The Children and Education Scrutiny Sub-Committee met to discuss social care reforms, the findings of a special educational needs and disability (SEND) inspection, and the sub-committee's work programme. Councillor Sulukh Ahmed was appointed as the vice chair of the sub-committee.

SEND Inspection Findings and Action Plan

The committee reviewed the findings of a recent area SEND inspection, which assessed how well the council, education, social care and health services work together to support children and young people with SEND.

The inspection concluded that:

the local area partnership's arrangements lead to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The local area partnership must work jointly to make improvements.

Despite this overall conclusion, the report highlighted positive aspects, including that children and young people with SEND are genuinely valued in Tower Hamlets, and that there have been many improvements since the last inspection. The report also noted that the parent carer forum (PCF) speaks positively about their working relationship with the local authority, and that the SEND information, advice and support service (SENDIASS) is well known and highly regarded.

Areas needing improvement included:

• Preparing for Adulthood (PfA): Outcomes across education, health and social care need more effective planning from Year 9 onwards.
• Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs): These need to accurately reflect children and young people's health and social care needs and provision.
• Access to EHCPs: Ensuring health practitioners can routinely access EHCPs to inform their work.
• Timeliness of EHCPs: Amended EHCPs are not always issued in a consistently timely way, and older young people with outdated EHCPs should be prioritised.
• Learning Disability Diagnosis: Ensuring a consistent approach to diagnosing young people with a learning disability to accurately reflect their needs and enable a well-planned transition to adult services.
• Post-16 and 19 Education: Improving the in-borough educational offer for post-16 and post-19 young people with more complex educational needs.
• Oversight of alternative provision: Strengthening oversight of the quality of provision for children and young people who are educated other than at school.
• Staff Expertise: Further developing the knowledge and expertise of staff so that they can support families more effectively, including improving the accessibility and signposting of sources of help from within the local offer.
• Waiting times: Reducing waiting times for neurodevelopmental assessment.
• Speech and language therapy: Ensuring that the commissioning arrangements of speech and language therapy for children of compulsory school age enables their needs to be met in a consistent and timely way.

The council is responding to the findings by scheduling multi-agency meetings to discuss and develop new actions, and amending the current SEND delivery plan to respond to the areas identified for improvement.

To ensure that improvement work can be prioritised, additional resources are needed, including:

• Additional permanent educational psychologists.
• Additional EHCP co-ordinators.
• More resources for speech and language therapists.
• More specialist places for young people with learning disabilities to support their transition to adulthood.

The government has announced plans to abolish NHS England and reduce Integrated Care Board (ICB) operating costs by 50% in 2025-26, and it is expected that all joint funding will be withdrawn by December 2025. This is likely to impact the following SEND transformation work currently delivered by ICB place-based commissioners:

• Developing options for a therapies offer for school age children in response to the SEND inspection recommendation.
• Leading the development of a neurovariance diagnostics pathway to address the wait times for neurodevelopmental assessments including autism in response to the SEND inspection recommendation.
• Supporting the multi agency response for children requiring support across health, education and social care with the aims of reducing hospital admissions and the need for residential placements.
• Coordinating work across the partnership on improving the diagnosis and support for children with a learning disability in response to the SEND inspection recommendation

The council must share its amended SEND delivery plan with the Department for Education (DfE) and NHS England (NHSE) for feedback by 10 October 2025, and update and publish its new SEND delivery plan by 31 October 2025.

Councillor Rebaka Sultana noted improvements in how quickly EHCPs are coming through, but asked for an update on the percentage of EHCPs issued within statutory deadlines¹. Lisa Fraser, Director of Education, responded that the figure was around 64% but that it fluctuates, particularly in the summer months when schools are closed.

Dr Phillip Rice raised concerns about the government's plans to abolish NHS England and reduce Integrated Care Board operating costs, and asked whether all joint funding would be withdrawn by December 2025. He also asked how difficult this is likely to be.

Hasan Chowdhury asked what immediate actions are being taken to respond to inconsistent SEND outcomes for children and young people, what oversight mechanisms will be in place, what steps are being taken to recruit permanent educational psychologists, and what concrete steps are being taken to expand post-16 and 19 provision for learners with complex needs.

Social Care Reform Briefing

The committee received an update on the government's mandated social care reforms, focusing on the Families First for Children programme. The reforms aim to strengthen early help, embed multi-agency safeguarding, and empower families through family group decision making. The goal is to reduce escalation into statutory services, improve outcomes for children and families, and ensure coordinated support across health, education, police, and voluntary services.

The first phase focuses on integrating early health preventative services with statutory services, multi-agency child protection teams, family group decision making, and fixing the market for residential care.

The council has received £2 million in ring-fenced transformation funding for 2025–26 to support the reforms.

The council plans to co-design changes with staff, partners, and families to ensure reforms reflect their needs and wishes. The local approach is to be careful, thoughtful, evidence-based, methodical, evolutionary, and collaborative.

Shiblu Miah raised concerns about fixing the market for care leavers², particularly regarding housing and excessive profit-making from housing. He asked what the council is doing to keep young people within the borough and whether the council is considering initiatives such as having its own accommodations for care leavers or offering market rent schemes.

Susannah Beasley-Murray, Director of Children's Social Care, responded that the council is looking at both price and quality, and that Ofsted now regulates homes for 16- and 17-year-olds in semi-independence, which has improved quality. She added that the majority of in-house foster carers live in Newham or Hackney and have links to Tower Hamlets, so that children can still see their families.

Councillor Rebaka Sultana asked what the plan is to build and retain a stable, skilled children's social care workforce, particularly for the new roles, and how schools, health services, police and voluntary sector partners are being engaged in design and delivery.

Dr Phillip Rice asked how the council proposes to assure itself and the committee that it can effectively work across agencies and empower professionals.

Work Programme

Councillor Abdul Mannan suggested putting mental health first on the work programme, due to the high and rising rates of bullying in primary and secondary schools. He requested a report with recommendations on how to improve the situation.

Shiblu Miah requested a visit to the living care team to get updates from the last review and to visit one of the supported accommodations for care leavers.