Agenda item

Jane Seymour introduced the report (Agenda Item 10), which provided benchmarking data on funding of resourced provision for children with physical disabilities (PD).

Jane Seymour reported that a decision had been taken by the Forum to increase the value of the PD resourced funding bands in West Berkshire for the current financial year. This was due to increased numbers of complex cases using the provision requiring a higher level of funding. When the decision was taken, the Forum had asked for a further report to be provided on how funding bands in West Berkshire compared with other local authorities and if more use could be made of PD resources to avoid out of area placements. Jane Seymour reported that she had managed to obtain data from three other local authorities in the south east. This information showed that in all cases the bands in West Berkshire were higher than the other authorities however, West Berkshire had very low spend on specialist placements in comparison.

In conclusion Jane Seymour stated that it was felt that West Berkshire was already making very effective use of resourced provision and it was avoiding high costs on specialist external expensive placements. Further to the information in the report Jane Seymour commented that she had recently seen benchmarking data from the south east and when comparing spend per head on external placement West Berkshire was one of the lowest. Jane reported that West Berkshire was already catering for most children in house and the provision did not need to be changed. This would however, be kept under review.

Reverend Mark Bennet asked if West Berkshire could offer any surplus places to other local authorities. Jane Seymour confirmed that there was not currently any surplus places however, children from outside were sometimes accepted if possible. Gemma Piper commented that this could be an income stream overtime for the Local Authority. There were currently no surplus spaces at the Kennet secondary provision but this was something that could be considered going forward. 

RESOLVED that the Schools’ Forum noted the report.