Inspectors highlight 'significant weaknesses' in area's SEND services
Gabriella Jozwiak
Thursday, March 23, 2017
A council and local health services have been told to take action to address "significant weaknesses" in provision for children and young people with special educational needs or a disability (SEND), following an inspection.
Inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission were so concerned about services and outcomes in Dorset that they have asked Dorset County Council and the area's clinical commissioning group to set out how they plan to improve provision through a written statement of action.
Frequent changes of senior leaders were found to have reduced the local area's capacity to implement the government's disability and special educational needs reforms, such as the replacement of SEND statements with education, health and care (EHC) plans, effectively.
A letter outlining the findings of the inspection said: "Until recently, leaders have not tackled their identified areas for improvement with urgency and rigour.
"As a result, the provision that children and young people who have SEND across the local area receive and the outcomes they achieve are too variable."
During the inspection, which took place in January, inspectors found that services were missing targets to complete assessments for EHC plans on time and in partnership with appropriate agencies.
They also found EHC plans included generic targets and lacked essential information from health and social care professionals.
"These EHC plans are not tailored to the individual's needs and consequently do not support children and young people effectively to achieve their aspirations," the letter said.
Inspectors also criticised council and health leaders' effectiveness in tackling the shortcomings. They described local leaders' arrangements to check the quality and impact of their work as "inconsistent", and said systems to identify and tackle weaknesses as they occurred were "poor".
"As a result, leaders have been slow to address weaknesses and drive improvement in the quality of services for children and young people who have special educational needs and/or disabilities," the letter said.
Parents told inspectors they experienced delays in getting their children's needs assessed and were unsure about how to access information and services about SEND provision.
However, the letter noted that leaders had begun to reduce completion times for EHC plans, with 77 per cent of decisions to assess a child being made within the six-week target since November 2016.
Inspectors also praised the county's high-quality residential provision for children and young people with complex needs, noting that outcomes for looked-after-children had improved, and that the number of children excluded from school had reduced since 2016.
Dorset County Council's director of children's services Sara Tough said the authority took the findings "very seriously", and was committed to "working with our partners, parents and carers to improve services and outcomes for children and young people with additional needs".
"We need to continue to make progress in improving how quickly we complete plans and get better at working together with other agencies to meet children's needs," she said.
"The inspection team told us they believed that we have a clear understanding of what needs to be done and that our plans are having an impact."