself on the system of a cohort of two seven eight three seven hundred and twenty three had a plan and four hundred and twenty nine were at send support so we can share this um after the need sorry could you just say those last set of numbers again and what was the the first thing what was the two one eight five actually one eight five is the number of children you were relatively home educated right okay that was the and of that group 146 have a plan and 602 and then the second one was two seven eight three and then i missed the last number sorry of that group 723 had have a plan right and 429 are at send support okay and i guess this the second part of my plan question which may maybe do or don't have an answer to is how does those do those ratios if you like or how do those numbers compare to other authorities elsewhere so in looking at those numbers here today you can inform us as to whether you think those numbers are good or bad we know that overall we we are comparable with national data but we'll ask our colleagues in the region and and look at what percentage of yeah so do you have any data that for us today where we can see the numbers of you don't okay that's why i'm just saying if you do that that's why we asked it as an advanced question because if you're able to find the answers that can help us inform our discussion thank you thanks claire i actually i had a i was going to ask sundra one further detail on this um of those who are severely absent who have a plan can you say do you have the information there in front of you how many of those children are already in specialist provision and how many of those are in mainstream because um i i feel anecdotally that it's quite shocking how many of those are in specialist provision i think i think it's a really good point especially since it's such a large a large proportion of the 2783 yeah that would be that would be useful to know um before i go on to bob um i mean you've raised a good point claire and i think it'd be useful to know i mean is it are you able to answer that sandra now or is that something you will also take away you know how many of them are are you know severely absent from a special school as opposed to severely absent from a mainstream and that would be great thank you um do you do you have any sense and i don't know whether you collect this information or not but you know we do have these high percentages of children with sen support and with ehcp's severely absent do you know why that is do you because i don't think it's covered in the report do you have a feel for why that those cohorts of children are so severely absent do you have a sense of it based on your experience even if you don't have any documentary evidence so we we know that um our numbers of children who are electrically home educated for reason of increase since the pandemic and when we look at the reasons if on page 211 there's the little pie chart that shows you the reasons why parents choose to selectively home educate and the biggest the two biggest categories are one parents saying it's their choice that's what they want to do the second largest category is they they're dissatisfied they don't they don't necessarily get the school of their choice and whilst they're waiting they will elect to electively home educate rather than sending their child to to another school um sometimes it's because of a relational issue between the school and the parent and then we will try and intervene and support the child back into school but the main two reasons are because they're choosing to do that and it and it and we've seen an increase in that as a a parent replacement that they prefer with the next group yeah i mean i you're right i did read that in the report and it's useful to have a reminder it was about those children who are severely absent you know do you even if you don't have the documentary evidence do you have a feel for why that might be the case or maybe um patricia would you like to start sandra maybe patricia can come in again since the um covid or the pandemic whichever one we're calling it we've seen an increase in anxiety amongst young people and we've seen in we we now have the term emotionally based school non-attendance and we've seen an increase in the number of children who are too anxious or don't want to go to school um or can only cope with schooling in small doses so we're working with our schools to develop flexible teaching approaches and the more successful schools have alternative arrangements where children might be able to door say hello to their class teacher get some work go back some children are able to spend maybe an hour in school each day and then they they can't cope or they become distressed we're seeing those levels of absence and anxiety linked to children and young people in neurodiverse so we've um i hope we are looking at how our mainstream schools can provide a sense of belonging to children in neurodiverse and have developed some principles that will support those young children with high levels of anxiety so i'm just they can't cope with being in a school environment um tricia you were going to sorry oh um can i let tricia come in first and then can i come to you please okay and then i've got bob and then bernie and then rachel oh thank you fiona um i chair the encouraging school attendance group which is a multi-agency group and um and certainly the feedback that we get from our our school representatives particularly for younger children um who are neurodivergent is about the emotional anxiety um and actually the parent being able to say well actually my child did much better at home during during the pandemic um and so you know they're going back in school is far too problematic they're too anxious um noise levels is too difficult so that was i mean sandra has actually now covered that off i was just going to interject with that and also obviously adolescents who you know don't necessarily want to go to school and their parents aren't necessarily prepared to push them and so we get persistent absence there as well it's really it's really sad actually to think that's what's happened to so many of our children um bob you wanted to come in uh yeah thank you very much um i want to say first i think there's a very helpful report i've certainly learned a lot from it and i think i'm very pleased that you uh chose to explain the very large number of acronyms in it as well no i think it has been very useful and shows us the scale of the problem and the diversity of the problem and i think the problem in a sense is that many of these uh statistics are really personal tragedies for the children involved and i'm sure i don't need to tell you that and never achieve their potential i'll just make one point for my question in the last session about the cn i i made the point that you know happy children will learn and um that's the case with the cases i cited then and where they're now happy now learning and that that must be the case with some of these uh uh the people we're talking about here and i'm sure as you've indicated there's an overlap but can i ask about um the children who are severely absent from school i'm sure that you know of the 2287 there are 2 287 different reasons why they they are absent um i wonder what can effectively be done and the other one it may be that it's what's explained in the report but the 205 children who are being trapped as they may be potentially children missing education i wonder if you could just sort of elaborate on that a bit so the i'll start with the tracking and then leave the more complicated explanation to my colleague so when children move into the county um they might not have a school place arranged so we track them we admissions let us know that you know they're in they've moved in and the admissions will allocate them the school place if there's one available near where they live it might not be the the type of school and maybe they want a c of e school or a catholic school or whatever school so they have we give them a certain number of days in which to identify school register their child for school and get the child in school and if they haven't done that within 28 days after 20 days admissions will tell us they haven't registered for a school place and inclusion will get in touch with them and if they haven't registered by 28 days we will move them onto our children missing education and they haven't presented their child for education so we we give them reasonable time to move into the county identify school and register but then if not they formally become a child missing education so the disparity between that figure and the 87 cme children would indicate quite a good success rate for doing that yeah thank you no the complicated bit so in terms of the severely absent children you're absolutely right of all that number there will be a different reason for every single one of those children um and and what can be done around it will depend on what the reason is for why that child is severely absent so um obviously if if we determine that the parents aren't taking reasonable steps to ensure that their children are attending regularly then it would be for the local authority to look at any potential legal intervention around those um children um around the parents kind of lack of action there um and if there was if it if it as sander's explained around the um ebsna children and the children that are suffering with anxiety we'd be looking at whether we have any duties to provide provide something alternative but ultimately we'd be working with the schools to look at robust plans of action to get those children back into school early um forgive me if i've missed this in the report but i didn't see this um one of the uh one of several of the residents i've had to deal with in the past the reason for the children children or one of the children not going to school is because there are real problems in the home and the child doesn't want to they've got this protective thing towards a younger sibling or they're worried about their mom or what have you so they don't want to go to school because they don't want to miss or be away when there's a potential problem in the home and i have a surprising number of these um and i'm just wondering what you can do or how you team up with presumably let's say domestic abuse or some other situation how you're able to team up to encourage identify the reason for these children by virtue of the fact that the other domestic abuse service is aware of this is there any way that you can get those children into school or or or address the psychological aspects of this because i found this really quite worrying it was a long time ago i had about four or five cases when i first became a counselor so this must have been about eight years ago something like that but um i just wondered what happened in this case because i didn't see them represented in this report i think tricia offered to address that i don't know how you feel but i think tricia um i'm happy to come in here just in in relation to persistent absence from school is now because it does come under the category of neglect so we would be working very closely with those terms they would be legitimate referrals for request for support and in doing that assessment one would you know imagine that we would be working alongside domestic violence agencies you know um so it would be an assessment that we would be undertaking and and we're very very clear that it is it is neglect that that's very helpful to know thanks kello um and in practical terms um once we've identified that that what you've described might be the reason for a child's absence we would be looking at pulling a team around the family together so that if children so if they hadn't quite reached children's services threshold we would still do that early intervention threshold and either somebody from the inclusion service or whoever's the lead professional around that family would look to pull a team around the family together and we would be looking at some potential referrals to the school nursing team the primary mental health workers we would be sign posting schools and parents to the ebsna resources that are on our local offer page and looking for some practical solutions i've back in the day when i was a a frontline worker i've had those exact cases that you're describing and things like a reasonable adjustment around the school allowing the child to make a call home during the day to make sure that everything's okay and things like that so we would put a plan around that child to make sure that to try and reduce their anxieties around leaving potentially a situation at home that they're worried about that sounds good anyway very good report by the way thank you uh rachel thank you german originally as i started to read this one of the things that came up in my head was simply to ask how many children have we got missing um or not getting full-time education and as i got further into it i thought that doesn't actually mean anything because would i be asking about the part-time people the people that go to the people the children that go to the people referral units the home educated how guaranteed we are and a lot of these you've answered um and then i see 87 children that we just have no idea um that aren't getting any provision at all of those 87 children are these all possibly move-ins are these special needs and there's problems getting schools for them um i was going to say transient children but i think that's a poor expression when someone's just moving house and it's in the middle of term or something but um i was just wondering 87 is that an average on on what happens it doesn't and can i just make a plea if you're going to give me a pie chart put some percentages on it please um because it means absolutely nothing so in terms of the 87 that you've quoted that's our children missing education number that is a that's a fluid number because the the data changes almost daily as we're finding school places for children etc and and new children coming in um the um i've lost my thought trying to talk the um from experience what would you see that number is yes sorry so in terms of all of those children it will be primarily there are two primary reasons why children would be uh sit on our cne list because they're obviously the ones that have been missing education for a longer period of time um and it will be because we've deemed that their elective home education isn't suitable therefore we've moved them from our ehe list into our cme list and then we are actively working around those families and as santa's already mentioned doing a school attendance order so we would be trying to support in the first instance to help those families get those children back into school but where they're not wanting to do that or are not responding to our inquiries around that then we would be looking to issue school attendance orders the second group and i haven't got the exact numbers in front of me but that 87 would be split the second group would be either mover in children who have got an ehcp that we haven't got a school place for and we haven't quite got alternative provision in place for yet or again children who have an ehcp where those families perhaps are not working with us in the way that we would want to in order to get the school places moving i like the way you put yet because yet gives the saying that we will we will could you give me an average of time that you find children are out of school in that category so um our cme for over 500 days but for but on average it's about six weeks it's not too bad thank you chairman sorry liz thank you thank you chairman um i mean when you're presented with this this report and presented with the data you know seeing a figure of 7 165 children is quite worrying obviously you know you have sweated down and there's a there is a big trend of people electively choosing to home educate i mean i'm looking at the figures here and it is something obviously that you know perhaps there's a select committee you know perhaps want to dig a bit deeper into at some stage um but that isn't my question sorry that was just an observation so um one of the things um is that um you know that we have got and and counselors be aware of this that um of children who are receiving um not receiving any education or very limited alternative provision you know of only a couple of hours a week i've got myself as i mentioned earlier a couple of cases at the moment about that um so um i know that you're bringing another um report to us in the october um next month about alternative provision and i just wondered in that if if um how we can benchmark against the minimum number of hours the dfa is 15 hours isn't it and how we can see that you know if that could be that could come forward in the report about um you know not just um who's getting the provision but how how many hours they're actually getting because it does seem that um some people are only getting a few hours and i just wonder what you feel the trend is and how that could perhaps how you're planning to remedy that um is it just to get the child back into school is that the aim or is it to to try and increase it up to that 15 hours okay so of the 7165 that that's in the report we went back to look at that um that figure and of that group 173 are actually at the moment getting less than 15 hours um tuition a week so i know it's small portions but for each of those children that's the concern so do you know how many less they're getting is it on average only getting two hours a week or or is there you know a variation so we we can break down um we normally break it down are they getting less than five hours or less are they getting less than 10 hours and then are they getting less than 15 hours so i can provide that detail with the other data but of this cohort 173 are getting less than 15 hours and they're getting less than 15 hours for a number of reasons some some of them are on the role of the school and they're anxious about attending school and it's been agreed they'll come to school for at least an hour before they go back again there are some children who are very seriously unwell they're having chemotherapy or they're waiting for transplant and they're having that's all they can cope with so we need to take those cohorts out for the others that could attend more or participate in other activities we are actively working with each of the caseworkers to build to increase their package as as they are able to because some children are just so anxious they won't leave home even if we offer them free leisure activities they wouldn't participate so we're where we can we're working to increase that figure so i would expect to see that figure substantially reduce by the time i come back in october but it's a it's a myriad of of reasons and we're checking that at the moment um next question's from barley dear gosh how long did i say i've been a counselor for um do we have information on outcomes for children who've missed significant amounts of schooling to understand the impact and by that i know that there's a hundred myriad different stories but presumably there is some kind of direction of travel or trend for you know if you miss x amount of school in your lifetime or x times 10 what are the overall impacts um and uh generally speaking if we get them back into the system can we mitigate those or are some of them every child that's really absent there can be a different reason for that um for some children um being at home and having access to surrey online or having access to a tutor works for them and they're happy to work away and we can give you some case studies we can make put some case studies in our report for october that will show that even though this young person hasn't gone to school they've engaged and they participate and they've done well but equally there are there is national research and national data that shows if you miss out on education you lose the protective factor of being in a school and you may be exploited you may be um become involved in risky behavior such as offending or becoming a teenage parent so that is all very well documented what we what we haven't done i don't know if we can but our goal is to look at the destination what's the destination for the year 11s who have been severely absent so maybe we could i'll have a look and see if we can get that data and put that in the report if i can really interesting if that's if it's feasible to pull that information yeah absolutely um john you had a question yeah thank you um just a little bit of information it says in 2.11 the council has established a cnis service manager post uh when was that recently right we all we all do it i wouldn't worry about it we all do it was last year february last year february last year okay that's thank you for that so in a sense um nearly the post was established and then occupied because of a reason and this is a need to have it um in the period you know 18 months or so since the manager took over um had there been you know um i don't want to put it what is the person achieved but in other words you know have there been as a consequence of the new manager a improvement in the service that what the council can do on this you know very serious issue and perhaps if you know the headlines of the impact of having the manager have been one two three so i would say the the impact has been that we have different conversations with different people so we might talk to head teachers and they might talk to you about a particular case where they can't get this child to come to school they think these charges should be in a specialist provision or i might talk to the inclusion manager and so and we look at the attendance data but what we didn't have is what we've been able to produce for you today we would never have been able to produce the chart that's on page 207 where we have all of the data in one place and somebody have an oversight of that so we can have conversations with send around well why is this child only getting five hours and their alternative provision how does the alternative provision support meeting the outcomes that are set out in their plan so in a way it's added capacity but it's also increased our intelligence it's allowed us to work with the data people to develop our dashboards 18 months ago i would never been able to give you a comprehensive list of all the children and their category and i'm confident that we know we don't know where they all are but the ones we know of we know what's happening excellent thank you for that and i'm gonna a good answer is going to be expanded by kelly it was just one point to add i think having a council-wide service manager for that for this responsibility also ensures that we've got consistent practice across the county because what we absolutely can't have this postcode loss free for our children and that has made sure that that is or has all come together so we've got counter work practice around this work as well another good answer thank you i think the last question is with me then um the report says it's good practice for schools to scrutinize their absences data from your experience of the targeted support meetings is this commonly done the reason and one of the reasons i ask is because i can think of three instances where children are in the role of a school we are paying for 15 hours of alternative provision a week probably two of those hours actually get delivered because the providers don't turn up or you know change so i'm just wondering i mean i do is that something that that in your experience schools do keep a good um you know a good monitor do they monitor it well so i think um we provided in the report that majority of our schools have had targeted support meetings um in the in the summer terms we were able to share that data and in terms of your specific question anecdotally yes i would say that majority of schools are well prepared they they monitor their attendance and their absence routinely regularly outside of the time that we're in there and then are able to share that data and we're able to scrutinize that together as the local authority in the school to look at where we need to provide additional support um all schools now are required to have as part of the new working together to improve school attendance guidance they're all required to have a senior leader who is responsible for school attendance as well so part of their role is that they have to scrutinize their data it's become a um a statutory responsibility for the schools there will there will inevitably be some schools who are better at this than others and we are looking at building um groups of schools to provide shared good practice that's part of our job as the local authority in the new attendance guidance is to bring schools together to look at sharing of good practice and how they can do that and we want to our schools that are very good at that to help our schools who um need a bit of support with that great can i just clarify because i wasn't thinking so much about absence i was thinking about the fact that we're paying for a level of alternative provision which the provider not delivering and the school isn't doing anything about it okay what what's your i mean it you know have the cases that i'm um that i'm aware of do you think they're unusual i mean the responsibility sits with the school but do you think that's unusual because it's you know they're we're talking three different schools here i think i am surprised about that if i'm honest i think um certainly part of that targeted support meeting is is scrutinizing the people's missing out on education which is the terminology that we use around children that are not receiving education in the normal way in school and we would action if we felt schools were not robustly monitoring it were not robustly challenging it we would absolutely action the school to do something with that which we would review at the next targeted support meeting so for example have you got up-to-date attendance data from that alternative provider because the communication is is the key and we would expect our schools to absolutely know where their children are if they're not in school and if they've commissioned alternative provision or if the local authority indeed have paid for it we would expect that somebody's checking not least because there would be a potential safeguarding reason if we don't know where those children are and alongside that we would also be checking their attendance codes and their attendance registers and making sure that actually where they're saying children are on alternative provisions they are correctly coding that and equally if they're not attending those alternative provisions that they're correctly promoting that so there is a level of scrutiny around that when we do those meetings with schools do you want to share those cases with us i'd be happy to absolutely can i i'm sorry patricia i'm i'm just going to finish off and i think you're finished now but i'm just going to finish off with saying that um children attending school we see in sorry as a multi-agency responsibility we don't just see it as the education department so there is a meeting every half term which has our police and health and education represented a long time alongside social care i think it's been really instrumental in terms of some of the work that is actually done like we have worked alongside our gps who were signing children off without ever having seen the child on the basis of information that was provided by the parent with no recourse no conversation with the school we have our health visitors now being really inquisitive when they're going into the family home where they see a young child and in terms of saying you know let's you know what school are you signing up for what preschool are you signing up for what's what provision are you looking at i'm really trying to deliver the message across all the agencies about how we get children back into school and that includes the police when they're walking along the streets and they see a child who should be in school not in school only to navigate chips down the road um in terms of asking the question and taking that child account and saying you know why isn't this child in school so i just wanted to emphasize that apart from the really good work that they're doing our partners are actually supporting us in that work i mean that's really good to hear so thank you for that um claire thank you thank you fiona i'm really pleased um that that trish had the chance to say that because i think it's really critical um that the committee had the chance to hear how important we we view this for many of the reasons i i went through i wanted to say particular thanks to to kelly and sandra for this report um i i know that as lead member i've been pretty fierce about this and i'm i'm given that uh alternative provisions highlighted in the sent improvement plan given that on the topic of um alternative provision for us i have been fierce in following that up and um and i'm really grateful for the work that's been done and the fact that we're able to collectively see how much scrutiny this area has across many of our services so thank you thanks a lot claire um i think what we'll do now is look at the recommendation in this area and i'm sorry liz okay it's just a very quick question because i noticed in the report that there was the um government's intention to introduce a register for those who are effectively home educating and and i just wondered if there's any timeline on that if sorry county council has to do something with that or if because obviously there is the safeguarding issue which has been highlighted in the report so i just wanted if you know if anybody knew a little bit more around that everybody's kind of shaking their heads so i'm not very hopeful thank you rachel uh well in part of the earlier session i made reference to the education bill that never became law um in the last parliament um and the provisions for making a register of electrically home educated children were part of that bill so that's one of the things that was lost when that was not enacted um it's something that the association of directors of children's services among others is campaigning quite vigorously on and so there's a children's well-being bill being crafted for this parliament uh and it may be that we see it reintroduced in that but it would be an enormously helpful thing and we would like to see legislation made for it but at the moment we can't unilaterally create such a list well let's hope it happens sooner rather later um so what i suggest is that we move to the recommendations and these recommendations are really based on building on all of the good work that we've learned about this afternoon um it's very much about asking surrey to take a leadership role um and also building on the appointment of the um the the new appointee who's looking at children not in school so it's about suggesting that surrey takes a very clear leadership role in establishing what is good practice what we would expect to be happening with partners um and i think just following up on the question also that bernie asked about understanding what happens um to the life chances of children who aren't in school by comparison with their peers um are members happy with this recommendation johnathan so two two comments i wonder if there is a possibility of our maybe not a recommendation but a request for information on the life chances thing too if we have educational outcomes for those home educated and those who are not severely absent because presumably they are reported and we could compare them say well what is the impact of this on children i don't know if we if that's possible to know i mean that's not a recommendation the recommendation i thought might be worth adding is something about the prevalence of ehcp's and scm amongst those who are um severely missing education in surrey and the need to address that as part of our send improvement work um if you are happy to to leave that with us i think that would be i think we can probably construct another recommendation around that and share it with members over the next couple of weeks i mean it it it is it is the percentage is concerning i think we we've had a good explanation of why it's possibly happening but obviously we would want to to try to improve the situation there as we would every aspect with this end process they might quit if you add in the scm and ehcp 41 of those severely absent with special needs is a very high number and i but again i absolutely no no idea whether that is the same number across the uk or pacific problem with sorry i don't know whether it's something that is particularly soared since covid and it's part of the covid boom in absence or whether the if it was that is the covid boom something that's that's particularly affected those in special needs or is it more general so i just think there might be something about special needs absentee that might be picked up as part of the send improvement work so if we're comfortable that we'll take those recommendations away we will do some work on an additional recommendation sunday you've already offered to provide us with some information in terms of the the comparison of absence with children with special needs and children who are on send support so maybe we differentiate between the action and the recommendation but if you could please take continue to take that as an action and we'll find the wording for a recommendation that actually doesn't try to reproduce that action because i'm conscious that you know you probably won't be able to provide quite the the breadth of information that that we think might be helpful because that would be an additional significant piece of work potentially which would have to be obviously agreed um what i'd like to do now is to move to item nine which is another ofsted report on a children's home this is um we're on pages two one seven two two two six of the um agenda pack and once again which is great to hear um we've had as a home inspected that has retained its good status and thank can i just thank sandra and kelly very much for your time thank you for the report um yes we have another home that has retained its good status and that's very reassuring and and you know i would have been absolutely gutted if our record had begun to decline because it's looking good and that's incredibly reassuring so thank you for that and please convey our thanks to the staff working um in that particular home because you know working in a in a in a children's home is a very very stressful environment so we really do appreciate the work that they do oh thank you um item number 10 on our agenda is the um performance overview we have looked at performance in our pre-meeting um and i think we learned some some interesting information i don't want to go over some of the data that we've already described today earlier on so looking at you know the number of ehcp tribunals in july 24 by comparison with um july 23 because of course you know the number of tribunals has actually doubled um i think we've had a a thorough discussion earlier which potentially highlights the reasons why this may be the case um there are just a few other things that i think i guess are are quite concerning not necessarily all of them within our necessary county council's ability to do anything um we see that mind works referrals increased by 49 percent between may 23 and june 24 and at that point we're at 126 percent of commission capacity which is deeply worrying particularly since mind works on the developmental pathway which is the most stretched pathway um you know the the appointment wait time for the first appointment on the neurodevelopmental pathway assessment rose to 266 days in june 24 deeply deeply worrying um and i understand that we're going to be party to a response from mind works about what they're going to do about the particular issue that was raised at the joint children and adult select committee and i really hope that there will be a response commensurate with the scale of the need that's out there that is clearly not being in any way addressed at the moment as i highlighted our last select committee we continue to have a worrying position in terms of social workers we have a target of 80 to 85 percent of our social workers being permanent the current establishment of permanent social workers is 56 percent which is deeply concerning we have more locums but also significantly more vacant posts than in the past this is a topic that we've discussed a number of times it remains of concern to the committee i'm sure it remains of concern to the service um this is possibly an area where it would be interesting to understand what's happening in our geographic and statistical neighbors just i mean i know that there is a there is a national issue on the recruitment of permanent social workers but i think it would help us to understand whether we're an outlier on these particular statistics or not as we have discussed fairly recently the recruitment of social workers as a recruitment of foster workers foster carers of all types um including special guardians sorry and as well as kinship foster carers continues to decline so our sufficiency statistics remain high and fairly static and we are aware of some of the reasons for that um and i believe this is something we will look at in the in the not too distant future i mean i'm also very conscious tina that the last time we had a conversation about this you you highlighted the fact that a lot of children coming into care have many more complex needs than many foster carers would typically expect and and that is leading to an issue it is and but just to say that we're taking a plan at the request of corporate parenting board to the next board around the fostering recruitment and retention so it's being scrutinized there as well thanks very much okay um i think our business is now complete the last thing that i have to say is the date of our next meeting is those through the 14th of november the main item on the agenda is transitions of children into adult health and well-being and i look forward to seeing everyone at that meeting thank you everyone for your attendance thank you for your contributions and have a good rest of the afternoon Thank you.