Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Local Area Inspection highlights strengths but still more to do
Lewisham’s wider local area and all its partners were recently inspected under the new special educational needs (SEND) Inspection Framework.
Lewisham Council’s SEND strategy putting families, children and young people at the heart of the decision-making process, is seen as a strength in the Ofsted & Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection report into support for children and young people in the borough with SEND and across all services, including the local authority and local health services.
Ofsted says, “children, young people and their families are involved in co-production (a way of working where children, families and those that provide the services work together to create a decision or a service that works for them all) and “children and young people are thoughtfully considered in the decisions made by the local area partnership” that “there is a clear moral imperative to do the right thing for children and young people”, alongside that “there is lots of positive work going on to help identify SEND in very young children.”
The report also states that “there is shared ambition to improve things for children and young people with SEND in the service” and “leaders work well to support vulnerable children and young people.” Alongside that, “the SEND advisory service, Educational psychology service, SENDCo Forum also provide good training on SEND to partners.”
Ofsted & CQC did find, however, that “the local area partnership arrangements lead to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and that the local area partnership must work jointly to make improvements.”
Councillor Chris Barnham, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People at Lewisham Council says: “We are determined to ensure that all our children can have the right start in life. Good support for children with special educational needs is an important part of that. I am pleased that the inspection recognised our ambition and the strong work that the Council, schools and our health partners are doing.”
“We are well aware that there remain inconsistencies, and that we are working within a system of SEND that Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has acknowledged is broken and needs to improve. We have work in hand to address this, for example to improve support for young people with SEND as they enter adulthood, to reduce waiting times for specialist health assessments, and to support all our schools to provide an inclusive education. We will soon publish a refreshed SEND Strategy which will tackle the inspectors’ recommendations and set out an ambitious forward plan.”
There is also a wider offer to support children and young people with neurodiverse needs, including the All-Age Autism Well-being Service and Drumbeat Autism Outreach. However, children and young people can wait over a year for autism and ADHD assessments and therefore this can hamper the ability for children and young people to receive these services when the need arises.