Agenda item

The report of His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate following the Local Area SEND Inspection has been published since the Committee last met.

The Committee has also received a report by the Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services setting out the indicative action plan development process and proposed governance arrangements.

Cllr Liz Brighouse, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Children, Education, and Young People’s Services, Stephen Chandler, Interim Executive Director: People, Transformation, and Performance; and Anne Coyle, Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services, have been invited to answer questions on the reports.

The Oxfordshire Joint Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee considered the report on Thursday 21 September 2023 when it focused on Health and Wellbeing aspects.  The People Overview & Scrutiny Committee is encouraged to focus on the Education aspects.

The Committee is recommended to

(a)           NOTE the report of His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate;

(b)           NOTE the indicative action plan development process and proposed governance;

(c)           AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make to Cabinet.

The Leader of the Council, Cllr Liz Leffman, as well as the newly-appointed Cabinet Members for Children, Education, and Young People’s Services and for SEND Improvement, Cllrs John Howson and Cllr Kate Gregory respectively, attended alongside the Interim Executive Director: People, Transformation, and Performance, Stephen Chandler, and the Interim Corporate Director for Children’s Services, Anne Coyle.  They attended to present the cover report which set out the indicative action plan development process and proposed governance arrangements in response to the Local Area SEND Inspection report which had been undertaken by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) in July 2023 and which had been published on 15 September 2023.

The Leader introduced the report by thanking the public speakers and by acknowledging that the Council had consistently let down parents over a long period of time and that the Council accepted the report in full.  The Leader expected to see significant improvements in a very short period of time and was grateful to the Interim Executive Director and the Interim Corporate Director for their work on the Priority Action Plan (‘the Plan’) for the Local Area Partnership (‘the LAP’) which was due to be submitted by 27 October 2023.

The Interim Executive Director expressed his sorrow that the Council had let families, children, and young people down and stated that, to recover, prompt, clear, and concrete action was needed and that the Council was committed to that.  There was not much time before the Plan needed to be submitted but workshops had taken place with different stakeholders and the importance of preparing the Plan in partnership was extremely important.

The Interim Executive Director recognised the importance of improving trust and the culture within Children’s Services and that would be addressed in the action plan.  It was intended that there would be an independent chair of the Oxfordshire SEND Strategic Improvement and Assurance Board (SIAB) and the Interim Executive Director was committed to have having the voice of parents and carers represented at every level.

The Committee recognised that the inspection was of the Local Area Partnership as an whole and the Priority Action Plan was therefore the plan of the LAP as an whole.  The Committee noted that the Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (‘HOSC’) had considered the report at its meeting on 21 September 2023 and that its questions focused on the partnership and on the health-related aspects of SEND provision.  The Committee focused its questions more on education matters and on the Council’s provision.

The Committee was pleased to hear an unequivocal acceptance of the report and the apologies made on the Council’s behalf and of the resolve and commitment to rapid and systemic improvement.  The Committee welcomed the ongoing openness to scrutiny of the Interim Executive Director and the Interim Corporate Director.  At the same time, the Committee was conscious of the fact that the core leadership team is largely made up of interim appointments and that stability and continuity would be of benefit.

The Committee heard, and noted in the Ofsted report, that “[l]eaders openly acknowledge the urgent need for a ‘reset’ to repair the fractured relationships with parents and carers and other stakeholders.”  The Committee agreed that was essential.  The Committee also heard a commitment to improving culture.  The poor communication cited in the report had hindered the building of successful relationships and an element of restorative thinking and of building anew successful partnerships with families and with other stakeholders was key.  This should include a commitment to co-production and a preparedness to engage with suggestions made by those who did not necessarily have an official relationship with the Council but did have positive contributions to make.  Timely, clear, and charitable communication would be essential and the Committee was pleased to hear of the quality assurance work being undertaken in the area of responses to complaints. 

The Committee considered that one factor was the difference between the strategic ambitions and the operational happenings.  One important element that would be helpful in improving the culture would be to conduct an audit of training available and to consider whether and where improvements were needed.  One area that should be considered was whether the right training was provided by the right people in the right place, particularly in relation to neurodivergence.

One challenge of which the Committee was aware was the difficulties for small groups and organisations of providing support for those with SEND in the community.  Many make a real difference but the limitations of funding are such that continued engagement is problematic.  The Committee noted the existence of the Connected Communities Fund and called on the Council to consider how seed-funding could be appropriately paid out to groups to enable growth and sustainability.

The Committee commended the effectiveness of the outreach work undertaken by special schools in the county and considered it would be valuable were the Council to work with them to consider how best that work could be strengthened and extended.

The Committee discussed the situation with Education and Health Care Plan tribunals and explored if it would be appropriate to recommend that all applications for tribunals should be paused.  The Committee was pleased to hear that a number of control measures had been put in place which should ensure that the number of tribunals should reduce markedly and that no such application would be undertaken without the agreement of at least the Deputy Director.

The Committee was keen to explore how it could best work with HOSC to scrutinise Children and Adults Mental Health Services (‘CAMHS’), the challenges it was facing, and the resultant impact on children and families.

The Committee was very conscious that the report was a result of the inspection of the Local Area Partnership as an whole.  That meant there was a challenge in identifying who was ultimately responsible for leading and holding to account.  One of the challenges for the LAP would be to ensure that its leadership and responsibility was clear.  The Committee observed that it was very important to build strong relationships with key partners across the LAP.

The Committee established that the Priority Action Plan would be shared with Cabinet before it was submitted to the Department for Education.  The Committee emphasised that it was imperative that members of the Committee but also of the Council more widely were aware of the content of the Plan at the earliest opportunity to enable appropriate oversight and engagement.  The Committee recognised, however, that there would be a fluidity and flexibility to the Plan up to the point of submission.  The Committee also recognised that the Plan would be a high-level one but that there would be detailed tracking of the actions thereafter.

The Committee resolved to DELEGATE to the Chair and Vice-Chair responsibility for making recommendations along with the Chair and Vice-Chair of HOSC.  These were subsequently agreed and reported to Cabinet as:

Recommendation 1: For Leadership over the Partnership and of Children and Young People’s SEND provision to be explicitly set out and communicated clearly to families and all stakeholders; as well as clear measures of how leadership will be developed and demonstrated at all levels, and to demonstrate how new ways of working with stakeholders will put families at the heart of transformation.

Recommendation 2: To ensure good transparency around any action planning and the improvement journey for SEND provision for Children and Young People, and to develop explicit Key Performance Indicators for measuring the effectiveness of improvements that are open to scrutiny. The committee also recommends for more comprehensive action planning after the publication of the initial action plan requested by Ofsted, and for this action planning to be made fully transparent.

Recommendation 3: For the Leadership to adopt restorative thinking and practices with utmost urgency so as to reassure affected families, and for this thinking to be placed at the heart of any coproduction exercises to help families feel their voices are being heard as well as for the purposes of transparency.

Recommendation 4: To ensure adequate and timely co-production of action planning to improve SEND provision, and for the voices of Children and their families to be taken into account in tackling the systemic failings highlighted in the report. The committee also recommends that the Partnership considers timely allocation of seed funding for the development of co-production involving people with lived experience; and for joint commissioning of training and alternative provision across Oxfordshire, involving multi-agency stakeholders, the voluntary sector and families.

Recommendation 5: To continue to improve working collaboration amongst the Local Area Partnership so as to integrate support mechanisms and services as effectively as possible, and for rapid improvements to be demonstrated on clear and efficient information and patient-data sharing on Children with SEND.

Recommendation 6: For every effort to be made for children and young people with SEND to receive the support that is specifically tailored toward and appropriate to their own needs and experiences; and for those involved in providing support services to be aware of the additional/alternative services available which a child may also need a referral to. It is also recommended that improvements in one-to-one communications with families should be prioritised by Oxfordshire County Council, using the budget agreed by cabinet immediately following the Ofsted report. 

Recommendation 7: To consider the use of digital resources for enablement, including at an individual level; and to ensure EHCPs are up to date and that they constitute living documents for families.