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Children's Services Scrutiny Sub-Committee - Tuesday 8 July 2025 7.00 pm
July 8, 2025 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
Just to let you know that the video's on now and we've got microphones so and they can sometimes pick up even if you're talking very quietly so Good evening and welcome to this evening's Children's Services Scrutiny Subcommittee meeting. I am councillor David Oxley, chair of the subcommittee. I just said the meeting's been recorded and being brought past live on the internet. In the event that technical issues require the meeting to be adjourned and it cannot be restarted in a few minutes, further updates will be posted on the Council's Democracy X, formerly Twitter account which is at LBL Democracy. Please note that the council has a duty to protect sensitive personal data. To ensure such information is not inadvertently disclosed, please avoid using full names or only other details that may review the identity of others. Health and Safety Housekeeping Fire Exits Exit the room on either door and then go up the stairs to street level. The toilets, there is an accessible toilet just outside my left side over there. Secure, just push the button and go through there. Secure, read that bit. So I've gone to apologies. I've received apologies from Councillor Christine Banton. He's the deputy mayor and is some sort of chairing some other events somewhere, so unfortunately can't attend. I'll start with members of the committee. We're going to go for the declarations of pecuniary interest and if you could also introduce yourself at the same time. So if I start off from Councillor Armstrong, if you just introduce yourself, and if you've got any pecuniary interest. Yeah, I am Councillor Dominic Armstrong for Screatham and Covenant Bale Ward and no pecuniary interest. Sarah Cole, also Streatham and Covenant Bale Ward, no pecuniary interest. I'm Councillor Matthew Brand, Streatham Hill West and Thornton Ward. I have no pecuniary interest to declare. My name is Brian, Councillor for Brixton North, no pecuniary interest. I could also just welcome the Covenant Member for Covenant and People for mankind. Now, next we move to the minutes of the previous meetings of the committee held on the 6th of February. Okay. These are set out in the agenda pack on pages 1 to 5. No requests for amendments have been received by Democratic Services. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed. So we're here. Agreed. Okay, thank you. Now we move on to the core business for tonight's meeting. First substantial item on tonight's agenda is the spend and alternative provision. It's item free on the published agenda pack, pages 7 to 17. We'll first hear from the Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, Councillor Ben Kind, and then officers to introduce the item. Thank you, Chair. I don't know which officers are coming up. Sophie? Myself and Lulu are here as officers. Before I hand over to them. The Send and AFE strategy, I think, is one of the most significant pieces of work that we've done in the last year, which I'd like to thank not just the officers, but also everybody out of the community forum and care forum and the schools that are being involved in helping co-design the process. Because I think that what I hope the output is, is something that reflects to the sort of core values that we've got as a council and as a broad partnership around fairness, around opportunity and about making sure that every child, no matter where they are and what their starting point is, has a chance to thrive. And I think we've got to be honest that most of the last, well, probably it's not just the last decade, it is decades. You know, it's been something that has sat there for a long time that there's been pressure in this area. And I would note that in the last decade or more councils had to take on quite an ambitious set of reforms that took place in the mid 2010s. And I think you'll be remiss for us not to note that that didn't come with the kind of financial resources should have been there to back it up to make sure whether that's for schools themselves or for other members of the partnership to be able to deliver that. And we've seen then as a result the growing numbers of education, health and care plans. We've seen the challenges that parents and carers have in sort of, I'll say, battling against the system at times trying to get the support that their children should get. And we've seen levels of EHCPs, for instance, in Lambeth go up significantly. We've seen it happen nationally as well. There's been some media attention on that and potential changes that may come later in the year. But that's all been done at a time in which the amount of money available has been going down. And whilst, yes, it's a high needs block and the additional money that comes with that, you've got to note that it is not just the education part of the HCP, it is health, social care, it is other forms of support for that. And all of that comes into part of the provision of support for the families, particularly then to the young people. So, I think that, you know, there is no overnight fix. I think there is a genuine hope that the Send and AP strategy for Lambeth, when focusing more on the Send side of it, but hopefully you'll get into the AP side of things as well, where I think we've been very ambitious. But I hope that, like you say, whether there's no overnight fix, what we've got is an old vision that I hope is designed locally, which is quite a lot of co-design and a lot of reflection, and that what we're looking at is a far more positive way of working in this area as we go forward over the years. In particular, sort of just draw your attention to things like getting the balance right in terms of provision, making sure that we've got both mainstream settings and special school settings. It's a huge area and it's something that I think, and I hope I'm proud of, that Lambeth has done the investment to make sure that there is that choice, that choice is local and that our aims, and again, you know, hopefully there's contributions that can come in tonight and you can ask questions about whether we're getting the balance right, because the thing that I don't want to see is parents not being able to have the choice, not being able to get access, even in the world we're operating, even when the finance is restricted. So hopefully that direction is a positive direction we've got, but the officers are going to go into it in detail, then the better I'm going through then. Right, if the officers have got anything to add to that or? Yeah, myself and Lulu Pinky, our Send Youth Coordinator, would like to add to that if that's okay with you Councillor Oxy? Yeah, because we've actually got that sort of my list of speaking requests, but yeah, sure. Do you want us to sit up here or are you happy just to sit where we are? You can sit at the table, I'll hear you a bit better. There isn't that many people here, is there? You can almost all sit there really. So as Councillor O'Kind indicated, the report covers both Send and Alternative Provision strategy, our new strategy to drive improvement for 2025 to 2030. It was really important to us that it was co-produced with schools, with our parents, with our families and with children and young people, but also we had an LGA peer review in November 2023 that was also part of that feedback to make sure we had external verification, external deep dive into looking at the areas we needed to focus on to make sure we make improvements for our children and young people with Send. It's underpinned by an action plan and the governance sits within something called our Send Strategic Partnership Board, which has representations again from school, from health and from social care to make sure that this joins up working to drive through improvements. You'll be aware of the number of challenges outlined in the report facing Send, but what we really want to focus is on on those seven priorities and that includes a priority as detailed around alternative provision. We look at alternative provision and Send collaboratively. We know there's an over-representation of Send children in alternative provision and therefore we've adopted the approach that was outlined back in the improvement plan in March 2023. Our drive is to make sure that this strategy achieves improvements by 2030 in terms of especially around things such as sufficiency, inclusive mainstream and the report outlines some of the steps we've already taken, especially around early intervention. I know that part of the report request was to look at what support we give to our children and young people who don't have education and healthcare plans. We detail some of the support such as our three-team for children at risk of exclusion, our Exceptional Needs Grant, which is a form of funding for children who are Send support and I'm sure Karen Chamberlain and Andrew are our head teachers and executive head will be able to outline some of that support for schools. A big drive has been around sufficiency of places and we have created over, we will create over 257 places by 2030 and that's a big piece of our work that we've been looking at and making sure we're not only having specialist places but resource spaces and mainstream. One of the reasons Lulu is so key is it's really important we have our Send voice through this work and one of the reasons why Lulu has been invited to speak because it was a key role that we have really driven to have to have that Send youth forum. So Lulu is going to talk through Send youth voice, how we make sure it's part of our decision making, it was part of the strategy decision making in terms of identifying areas of priority but also moving forward that all the work we do have for that undertaking as well. So if it's okay with you actually, Councillor Oxley, I'll hand over to Lulu to outline that work as well. Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. I'm the Send Youth Involvement Coordinator, I've been in post since April 2024. My role is about amplifying the voices of children in the Send and ensuring that their need to be involved in decision making on an individual service and strategic level basis. Today I wanted to share some of the successes and challenges of participational work and also acknowledge what we're hearing directly from young people. So an initiative that we started is our Send and General Inspectors Programme. This is a paid opportunity for young people to review local services and suggest improvements to make the children being accessible. So far they've inspected our Send local offer and short break service providers and their feedback has led to real changes, so more accessible online content and better trained play workers. We're now expanding this to include our library services and our summer health programme. Another highlight has been our autism documentary funded by the All Age Autism Grant. 30 autistic level people from three local schools have produced a film about their experiences and have earned AQA accredited certificates. We've also launched a Send Youth Council, as Sophie mentioned, which consists of 14 young people from two special schools and two sort of spaces who meet once a half term and represent the voices of younger people with Send. This particular initiative has highlighted challenges of participation work with young people with young people with Send, which I wanted to mention. During our initial pilot of the Send Youth Forum, which is now the Send Youth Council, the initial pilot sessions weren't run directly through schools and because of this we struggled to meet the needs of some of the young people that attended due to limited capacity on our end and with just two of us deliberately couldn't provide the one support that many of the young people needed and that's why strong partnerships with schools are essential to my work as I can work with the staff and rely on the staff to help support the young people's participation. However, school engagement isn't always consistent and many schools are incredibly proactive and some others are slightly harder to reach, which means I often end up working with the same young people and risk-easing health insurance, especially young people educating in London at school or in alternative provision. I found that project-based work creates far more meaningful engagement than one of the consultations. True co-production takes time, time to build trust and relationships and create safe spaces and ensure that young people feel valued. But to do this well, we need investment, whether that's paying young people for their time, funding, support staff and for investing in long-term projects. And finally, what are the young people telling us? Well, they're telling us that they want more opportunities to socialise, be active and have fun. Many feel isolated and barriers like anxiety, cross-travel and the lack of trained staff and often prevent them from accessing opportunities. Parents echoed this to me, specifically highlighting a lack of STEM's targeted vision, especially for those over 18. In our very first consultation towards the FSND forum, when asked what the young people wanted to do at the group, no one specifically mentioned youth voice or influencing services. They said they just wanted a space to hang out and have fun and feel included, but this was that I'm keeping. Thanks so much indeed. Right, so we've got now sort of one, two, three speakers. We've got Rosemary Merricks, got Andrea Parker, Karen Chamberlain. If I could take them in that order, we could take Rosemary first. Just three mates just for each other. Might as well sit here. Young man there as well, if he wants to. Yeah, just. I'm Rosemary Merricks, I'm the facilitator for Lambeth parent forum and we're a voluntary group of parents and carers, children, young people with additional needs, age 25 in Lambeth. And we've worked with partners within the local area on consultations around the strategy and we sit on the SEND strategic partnership board, so we're quite involved. We were really pleased to see that the feedback from families was incorporated to define the strategy, the priorities in the strategy. And we really welcome that strategy highlights a need for everyone to understand the needs of children, young people we send and to work together to provide the best possible outcomes for our children, young people and importantly to communicate the opportunities and support available to our families. We completely agree early intervention is crucial, but not just in the early years. It went across the child's lifetime as needs arise. Everyone working together is so important for children, young people and their families to be supported, not just in terms of education, but across all aspects of their life, including social care, health, leisure services, housing, etc. It all impacts on us. Unfortunately, there's still somewhat of a lottery in terms of how well schools engage with families, with children, young people we send. Some are exceptionally good, others not quite so good and families can have a struggle to be sure that their child's needs are being met. We've heard directly from families who've benefited from the expansion of the outreach teams, especially the Area SENCO team, who've been able to act as a bridge between parents and schools when things are going quite as well as they might. And there's been really good feedback about that. Again, we welcome development of the ordinarily available provision toolkit to clarify the support that Lambert schools should be providing and to ensure consistency and transparency. We've been asking for this for a while. Because it's so important that parents know what they can expect the school to be providing for their children, as well as the school knowing these things. And that's the same. There's also some EVNSA, the promotion based school on attendance guidance coming through that's kind of gone to schools and needs to be parent facing as well. So parents are aware of it. As acknowledged in the introduction to the strategy, the system is increasingly complex and challenging for all involved. And the future is quite uncertain, given the media reports recently and the inability of certain government members to provide us with certainty. So we feel it's really important that the actions of the strategy are felt by everyone at all levels, and everyone needs to walk the walk as well as talking to talk. Thanks so much. Thanks. We've got Andrea Parker. I've got my list. Good evening, Andrea Parker. So yeah, just offering some feedback from one primary executive head teacher of three of our schools. Some of the real strengths in the provision has been the echo about the area SENCO team. Schools have found that really supportive and the training that the free training that has been available to schools, for example, via the Lamb of Autism Advisory Service and the well-com screening project as well. That's been a real strength. The education healthcare hub administrator has been really responsive and capable and timely. And the early years SEND has been really positive that transition support that schools have had. And certainly access to the additional short-term funding of the Exceptional Needs Grant has been well felt in schools. And the turnaround for that has been very efficient. And it is the type of provision that you need on the spot, you know, isn't something that you want to be waiting a long time for. And that's been really welcomed. Of course, you know, enabling the caseload of SEND is a challenge and it's a challenge on the ground for our families and for schools who, when they don't have the resources to support families, really, really struggle to do that. There has been much more response, although there are still more challenges. So just we need to continue to focus on a joint-up approach to working, that schools can get responses to things that are happening that are urgent in schools, things that are happening, you know, that can make a difference to what might happen tomorrow. So I think a rounded experience from all people that are working within SEND and supporting schools would be welcomed by schools. Great stuff. Thanks so much. Finally, we've got, excuse me, which schools do you cover? I'm sorry, it's still my ignorance, but BJS Federation, which schools does that? Bonneville in Clapham, Jessup in Hernhill and Stockwell in Brixton. Oh, great stuff. I'm quite near Stockwell actually, so. In fact, I think I've planned to go and see them to actually have a look round. Come on. Anyway, Karen Chermullin, Head Teacher of Lillian Bailey's Technology School, hasn't it? Yeah. That's you've been before, yeah. Secondary perspective. And I thought I'd give you four things, a bit of context about the school, a bit of talk about what we've done in provision and impact that's been enabled in Landworth, some of the initiatives that Landworth have really been doing the last year and how useful that's been, but also some of the challenges that we're still facing. So to give you an idea, we've got 855 children, including those in sick form from age 11 to 19 in the school. Of those, 44 currently have an EHCP plan. This time last year was 34 and we have, I think, 10 or 11 more expected in September and our current year 11s, most of which will stay on in our sick form. So we will expect, you know, quite an increase in our EHCP students. And there is obviously quite a lot in the news about the explosions of SEN and EHCP, but I do wonder if there is an explosion or if we've just got better at identifying meeting needs and also preventing children from falling through the gaps, which they would have done previously. And I do feel this has been a real focus in Landworth and it's a focus that can be felt in the schools through training, available resources, support for schools and lots of levels. We talked about the EHCP work on transition, lots of different things. And I do think in the past some of these children would just have been written off. They'd have been naughty children, they'd been excluded from school, you know, or they just wouldn't attend anymore. And I do think there's been a lot of focus on things like attendance and lots of improvements there that's actually helped to keep these children in school, which makes them more, you know, more aware of needs that need to be met. But I think that we are experiencing somewhat of a positive trend in the meeting the needs of children. So in Lillian Bayless last year our EHCP students had a Progress 8 score of just below zero, which might sound not very good, but nationally students with EHCPs get about two thirds of the grades below their peers. For our students who are SCN identified needs but without an EHCP they actually scored above national average for all students. So, you know, we are in a position where when we're meeting needs children are actually making great progress. We've had reductions in suspensions over time and in terms of attendance our students with SCN without EHCPs have a higher attendance than national average attendance. Our students with EHCPs also have a higher attendance, nearly the same amount of attendance as national average, but a 12% increase on their peers. So again, I feel like as a borough there is some real great work being done and success here. And there's loads of stuff. So I wrote a long list of things. I'm just going to rattle through some of the provision. And when I was writing out, I was going, oh my gosh, I can't believe we did all these things. So we've obviously got in-class teaching assistant reports, we've got nurture classes, smaller classes for children who aren't meeting age-related expectations, speech and language therapy, occupational health, sensory breaks, phonics, literacy programs, catch-up numeracy, ELSA, social stories, mentoring with external agencies, drama therapy, talking and drawing therapy and art therapy, soft landings, soft endings, home learning clubs, and we're building a sensory room, zones and regulations, SCMH provision with some specialist HLTAs as well. We work closely with parents. We've got on coffee mornings. We work closely with there, I see in which the parents in particular, and we work on staff development. And I think that's been a big push in Lambeth and that's really been felt in the schools as well. And I think, you know, our school ethos and the school ethos across Lambeth and the push across Lambeth has been for schools to think about how needs can be met in the mainstream or at least on a majority mainstream timetable. And as a school, we've helped us for that with regular training, resources like standing desks for ADHD students, curriculum planning, focus on specific whole school priority students. But I think the biggest shift in terms of what a school can do to address this is that school culture of moving away from seeing a child as this naughty child, to looking at behaviour as either an unmet need. You know, we don't talk about behaviour anymore. We talk about regulation and dysregulation. We don't have a behaviour policy in our school anymore. We have a positive relationships and communication policy with the concept that behaviour is a form of communication. And I think we've been very lucky to have some great initiatives in Lambeth. We've had a capital grant support set up of an ASD resource base in September. And then we also are going in with a local primary school to open up an SENH resource base, which will hopefully open up shortly after September. And this will obviously provide basis for students with those specialist needs. But I think for me, when you have got resource bases, and I know several schools in Lambeth are now being given capital grants to open up resource bases, I think this obviously addresses the increase in students with EHDPs, which is obviously a good investment. But it also provides expertise within the mainstream, which otherwise you might not get, you know, so as well as obviously providing the expertise for the complex child, the less complex child, the expertise there increases within the mainstream. So more needs can be met earlier on in the mainstream intervention. And we've also benefited very much from the Lambeth tier system with support, as well as the exceptional needs grant, which I do think, as Andrea said, is just so timely. It provides early intervention that sometimes prevents an EHDP needing to be written, but it also helps to determine really quickly what supports a child needs and put it in place really quickly, because that is what early intervention is about. It's about identifying the need and putting something in place to address it in the moment. So what are the challenges? So I did, I'm wondering if I will say this, but one of our challenges is that we are a Lambeth school, but we don't just deal with Lambeth council or Lambeth children. And actually we find that I won't name, I won't name the borough, but we probably both have the same experience. But there are in some boroughs that we work with, there are lots of lack of funding, different banding is provided in different boroughs to what Lambeth provide for students. There is no agreement at the point of being named of what banding is going to be put in place for a child. So you're asked to be able to meet needs, but you have no idea what you can spend. You know, it's like, you know, if you're going to make dinner, would you spend, would you make a different dinner if you had £5 or £50? Obviously you would. And they're not very timely with giving their money, which often means that money is taken away from children with Lambeth eHDPs to fund the stopgap while you're trying to, you know, do so. And I do find that some of the out-of-borough eHDPs are not the most accurate eHDPs. Whether that is to move a child into mainstream or shouldn't be in the mainstream, I would like to put all my eggs in that basket. Maybe I would if I wasn't being recorded. And I think the other big challenge for schools is just the volume of work. So yes, we are meeting needs better, but the volume of work is increasing exponentially. So I can tell you that this year we have had 104 consultations across three boroughs for SCM places. And we've probably got a maximum and a big maximum of 10 places per year. And, you know, I told you we've got 43 in total in the school, but in one year we've had 104. Each consultation probably takes about three to four hours at least of time, reading all the documentation, looking at the provision, looking at the costings, putting something together, having it all checked by the team. And sometimes that is then sent back because they said, actually, could you provide some more information or here's a new annual review that you haven't considered? So that's adding on work. I think when we totaled it up this year, it has taken about 49 days of our SENCO's year just to do this out of 190 working days in a school. So that just tells you the volume of work that someone is doing. And that's not just their job. Their job isn't just to answer consultations. Their job is actually to provide for children with SEN in the school. But it's also just such an important thing that you can't just skip it. You can't rush it. It's so important to get right, because if you get it wrong, the risk is that the child is in the wrong setting. Needs won't be met. And we all know that when needs aren't met, actually, that becomes, you know, a cycle, a sort of downward spiral for the child. And then I guess the final challenge that schools are facing is funding or is money. You know, Lambeth have a higher than band, average banding rate for lots of schools, but no banding really covers every single child. We've got about four children who currently are in need of one-to-one support. And obviously, we've got access to additional support from Lambeth. But even on the top band, you wouldn't actually pay for one-to-one support. It doesn't cover one-to-one support. And I guess the reason why I'm saying this is because I'm very, very concerned about the new white paper that is coming out. And the idea that the blame of local authorities having crises in budgets is the result of having children with EHCPs. Because I can tell you there is not one head teacher who will see that an SEN child's EHCP more than generously covers the provision that is in place. That would be a total falsehood. And I guess what I really worry is that if funding is reduced, how will we continue to do the good work that we're doing? And I guess what I would ask the committee is what is being done on behalf of advocacy of schools and children in Lambeth in order to make sure that we don't end up in that position where the children end up losing money and the schools lose money for EHCP permission. Thanks so much Karen. I heard a lot of speakers there now and improved your awareness. You've got to the stage now where the House is on the committee can ask questions. Do you want to start things off? Councillor Armstrong. Yeah, thank you. I think strategy is really good and very important. I agree with the assessment you made around the lack of sort of catching in previous years around SEN. I'm dyslexic myself, went through my entire education without being picked up and it wasn't until I was in career that it actually was diagnosed. My question is in relation to the the six priorities that are in 2.1 within the priority section. In 2.7 it talks about obviously the importance of the year six transition and that process which I agree is a really important step within a student sort of education program. I wondered if you could talk a bit more in terms of what's the sort of plan or current processes and also keen to hear from educators as well in terms of that early year to primary transition, the secondary to post-16 transition and then also crucially the post-16 into a post sort of education world and making sure that we have the transitions in place to support them going out of education as well. I just wondered if you could expand on some of the work that's within the strategy and being done around that. I'm sure if you're happy I'll start off and then I'll hand over to the schools as well in terms of that frontline and also the parents forum in terms of parents experience. It was really crucial for us in the strategy that we took the feedback from families that previously it was all about the transition to adulthood and actually we recognise from the feedback that we have from schools, from young people and from families that actually it's as you said those key transition points actually both the early years to reception, year six to seven, post-16 and then post-19 all of them have the challenges which is why it now stands as one priority and it's something that we focus on. In terms of the year six to seven as you said we've developed a broader event which means the sharing information because you know that sharing information is so key but also our SENCO network worked to model what that phase transition should look like including inviting those young people for not just a lesson or a day but before those big days when everyone else is attending being able to experience the different parts of a secondary school day. We also invested in our early years SENCO team so that crucial transition from early years into primary and by doing that we also extended our team to early years especially around autism so they're called home support autism outreach workers I hope I've got the title right and so they were about really working to support those families who either aren't in a nursery provision or in a nursery provision a very reduced time to how we build up that alongside the school how we work collaboratively and as Andrew pointed out that early years SENCO team they do very much individual transition work so they work with the schools they have the knowledge of those children coming through in terms of supporting we still have some families and a big drive for us is to make sure we increase our underfires provision especially around vulnerable two-year-olds that's still a drive for us we aren't getting the uptake that we'd like to see around those vulnerable two-year-olds because we know as soon as we can have children and in an educational setting the more likely we will be able to do early diagnosis the more likely be able to do early intervention and start working with that family earlier so that still is a real key focus for us and it's something we have as a drive it for improvement for us in terms of that post-16 we've really been working to develop our school SENCOs and their careers advisors so our 14-16 and our back contracting which is there by Juliet Williams have been trying to develop the skill set within the school because I think it's really important and I think it's been highlighted to us it's something we take on board about consistency of schools so what we don't want to do is have everything just sit in the LA and it depends how much a school reached out to the LA or one person delivering that service what we want to be able to do is develop it so our careers advisors in schools our SENCOs in schools are aware of the wide offer that we have we have a really broad supported internship offer for example for our children young people we send and that also includes our specialist schools as well they're really key in that as well so I think it's really been about two two aspects developing schools to be able to offer that support but also we are looking at we are currently recruiting for a NIC coordinator which is we know that for some young people especially transitioning from 16 into a college setting what we really want to increase is their sustainability in that setting what we are what we what we find in terms of our outcomes is that we have really positive EHCP outcomes as in not being not in employment educational training but what we want to see is them achieve a level two award we want to see those achievements and make sure they're sustainable because we know especially for our children with autism they sometimes struggle within those first two terms in a college setting where there is slightly more freedom there isn't the structure there isn't the support that they would experience in their secondary schools so by having a NIC coordinator they will work with them on for example independent travel training so they can develop those skills they can go themselves but also any challenges they face within that college or post 19 setting as well or EHCP scrubs 25 they'll have somebody who they can contact to provide them with support to facilitate those conversations I'm going to hand over to either Andrew or Karen at that point in terms of their experiences for transition and what they is key for them as well that's okay absolutely thank you I mean I think transition is really key between year six and seven and also this year this year was the year that I experienced it post hand firsthand as my year six child became a year seven child last September will now become a year eight child in September and as a parent of a child with some neurodiverse needs as well this is even more crucial so I saw the other side of it and I think having seen both sides I'm quite pleased with what we do in terms of transition I think some of the really important things so we touched on things like taster days so we run taster days from year four upwards in fact tomorrow we have about eight schools coming in to attend our science fair and go inside a giant blow-up planetarium dome that we've got in our gym we do year five taster days where they do sports and science again and obviously do about year six taster days as well but I think that so we said you know bringing children into the secondary school setting and having them link with the older children is really picky you know kind of demystifies and takes away that fear of going to the secondary setting and I think there's been a lot of work with students who have an education healthcare plan or an SEM need or who are very vulnerable particularly in Lambeth in transition we had a really excellent Lambeth transition day I didn't go but I think I went the deputy head went and you know essentially it's like speed dating all of the schools so that you can kind of say oh you've got this child let me tell you about this child it's just one forum for everyone to kind of get together and just get to get that really vital information that sometimes you can't get that needs the spoken information about the children that are coming to you and particularly from secondary and in inner London secondary schools you know we probably have about 39 feeder schools so actually there's no way you can go to 39 different schools across London and get all of that information but the opportunity to have it all in one is really really crucial um I think the post 16 is again really crucial we have our careers lead and Senco and we work with the back on track team as well um and you know doing those meetings all happen so the annual reviews happen with the careers lead the center and the parents and the careers lead sits there helping them to fill out applications if they need to if they would like to do that as well as apply to the sixth form if they're able to you know so to have that kind of like wrap around care at close 16 and then obviously there is the kind of you know leaving at close 19 for those of us who um have sick form as well um and again it is just about you know you've just got to be doggedly go through every single child and make sure that every single child is in the right place for them and also follow up afterwards you know we've got children particularly those of the hdps that will follow up after they've started university after they've started work and just keep checking in with them and the families um so when children start in nursery um and we identify that there could be a need it is probably one of the most traumatic uh stages of the conversations that we are going through with families because it is often we are the first port of call that has alerted um our families to any um neurodivergent challenges that the child might be facing particularly if they do not have any siblings and they there isn't that kind of benchmark or or they're not uh they don't have larger family extended families and and they they live sort of in in quite a secluded way and they haven't been going to other nursery settings or other preschools um we uh my hub of schools we're quite fortunate we are also a children's center hub as well so we have lots of outreach support via our children centers um we also have preschools so lots of our children will come from our two-year-olds provision into our nurseries and then into our reception so we're able to uh transfer that information i would say that we have um um we we in the primary phase we gather a huge amount of information about our families naturally just because they are the parents coming in every single day dropping off their children those soft conversations on the gate uh the observations that are made those smiles that make a huge difference to making a challenging conversations of conversation far easier and so it is crucial that we are in a position to be able to hand that information over um it's things like we have staff members who will visit the secondaries uh with our families um they will also help fill in those forms um they've attended the land of transition day which was absolutely fantastic um again to be able to transfer all of that information over and it's not just the children that have diagnosed needs it's those children families with the undiagnosed needs that often are the ones you really need to flag up um so that they they don't slip through the net um it's also about how then what makes those children vulnerable in a larger setting and supporting those families to choose secondary schools that would be most appropriate to their needs um and the early years work i wanted to highlight with um the transition from early years so often those children are the ones that uh are first we're sort of first collecting the information for and support giving those them interventions to be able to pull together the applications for the ehcp plans in the very first place come back on that council okay we've got we also got you've got councillor bryant then councillor cole um yeah i was also very interested in the work lou describing about um amplifying the voice of children and families but i'm just interested in how would you actually how do we measure that how do we as a committee is scrutinizing this can we get some sort of some sense that actually they are being i mean there's lots of things going on but how do you measure being listened to and the the feedback you're getting on them is actually being taken on more well i can start with families not coming to you if that's okay and also i think it's everyone's here from rosemary as well in terms of the family representative that's the kind can jump in okay and so in terms of in terms of a measure we do an annual family survey which we are now in our third year and we can bring that in terms of uh council quite happy through to uh to to measure the different services that we offer to measure feedback from families um and that is the way that we've done it as a quantifiable it's always a challenge to quantify because we know that for some of our harder reach to reach families they may not respond to a survey and therefore it makes it difficult because often you have similar families that will respond and obviously face that challenge but it is something that we put in place that we did have something quantifiable council bryant but i think it's important if i go to rosemary and then to lulu in terms of how you feel the measure in terms of families being able to feed back on send services and and that gauge i think we've got there's a much better relationship now between the local authority and and family groups that are supporting families like ours um we have regular visits from council officers to to our coffee mornings we run a monthly coffee morning for for parents um and virtually everyone has has somebody from different areas so he's been a number of times georgina income um and and and officers are very open to speaking with with families uh with parents who have either have particular issues or just to have a kind of general conversation about what the council are doing how families feel about that families feeding back their experience of changes might have been put in place um i mean as i said before you know it is a bit of a lottery we've heard from from schools that are really engaged with their send um families and we've done coffee mornings in all their schools um to talk to families about what we do there are other schools that are a bit more difficult for families to engage with who don't have the same passion around send but that we all do so um so yeah that's difficult and another thing that we're that we're bringing in so we raise issues at some strategic partnership board that families are feeding to us and we're just kind of organizing uh a more uh comprehensive kind of we said you did kind of feedback document that we can have so that we can say when we i mean you know for example a long time ago we suggested there should be a youth involvement coordinator and then there was it wasn't immediate but you know there should be a local offer coordinator and then there was so we know we it doesn't happen as quickly as we'd like often but we know that the things that families are saying there is action towards it and we're trying to kind of formalize that a little bit um so yeah in terms of kind of measuring feedback from young people um part of the send an ap action plan um one of the actions is to develop her children young people's annual send survey um and i have been working with us and youth council to co-produce that so that was the first thing we did when we we set that up um making sure that it's you know something that young people want to fill out it's child friendly um and so yeah the young people are involved at each point of that um one of my roles um well a really important part of my role is to hold you know decision makers to account and you know that can be challenging but um i think it kind of brings me back to my point around this this project work it's so much easier um to you know in terms of participation work and empowering young people um ensuring that we're listening to their feedback um it's a lot easier to get that when i have kind of yeah project work with them i can invest a lot of time and energy i get to meet with them often um and the feedback that i've had from them is that they prefer that because i can build relationships with them it also allows more buy-in from the decision makers accountable and um encourages those kind of conversations and allows me to to close the feedback loop something that is challenging is when we have a one-off consultation or a focus group and young people have said before oh why you know why am i doing this what's what's going to happen this doesn't really seem you know it seems a bit pointless but actually if i'm able to meet with them and um work on a project like the autism documentary or um spend a lot of time with them on our young inspectors program um then i feel that the you know that gives them a much better opportunity to to feed back but um accountability is a challenge and an ongoing um challenge so with that castle brown or you come back on anything now castle cole yeah thank you for that and it sounds very positive but i wanted to come back to the hcp consultation process um i'm coming i was a thinker myself so i'm kind of really feeling for your thinker and is there anything that could do that i could get a second senco if lambeth would like to give me some more funding um i mean i think i think what what we've had to do what we've done in order to kind of like is build a bigger team of expertise you know who are able to look at an ehtp and look at provision required and actually support the senco so it's not all falling on one person's shoulders to do that work but it is a lot of work i i do know that we are unusual and we have a lot we've probably had a lot more than most um i don't think every school's had that many but you know it's as as we're exploding and to use that term everyone is parental preference so we have to send through a consultation rightly so if a parent requests us to so often schools which have a higher parental preference andrew and karen schools do they will have more consultations because parents choose them more often and they will request that we send through those consultations and and that is in our environment the same kind of practice that we have to make sure that those parental requests are sent through even if the it may not be the most appropriate setting according to professionals with the child it's really important we respect that parental choice and that it is considering that we're able to feedback to families about why the school can't meet the needs if they're making that decision and what we can do to support that child or young person can i can i add to that um i think two things that i think could make a difference um so across my three schools one of the schools has uh seven ehcps another has 15 and 10 about 10 more are about to be approved and another has 12 and another eight are about to be approved what we've had to do to support the the load the workload is we have an uh a federation send co who works across the three schools as well as with the school-based staff um i think one of the challenges when you are a school that parents you know want to send their children to make no apologies for that sometimes i think the those parents need um the advice early early doors often it is something as simple as you know if your child needs a quieter uh smaller environment they don't really know that and once they come through the doors so sometimes earlier conversations or earlier information if they can access that would help them to make initial choices that might suit their suit their children better and would then reduce the time that has been taken with their child in the wrong provision um before they are before they are able to be in the right place and that's one of the things and another thing is uh the process of gathering the information for for an application um and then that going to panel and then for whatever reasons and sometimes i think there can be reasons that uh could have been identified sooner before it being presented at panel um that could have either provided more information that would have been required in the paperwork if that was missing or um or or something even more vital off often the the pushback offer things that could have been uh identified sooner if there was a process in place to have a look at them before it goes to panel and that final decision is made because if it is pushed back for something that is paperwork intensive then there's a whole another lack of time before the ehtp can be can be granted so i think there are some sort of mechanical things that can can make a difference the process i would add that we have had quite a lot of support from lambard because we obviously have an unusual um number who are applying and so that will be things like you know when when applications are presented to us rather than drip drip drip can we have them all at once please because i you know if i'm going to say yes to something it's because i can meet needs but we can only meet so many needs you know i can't meet a hundred you know we can't have 104 well you know 104 children can't arrive with an ehtp and even if you think well actually i could probably meet that need if i've got eight other children i'm going to accept with a slightly different need actually that's you know it's not just about the needs of one child it's the needs of the group of children in the school that needs to balance as well so we have found that much more helpful than having you know a few years ago it was like here's one two weeks later here's another one well i've already said yes to 10 so now where am i um and uh you know and i think there has been some uh better work being done i would agree that sometimes i feel that the advice earlier going into secondary transition um depending on the different schools and sometimes depending on different boroughs is is potentially not as helpful um because secondary is a very different schooling system to primary you know generally the nurturing you know one teacher model that doesn't exist um in most settings so you know it is more difficult and i think and you know if you've got a senko who hasn't seen the other side or is it doesn't know what the other side looks like quite so much then sometimes the advice isn't as great as it could be as to what the best setting is but my final thing to add but i i must say that the connected way in which head teachers work in lambeth actually enables a lot of this what we're talking about just us knowing the schools and being able to provide that advice and us having those conversations the head teachers in lambeth work incredibly closely together and know a lot of the provision that is available and so actually those conversations albeit at a delayed stage actually happens quite flexibly and we're able to support our families by going to the settings with our families because we have those relationships with uh primaries or with the nursery settings when they're coming into primary secondaries thank you thank you come back councillor cole or no that's interesting thank you i mean there's people there any more questions that occurred to anyone a lot of speakers this evening and i got a lot of information although it sounded really good to me considering how well how bad things are on the funding side or whatever lambeth seems to be really making the most the best of it really i don't know what the government's going to come out with um later this later this year and i'm not going to assume it's one thing or another we've actually got one of our local MPs is the care of the education committee as well we're not getting any more questions in that case one of the things that i haven't had anything has any got any sort of things that we would want to put for recommendations from this meeting really this is something that we want to put out of this sort of recommending to the cabinet or to the officers from this apart from welcoming the report and the the approach that we're taking do anything else from any of the councillors just pick it on but not about the um the voice of the users about the didn't let's say you mentioned the heniel family survey i don't know whether we could receive that before the what the what the conclude what the results are that certainly that's kind of a happy welcome to go to you and then you can make it all available yeah anyhow so yeah you can have it i don't know whether you want to spend more time in a committee hearing it if anything you can have committee members come and meet the officer separately so you don't have to take you know yeah i think we'll just see it then yeah if we've got questions we'll come back to you there's an innovation accent okay but i mean this strategy needs cabinet as you came and spoke and it's being rolled out work is being done much a way to keep you informed and updated on how it's going to experience on the ground because it's most important for you to not here it's good that we've actually had that tonight itself but here from the educators and from parents and carers about how it's how it's going i think the appropriate thing is to invite that back in the future to hear again has anything changed again at the next milestone point so maybe it's this one me just listen i would like to have is it the best of schools it's there the best experience from scn is to have that in all schools in lambeth get that consistency of experience if ideally if i said little oliver off to one school and he turned out he was scn he'd get a similar experience be it from i don't know clapham manor or heatbrook or whoever or whatever that you could actually you could be sure you'd actually get a certain core experience there i don't think there's anything we can do about that really because a lot of that actually sits with the schools yeah there's i would say there's not yeah it's not for me to direct you as a committee but you know the attitude of the government for most of the last 10 or 15 years was it really was autonomy at all costs in the education system yeah i think that has been in this area has been at the detriment you were saying about experiences that that's not just autonomy at all costs schools it's the difference across local authorities as well and there is legislation going through at the moment we begin to change that shift require cooperation for instance on fair access plant cooperation in other areas it will drive that change but that won't come into force probably until the 26 27 academic year so it's it's not right now even then it would take time when we need it if many would take time again going through the system with not getting the the necessarily the support that they do so yes so apart from welcoming the report and thanking you all for coming and speaking here i haven't got i'm receiving that report well i think the recommendation of when they get to the next milestone if they come back and present again yes the follow-up is that's what we're going to do so thank you so thank you very much thank you bachelor you all come along tonight and hopefully we haven't picked you up too late so thank you so much thank you so second substantial item on tonight's agenda EHE stands for elective home education it's item four it's on the agenda pack pages 17 to 41 the first here from the cabinet member for children young people and families council of mankind and then appropriate officers to introduce the item the item um thank you chair elective home education sits at this sort of funny crossroads of on the one hand parental rights and on the other hand safeguarding and educational quality um and obviously it's important to be clear that parents absolutely have the right to educate their children at home the council has a sort of an overriding duty to protect the welfare and life chances of every child at the same time so it's a balance between the two aspects of where this sits and we have seen a rise in elective home education across the country since the pandemic for some it's a deliberate positive choice um for others it's a last resort because they feel the system has let their child down particularly in some cases around the cnd um or because of issues like racism and bullying in schools um that may be not adequately addressed and there are it's important to recognize a few tragic cases like we saw with the awful murder of sarah sharif where home education is being used to conceal neglect and abuse um i think it might want to draw to your attention um it's not necessarily part of the report but how the government previous government um spent a uh a long period talking about action on this um councils were in some ways i think left with limited powers and incomplete information there was a promise of a national register for children not in school and there's a detailed consultation on this in 2019 was never delivered on and i think it's important to also recognize um the role of the coalition government in scrapping contact point database which was put forward after the death of victoria climbier and herbert laming's first review um which was not a perfect system uh and and had legitimate criticism of it as a database still helped provide information about vulnerable young people um and i think set things back when uh the coalition government came in and scrapped that um it's that safeguarding back um but looking forward there's a new renewed commitment there's um legislation that's going through there's a long-awaited children not in school register that will be introduced and that's been welcomed by the children's commissioner and councils like ours who've been asking for this for some time it's about keeping children safe it's about ensuring every child gets the education they deserve it's not about interfering in the parental choice aspect of this and i think what you see in the report tonight is um strengthening of local processes under uh sophie's team um the multi-agency audits the role that's there in the sense of the partnership the action plans that are there to keep children safe and supported um and the monitoring of cases as well in order to address potential safeguarding concerns so i want to be clear it's not about penalizing families who are doing a good job job but we have a responsibility to make sure that uh no child becomes invisible and that's to me sort of a non-negotiable part of this so i really welcome the attention that you're giving to this as a topic and hopefully um a more robust system that will come out of the legislation that's going through that will enable uh professionals in the team around sophie and and everybody else in the rest of the children families education uh directorate to be able to really provide that kind of uh overarching support that is needed in some cases okay and hopefully you all read as well i had a written submission from like a team over at was it barnet council it's quite detailed and in a slightly different way of doing their education through a arms length company was it or something like that bells yeah which is a barnet um owner have a company that they own that delivers their education services both elective home education education welfare um i can't remember the other ones off the top of my head but they they they basically have set up a company that to do this that aren't lovely for them it sort of interests me on that as well how much sort of active support they give to everyone who've chosen active home education because i could imagine for myself just saying that if i decided that things weren't working out at school or whatever for a reason i could see myself in a situation where i'd want to do that but it would be really difficult i would think that actually getting the actual support you needed to actually match the amount of education you would get at school there just seem to be a lack of general support parents could actually access to this we are driven by the protective factor of school because in terms of if we think about school it isn't just about those academic outcomes it's about social interaction it's about being able to do early identification for send all those other services that sit around school so definitely from an education service provider point we are really looking at how we can support those families to transition back into mainstream so if you were struggling with a mainstream school what we had an agreement from with our mainstream heads is that there's a 10 day calling off period because often what we see and you'll see that skew in terms of key stage four in terms of numbers with ehe's obviously it's down to relationship breakdowns with the school and what we'd want to see is we working proactively before they're in elective home education to look at can we help build rebuild that or can we help find your alternative school so that that young person remains in mainstream education with all of those other things that go on around a young person when they're in those settings in terms of social development and so our focus is is around that in comparison to necessarily providing resources for when they are electively home educated we know that children are more vulnerable when they're electively home educated we face the challenge that if a child is not registered at a school place or comes back into the country having been abroad there is no mechanism currently to alert us that there is a child who doesn't have a school place and that puts our children at risk so a big focus for us has really been around our joined up working with children's social care to make sure we're really safeguarding as council kinds rightly points out there are families who are doing a really good job in terms of supporting their children with elective home education but it's the risk that we are aware of with elective home education it's really important to us so that audit that we completed that resulted in nine school attendance orders means we identified nine children that actually their vulnerability meant that the risk was high for that young person to remain out of sight of those services so they had something called school attendance order which meant we supported them to find a school and you can see from the two case studies we included that they were supported to successfully return to mainstream school and be supported to be successful and and achieve in that school as well which is so crucial as well but to support the family as well yeah i've read that certain things in the in the report and it was actually looked very good there it's to get get the parents out of bad situations with without them actually wanting to withdraw from the system finding other alternatives but my counsellors are to ask any questions councillor cole and councillor armstrong sort of two separate one um this one just out of what you were saying um um i'm just wondering whether safeguarding training actually includes same for us awareness if we or any staff member becomes across the child that is one of those that that is not in the system at all and it's a big concern for us for the education system um and how much awareness is that around around that possible issue there are kind of invisible children if you come into the country or come back in but um my other question that's a separate one um when a child um a young person reaches a point where they're going to go back in school or they want to go back in um is there any guidance or policy around around that that transition back into school are they able to um start school part-time or what kind of support will they get to make sure that they they transition back in because i think that is good to see happen so if i start that's kind yeah council kind of so on the first one on the training and then i think hopefully we'll pick up on the second one about transition but it is something that we discuss at the safeguarding training it is part of our responsibility in our role as corporate parents is to be able to pay attention to situations and to be able to see signs although it's obviously challenging because you can't always see everything and we are not the same professionals that are out there in the community what i would say is that the whole point of having the new register that will come into place is so that the local authority in the team and the sophie know not since school and are able to begin to close the gap of that small group that may be invisible so that should change but there is probably a wider point there which is about making sure that we refresh safe garden training and an awareness for collective members often we expect the team to go through continuous professional development and challenge themselves we should as well and we shouldn't be able to not be part of that there is obviously the next item is about said and some of the advice that's there but we've discussed before in the interaction plan about keeping counsellors up to speed on things and so sophie i know you won't because details were interested no so just in terms of that safe garden training we have been working directly with dan stotton in terms of working with gps because actually they're a key element for us in terms of actually often families will register for with a gp so we've been looking at alongside dan how we can work with our children young persons alliance to really promote that to make gps really education curious as in asking about educational settings but also knowing who we are to make sure if they have any concerns to flag that not just a general safeguarding but actually have that curiosity and i think that's a crucial part of that link similarly we send how we make sure that when we're looking at elective home education it's not just looking at education it's looking at health and social care and how we joined up can do that work to safeguard um i can see dan's come on the screen i didn't know if you wanted to add certain he's just good and in terms of the transition back in it's a very small team the elective home education it sits within inclusion our inclusion team is a team of three so it's a challenge but what we do is is based on an individual pupil and individual pupils needs so we have quite an extensive as you heard outreach team in terms of every senco in terms of scmh in terms of autism so we can utilize according to a child's need that support to support the transition we would be in contact with the primary school or secondary school to talk about phased transitions to talk about supporting that transition into back into mainstream they can do a phased transition they can do say arriving at 9 30 and leaving at 2 30 so they can get used to not having to travel when everybody else is coming into the school they can we can set up different models our education welfare service is really key in this work as well so the education welfare officers will work with that family once they're on a roll at the school to to attend to make sure that they're arriving you know on time or if they need support that they're able to have that facilitation through the EWO that support as well in terms of if there are challenges so i think that it's not just based on the elected home education team but actually those other teams that sort of circle around it to support the families to transition but each is generally individual we currently have approximately 277 as outlined in the report in terms of families but we are that work with children social care is so crucial for us to make sure we're identifying where we have vulnerable vulnerable families and social workers being curious to ask those questions and that was part of the action plan in terms of that making sure that they're proactively asking about education the quality of education what education that child is receiving but most importantly asking the child if they would like to return to school because often families are spoken to as in parents but it's also important to have that child voice as well so that's that role as well in terms of that's the social worker which is why it's so important we're doing this as a joined up piece okay can i just ask about the time scale for the register is that is that in effect now well the legislation is going through so it's part of that yeah in front of that so it's showing us then yeah it will be enacted and then it will have to the department will have to put guidance in place but i think the most important bit in the report that the the report covers the figures for lambeth the team already doing it so if you said it is a small team but they all right are already out there we have a very good relationship with schools i think so we're able to keep that dialogue going to know about people who may drop off the challenges the small group of people that are invisible to the system particularly given the draw your attention to earlier we know that in some a very very small number of cases that's why somebody who's electively home educated may not be uh for the kind of reasons that that all of those that are home uh for it for their education are there in a sense of either the frustration with the system or uh delivering the better education of course um so completely agree with what castle kind of said in terms of you know cannot let a single child slip through the kind of system and it's better to be vigilant than not um my question is and i am conscious that the the bill is still going through parliament and hasn't come out of the end yet um but the children well-being and school bill which is obviously really important in sort of tackling this issue of a lack of enforceability of vigilance within local authorities at the moment um and very very welcome um what preparations are you making and i am conscious that you know you don't have the set timeline yet of those kind of things but as this requirement comes in what preparations are you making for um the levels of requirement for enforcement within the local authority to be on the rush to make come from that um and again i am conscious that it's still going through the parliamentary process but then also what plans are you making for when it does go through the parliamentary process does achieve role as set in terms of the potential increases of vulnerable children who may become where the council may become aware of in terms of tackling that and dealing with that as that will obviously be um conscious fantastic work that's outlined in the report but you may have a sudden increase um that wouldn't normally come over your usual working pattern so why are you making preparations in terms of when that goes um so we've had recent meetings with the dfe um business council it's currently with with the house of laws and the dfe have already started their conversations with us and one of the areas will be that they are looking to move from that annual review to a term new review of everyone on the elective home education register and the register like you said will be enforceable uh which we welcome so we are going to have to look at the team in terms of their capacity to do those reviews um it will be also we haven't been told yet what level of scrutiny will be there because currently we have no scrutiny over a curriculum a family can choose their curriculum and as long as they're submitting a curriculum to us annually there is no we can't push back and say you're not doing enough phonics or you're not doing everything so we welcome what the guidance will be around that so far it's just been conversations with the dfe at this stage with them saying our indications at the moment is that it's going to be termally our indications that it's going to be an enforceable register we like you've pointed out have said are you then going to give us more funding to be able to do this um they said they would take that away uh for consideration but we have put that back to the dfe that obviously we would need to increase capacity to be able to achieve these areas i think again it's really important and that's one of the strengths is that we work collaboratively with our health partners with children's social care with education welfare officers so that actually isn't just one team in terms of elective home education that responsibility sits with our attendance team it sits with education welfare and like we talked about those outreach teams to make sure we support those children to transition back into mainstream it doesn't mean that we would all those children would suddenly not be able to have elective home education it just means that scrutiny would increase and like we said we welcome the dfe outlining how that's achievable without any extra funding and we would also welcome the extra funding if they make those changes because what we will need would be to increase the capacity of that team to be able to do it i think in terms of people places um we have places at our schools so we would you know welcome that support and like i said it would be about putting the whole team around the child to support that transition back into the to a mainstream setting or especially setting appropriate once they've got an ehtb that's the bride thanks i'll be quick because i'm conscious of your time um so as council kind mentioned uh the concern here is those who are invisible to the system and it seems as though in this thing it depends on the engagement parent and us knowing about them um in order to provide scrutiny um it's not like ofsted's gonna knock on your door and do a no-notes inspection of the education that's going on inside these homes and in 1.5 it mentions that we've got 277 on the books but in 1.3 no legal obligation for people to tell us they're educating this might be more of a call for more information than a question but do we have any estimates of what that number might be beyond the people we know about officially and of that 277 do we have any demographic data reasons why and i was going to drop me to go so in terms of um in terms of landworth we have quite a strong due diligence in terms of knowing those 277 we uh make sure we are having conversations with families about their reasons why they're choosing to elect to be home educated that's recorded their response to the annual review is recorded because families we can do a home visit they don't have to let us in so there are lots of things that we aren't able to enforce at this current stage so we record if there's uh no response to our annual review requests as well and then we escalate in terms of how we work with children's social care in terms of saying actually we now have concerns around safeguarding and that allows us to be able to engage with the family on a higher level in terms of the number that are invisible i would say in number that we are working because of the due diligence we have with every child who's registered for a school place and the follow-up there it is a minimal small number because the moment a child is registered for a place then we are automatically following that that that child's um journey in terms of education and automatically schools have to let us know in terms of electric home education to offer us so we have that level the challenge is children coming into the country in terms of the registrations like i said and we are working to try and be innovative but it is a challenge but we from the work that we already do estimate those numbers are small but we know that that increases the vulnerability so it doesn't mean that we are any less diligent or following up with our partners but that is the challenge in terms of following up with our partners to have that collaborative working because as i said there's no legal enforceability at the moment for us and that's why we welcome the new bill coming through so that we are able to enforce that more in terms that they have to then inform us rather than us following for once they registered but we also really wanted to in terms of even under five so if at any point they registered at a pvi childminder then we have them in our system so we're able to then follow up and do that tracking instead of they've never ever been registered in our system which would be a very small number thanks so if you've got any other questions the only particular recommendation i got out of that is safeguarding training it should include the sort of this particular scenario where you've got i mean would it be possible to see a bit more of a breakdown of the data 277 just in terms of the reasons like the percentages that's given there's things like that i can actually just send that to you rather than i can do that how i'm going to do your breakdown in the family survey and when you say that kind of thing yeah we can i can do in terms of age i've done everything i've just uh say that there's obviously there can get a point with some information where individuals can be identifiable yes it's a small number and the important thing is about us not getting that one hopefully you will allow sophie and the team to be able to pull that together at their discretion lower it it doesn't think that the last thing that we want for the document to be circulated that then begins to say oh there's one person in this situation which then can be used to identify that who that is and that has other other implications of a couple of things so safeguarding training does include the questions about the education aspect the councillors are i don't know if it does already actually it touches on it yeah i think it's what you you know is the extent of what it is it's a big broad topic and the more important thing is about councillors as elected members as corporate parents being continuously refreshed in what the process is to be able to take it forward and make the right sort of referrals in the right way you know nobody is asking you to make the judgment the team is there for it's about owners corporate sense you know make the right call where to refer in under what circumstances and yes for that then the training should be there but there is a session scheduled for a few that now after someone has responded so it's turning up to them so okay anything's got anyone else you want to make on recommendations sir thanks that's it was my particular request was that whatever now i was actually quite surprised you had all that information so quickly so having brought it all together so thanks for that bit and our next item is the ofsted update report and it is just uh an update we had an update if you recall the last meeting as well and it's um 975 c it's 43 to 59 you can count there first day from the cabinet member for children and families council of mankind and officers were able to introduce the item um i don't think there's really a need for an introduction to this item because the report is quite clear and succinct um for us to be able to answer yeah any questions i think i'll record just in case as well but i think it probably is all to you if you have any questions that arise from us here is an update if not i'm not expecting it to be a big item no so it's i'll go the introduction and get straight to questions which is mostly good news as well which is not so if we go straight to questions then do we know when we're expecting this next full or next full inspection yeah i think so um hi everybody my name is laura feeney i'm assistant director for transformation improvement and performance nice to see you this evening um so we had the annual engagement meeting which as you can see i've reported on here in the update and we talked quite meaningfully about our educate where we're at with education we're at with our children's social care and we we explained that we we had a big process of improvement as you can see from our report and i think that that they took that on board we haven't had the call yet so i'm anticipating that we'll have the because we're so close to these some holidays now i'm anticipating that we'll have that call in the autumn but that's as far as we can say anything else on that no see does that answer your question castle brown questions i mean me considering where we were before is really good news that we're going down this path and we've seen so many improvements and i'll carry on going this way and we'll we'll get good results out of our next meetings as well but any other questions on that or just castle call yeah one um it's about on page 55 there was a recommendation that schools and families be this is from 2020 mind you that schools and families be encouraged to engage with support services such as camps at an early stage um and i just wondered how sort of easy that was to achieve because my own experience is quite difficult to get an appointment with cams so it was just a question of that i know it's from 2020 but but whether that that that point was achieved thank you for the question thank you for the question council call as you can as you say that was five years ago now but we're lucky we've got dan stoughton here who can um respond is that okay dan yeah yeah of course good evening everyone my name is dan stoughton i'm the director of integrated children's commissioning and youth services for the council and the icb and the clue there is that mine's an integrated role so i'm also look after the nhs side of the system in the borough and really good question about cams and cams integration in schools i think the best way to illustrate our steps forward in this space is that we are um fortunate to have bid for and have got three waves of mental health support teams in schools in 42 schools in our borough and across primary and secondary and as in 2026 we're about to have a fourth wave of mental health support teams in schools so what that means is we have um uh kind of tier two as we might have called previously lower level emotional health and well-being and lower level emotional health and education practitioners within schools 42 as i say across the borough and who are staffed by colleagues from cams and from educational psychology and to basically do a lot of that work um council that you've mentioned in the earliest earlier space to prevent the need for later referral onto cams to meet that need earlier prevent that later referral and as i say we've got those in a good number of schools across our borough and i think the first wave came in in 2022 and we've amassed as i say uh two more since alongside that as well um we have uh in the last five years and since that recommendation we have worked closely with our cams colleagues to extensively redesign the model of cams in the borough which means that there's much more emphasis placed on the front door much more um kind of capacity built around early triage so making sure that when children come in in crisis they get an immediate response as needed um and then so so nobody's kind of lost in the system uh as it were and then finally um in kind of heartening news we've we know that at the moment um in our local camps uh service we are seeing upwards of 90 of children who are referred into the but into the cam service in landworth are getting their first meaningful contact within 28 days so obviously we don't want any children to be waiting any time at all for emotional health and well-being support but we have put in quite a lot of work and a lot of steps both in the early intervention space and in the cam space themselves over the last five years to mitigate against some of that hopefully that answers some of your question thank you very much got any other questions and this i think we've got any other um apart from noting the report there or to future updates as well okay you're all agreed on that then the last item we've got it's the work program and you've got that uh it's out of six i'm in agenda packet pages 51 to 63. you know it's a live document can be changed throughout the year as you can see in the appendix there it has the current schedule of actual things we're looking to do but these things change as um subject changes sometimes thoughts are not ready and it's not quite right we move things around we have had a couple of requests or um item well we actually looked into it on the last meeting as well and people place planning but that we are and um we'll look at the actual see where we can best schedule that in again as an update um members have agreed on that so it's something that's sort of an ongoing thing and we get better information that comes along and things happen like there was a recent hearing hearing as well to say which way we're steering things that's just be okay for that and obviously we need to check that before and but i have meetings with uh uh 100 car to discuss these things council bryant yeah i was just picking up that point um shared that i mean this is actually the next meeting in october i think obviously we've got there's a substantive item on children's services budget scrutiny uh and that was going to include an update on people place planning because that's obviously a critical part of it so that's actually already on the plan but i would just also request this partner i'm sure that would be in the update it will be will be uh your your colleague uh ben is um is actually putting a request right i responded to him telling him he doesn't need to worry he's got such a good colleague on the subcommittee i'm just kidding it'd be important that our place includes like the lessons that they learn from the school adjudicators decision because obviously there are going to be other proposals about uh collaborations or whatever you call them coming forward and obviously it's how we can the lessons that we don't fall down or did you hit again yeah absolutely we did that when we next next review because by that time as well we'll have better data about what next year is going to look like so yes we're okay with that okay in that case yeah all right west of the committee just before the meeting i met with the youth council where we're looking at strengthening some of their roles you currently have a vacant post on the committee for this year and i would like to ask you to invite a member of the youth council sit on the training meetings for the rest of this year it doesn't mean that anybody can't be there additional yeah you're on democratic services from the result of having that and i think it would be an excellent opportunity to allow them to be part of it specifically one of the areas i was discussing with them that they asked me about was scrutiny of budgets and i think that would be a positive step to take if you would all be okay with facilitating that to actually name one particular person or just a nominee for each meeting i think i think we just i would urge you to be flexible on it yeah this is what i was saying here we all the same was in the time strange life of giving up our to do this i would just indulge the bit of having a space for absolutely between jp and myself and sorry just to intervene um just on the recommendation of that we can have it as an action um as a recommendation but we can't agree for a member a new member to see it but we can put it forward as a recommendation but yeah i mean i don't sit on the committee i i attend it in person yeah i suggest you having a standing spare seat in the room to allow somebody to attend back to attend much in the way that we have the children in care council speak at corporate parenting board for those of you who sit on that at every single meeting they're not members of they're not proposing it as membership that's what i would that's what i did i'm not changing the constitution wait it'd be upset asking your intelligence given there's a vacant space that means that there's one less person already attending it it would be not knocking somebody out to then say you know here they could be and that allows us then to do to your sayings hotel to be able to look at any constitutional changes rather than a constitutional member it's attending and uh and i would use my chair's flexibility to allow them to be involved so if you can indulge me yeah very happy with that thanks so much indeed is everyone else okay with that just to get there okay yes if we've not got anything else anyone wishes to say i'll say thanks so much to everyone in the room for attending tonight and also everyone else online and we've actually managed to finish at quarter to nine which is not bad for one of our meetings actually so touch wood
Summary
The Children's Services Scrutiny Sub-Committee met to discuss special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision, elective home education, and to receive an Ofsted update. The sub-committee agreed to receive an update on the results of the annual families survey and report back at the next milestone, to include awareness of the process of elective home education in the corporate safeguarding training, and to circulate a breakdown of the demographic data in relation to children who were electively home educated and the reasonings parents provided for electively home educating their children. The sub-committee also agreed to note the content of the Ofsted update report and that the pupil place planning report scheduled for October include an update on the lessons learned from the school adjudicators decision.
SEND and Alternative Provision
The sub-committee welcomed a report on SEND and alternative provision, and heard from Sophie Garner, Interim Director of Education and Learning, who introduced the new strategy to drive improvement for 2025 to 2030. The strategy was co-produced with schools, parents, families, children and young people, and was also subject to a Local Government Association (LGA) peer review in November 2023. The strategy is underpinned by an action plan and governance sits within the SEND Strategic Partnership Board. The seven priorities include alternative provision, and aim to achieve improvements by 2030, especially around sufficiency and inclusive mainstream practices. The report also detailed support for children and young people who do not have education and healthcare plans (EHCPs), such as the three-team for children at risk of exclusion and the Exceptional Needs Grant. Lulu Pinkney, SEND Youth Involvement Coordinator, spoke about amplifying the voices of children in SEND and ensuring their involvement in decision making.
The sub-committee then heard from Rosemary Merricks, Facilitator of the Lambeth Parent Forum, who welcomed the incorporation of feedback from families into the strategy and highlighted the need for everyone to understand the needs of children and young people with SEND and to work together to provide the best possible outcomes. Andrea Parker, Executive Headteacher of BJS Federation of Schools and Children Centres, offered feedback from primary schools, highlighting the support from the area SENCO team and the training available to schools. Karen Chamberlain, Headteacher of Lilian Baylis Technology School, gave a secondary school perspective, noting a rise in EHCPs and praising improvements in inclusion and attendance.
Following questions from the sub-committee, Sophie Garner, Interim Director of Education and Learning, and Councillor Ben Kind, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, explained that the strategy was increasingly shaped by feedback from families, with a current emphasis on improving key transition points. They also noted that the annual SEND Family Survey was conducted to collect feedback from families, and that the team had expanded its expertise and worked to ensure proper consultation responses and options were provided to families regarding the EHCP consultation process.
The sub-committee resolved to welcome the report, and that officers provide an update on the results of the annual families survey and report back to the sub-committee at the next milestone.
Elective Home Education
The sub-committee then considered a report on elective home education (EHE). Councillor Ben Kind, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, noted that there had been a rise in elective home education across the country since the pandemic. Sophie Garner, Interim Director of Education and Learning, explained that the council had implemented a multi-agency audit which led to nine school attendance orders where children were deemed vulnerable. She also noted that officers supported families to re-engage with schools through a ten day cooling-off period and personalised transition planning, and that the elective home education team worked closely with social care, education welfare officers, and inclusion teams to ensure children were safeguarded and supported.
Following questions from the sub-committee, Sophie Garner, Interim Director of Education and Learning, and Councillor Ben Kind, Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Families, explained that corporate safeguarding training for staff and councillors included awareness of EHE and would be further refreshed. They also noted that discussions with the Department for Education were ongoing regarding the preparation for the new Children Not in School
legislation, and that officers had flagged the need for additional funding to meet increased responsibilities.
The sub-committee resolved that officers include awareness of the process of elective home education and how members can make the right referrals in the corporate safeguarding training, and that officers circulate a breakdown of the demographic data in relation to children who were electively home educated and the reasonings parents provided for electively home educating their children.
Ofsted Update Report
The sub-committee then received an Ofsted update report from Laura Feeney, Assistant Director, Improvement and Transformation, who confirmed that while the next full Ofsted inspection had not yet been scheduled, it was expected in Autumn 2025. She noted that a structured improvement programme was underway. Dan Stoughton, Director of Integrated Children's Commissioning and Youth Services, noted the integration of mental health and emotional wellbeing services in schools, which had increased early intervention.
The sub-committee agreed to note the content of the report, and that the pupil place planning report scheduled for October include an update on the lessons learned from the school adjudicators decision.
Work Programme
Finally, the sub-committee considered the work programme for 2025/26. The chair reminded members that the work programme was a live document that could change throughout the year. The sub-committee supported a proposal to invite a representative of the Lambeth Youth Council to contribute to the sub-committee as a witness in consideration of items. The sub-committee agreed to note the content of the report, and endorse a representative of the Lambeth Youth Council to contribute to the sub-committee as a witness in consideration of items.
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