Lincolnshire's SEND and Alternative Provision Inclusion Plan

We aim to continue strengthening the work with our partner agencies to ensure that children and young people with SEND or who access alternative provision and their families feel valued, visible and included in their communities.  We aim to ensure that children and young people and their families participate in decision making about their individual plans and are actively engaged in decisions making about their support.  

What we have achieved so far

• Lincolnshire Parent Carer Forum (LPCF) week of SEND is a well established event in January each year.  For parent and carers of children with disabilities or additional needs and for professionals who work with them. They provide a week of a diverse range of services, organisations and support groups attending online zoom sessions at different times throughout the day and evening.  Aimed at providing as much information, support and help as possible in 10 minute, bite size presentations.  The week is also supplemented with a number of workshops on specific topics requested by the membership that are held throughout the year
• LPCF are a key participant in the EHCNA 16 week multi-agency panel decision, ensuring parent and carer voice is fundamental to decision making  
• LPCF is a joint partner all local authority strategic decision making for children and young people with SEND ensuring that coproduction is embedded in all we do.  For example, Lincolnshire’s building communities of specialist provision, the review of the EBSA pathway, Lincolnshire’s SEMH strategy and Lincolnshire’s inclusion strategy to name but a very small few    
• Lincolnshire young voices (LYV) is an award-winning pan-disability participation group that helps to improve the lives of children and young people with SEND.  Their committee members have lived experience of disability and are dedicated to making positive change with a service plan that echoes their mantra of 'together, our voices make a difference'
• Lincolnshire’s electronic hub is available via Lincolnshire’s local offer for requesting EHC Needs Assessments. The hub is being widened for the completion of all annual reviews of EHC plans.  Resulting in a more transparent process for parents, carers and children and young people and further embedding coproduction
• there has been the recruitment of four dedicated education mentors within Futures4Me to actively support children and young people into education, training and employment
• the head of service for inclusion is educational representative at the youth offending management board, ensuring that education, attendance, SEND and inclusion forms key elements of shared data, discussions and analysis.  These links also support two way learning and developments    
• educational representation is embedded within the weekly joint diversionary panel (JDP) through attendance by the pupil reintegration team (PRT) to support robust decision making
• as part of the children and young people’s mental health transformation programme, we have engaged with children and young people and parents and carers with learning difficulties and autism to ensure our mental health support offer can meet their needs from community offer through to specialist services
• Liaise, Lincolnshire’s SEND information advice and support service (SENDIASS),  provides a county wide service via an appointment based telephone advice line and email support.  Face to face support is also available. Liaise ensure that service delivery is within the information, advice and support service network national minimum standards to effectively provide information, advice and support for parents, carers and children and young people. Young people who refer into the service can bypass the triage system and specify how they would like to be supported
• where children and young people are identified as not requiring an EHC needs assessment, this is viewed as a positive outcome for the child and young people in that their needs can be met through the graduated approach and support without the need for an EHC plan.  The SALL advisors provide robust feedback to the parents, carers and the school setting to identify the ongoing next steps and actions that should be put in place to maximise the positive impact of accessing the wide and diverse range of support and agencies available within the graduated approach
• in the small number of occasions where a children or young people’s highly complex needs result in them being unable to access an education within a school setting, there is a clear and robust commissioning arrangement in place  
• Lincolnshire continues to fully utilise mediation to enable issues to be resolved where possible through mediation that prevents families needing to progress to an appeal being lodged with the tribunal
• we continue to gather and evaluate feedback on the levels of satisfaction with services and implement developments for improvement where needed
• LYV’s produced award winning training.  ‘a rough guide to not putting your foot in it’ used the voices of the disabled community and national best practice to improve knowledge and confidence for everyone working or coming into contact with children and young people and adults with SEND.  With the backing of the Council For Disabled Children and funding from NHS England, they won a national association for special educational needs (NASEN) award in the  co-production category for working in partnership and producing a short, inspiring resource for professionals with the help of Badshoes Films.  The training is available free via Lincolnshire safeguarding children partnership (LSCP)
• we have maintained a high percentage of EHC needs assessments being completed within the statutory timescales to ensure timely identification of needs and the provision to meet those needs  

What we need to do next

• there remains uncertainty about families’ confidence in their child’s SEN needs being met in mainstream school through the graduated approach.  LPCF will work with stakeholders to fully explore the reasoning behind why some parents/carers see an EHC plan as a golden ticket and lack confidence in mainstream school being able to meet children’s needs through the graduated approach.  Learning will be analysed to support next steps and developments     
• we will continue to monitor and track our interim home tuition data to identify trends and gaps in services and to ensure children and young people do not spend prolonged periods of time with interim education arrangements 
• LYV’s will work with our transport and the independent travel training team in relation to public transport and accessibility for young people with SEND, providing crucial insight, advice and feedback to support developments 
• LYV’s will work with a range of schools to seek insight, views and experiences in relation to SEND related bullying with the aim of producing a school based resource to support key messages
• Liaise will continue to review how calls and emails into their service are handled and use robust data analysis to enable them to continue to implement meaningful improvements that maximise the support available to parents and carers.  They will continue to widen their offer and support through further developed links with special schools and with day care centers
• Liaise will further develop and improve their accessibility for young people, including embedding stronger links with further education colleges, ensuring the Liaise caseworkers have up to date and robust knowledge of post 16 processes and provision
• Lincolnshire will continue to analyse our data regarding appeals lodged with the SEND tribunal to inform developments and ensure that this adversarial route is avoided where possible for families
• we will continue our collaborative working with LPCF to enhance how we evaluate and gather feedback on the levels of satisfaction with services to inform service improvement and workforce development
• we will continue to work with informal and formal dispute resolution systems to try and resolve differences between families and the local authority at the earliest opportunity.  This includes continuing to contact families when receiving a complaint, mediation request or a lodged appeal to try and resolve the issues promptly  
• we will consider our local data in addition to working with the regional mediation advice, mediation and disagreement resolution service to allow analysis of trends both within Lincolnshire and across the East Midlands and use this to inform practice in this area going forward and decision making
• we will continue to monitor and track complaints and tribunals to identify trends and any gaps in service and implement effective developments to address the gaps
• where a child or young person requires a bespoke package of support we will continue to develop and implement robust processes to ensure consistency and oversight of risk management for unregulated providers