Agenda item

Purpose: To raise awareness of the SEND Reforms.

Jane Seymour introduced her report to Members of the Health and Wellbeing Board, which aimed to raise awareness of the Special Educational Needs (SEN) and Disability reforms. It also sought to inform Members regarding the work undertaken so far towards implementation of the reforms and seek their approval and finally to request that the Board consider how the specific implications of the reforms for health would be address.

Section two of the report outlined the main changes as a result of the SEN Disability Reforms and section three looked at the next steps towards implementing the changes.

The existing statutory assessment and statementing process would be replaced by a much more holistic, person centred Education Health and Care (EHC) Assessment process. There would be a new timescale in that EHC assessments must be carried out within 20 weeks, compared to the previous 26 weeks.

The process would be much more person centred and every family whose child had an EHC Plan would be able to request a Personal Budget for the education, health and/or care aspects of the EHC Plan. As a result the process would be much more resource intensive.

Three Assessment Coordinators would be recruited. Interviews were taking place the week commencing 19^th May 2014.

Local Authorities’ responsibilities would extend potentially up to the age of 25, whereas they currently lapsed at age 19.

There were specific requirements for joint commissioning. These included the development of clear arrangements between Local Authorities and partner commissioning bodies for commissioning services for children with SEND, the integration of education, health and care provision for SEND where it was beneficial and the agreement of shared outcomes including joint analysis of intelligence about needs of the local population.

Jane Seymour reported that section four power phrased the report by the Commissioning Support Unit Officer and outlined specific implications for health commissioners and providers. Section 4.2 of the report gave additional recommendations for consideration by CCGs including all EHC Plans needing to be outcome focused and reiteration of the new 20 week deadline for the publication of final EHC Plans.

Councillor Graham Pask asked Philip McNamara if this was innovative work for the CCG and what steps the CCG would need to take. Phil McNamara reported that the pooling of budgets was not new to them as this had also taken place within the previous Primary Care Trusts. The recent approach taken to the BCF illustrated how the CCG would operate moving forward. Phil McNamara support the suggested way forward.

Jane Seymour confirmed that there was an external organisation commissioned to hold personal budgets if individuals did not feel confident to do so.

Councillor Franks referred to the ‘Local Offer’ and queried if there was a case for extending the voluntary prospectus. Tandra Forster was leading on a piece of work looking at what was being commissioned with the voluntary sector and quality assessment. Jane Seymour confirmed that she was unaware of this would however, would ensure she linked to it moving forward.

Councillor Franks expressed that the Board would be interested to keep sight of the area or work moving forward particularly the pooling of budgets, due to the Boards own role in joint commissioning moving forward.

Rachael Wardell reported that the biggest challenge with this work was personalisation, which was particularly difficult concerning children. If the families were at the centre of professional thinking then it was easy to overlook the needs of the child.

Adrian Barker stated that he struggled to see how the Board could promote the integration of services. Councillor Franks confirmed that a steering group was coordinating the work. The role of the Board was to ensure joint commissioning arrangements were working. Most of the work would be carried out elsewhere however, it was important that the Board kept oversight as part of it’s joint commissioning/integration role.

RESOLVED that the Board would be kept up to date on work surround the SEN reforms post implementation.