Providing seamless support that promotes good outcomes
Hartlepool is often one of the first authorities to be inspected under new frameworks, and we were the fourth to be visited by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission for a local area special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) inspection.
SEND is a far-reaching, complex and challenging area, requiring a whole system to work together effectively so that children and young people with SEND receive responsive, person-centred, seamless support that meets their needs and promotes good outcomes.
This is no easy task, but it is the minimum we should deliver for the most vulnerable children in our communities.
Children with SEND need schools, local authorities, health commissioners, providers and partners to work in harmony to support them, to collaborate and challenge themselves on quality, and deliver continuous improvement in education, care and health provision.
Our journey of improvement has been a long one and we are far from where we ideally want to be.
The most recent inspection is the culmination of several years of improvement activity where we have relentlessly focused on challenging ourselves around what our strategic objectives are and how we will achieve them.
Underpinning our judgement is the quality of the local area’s partnership with our Parent Carer Forum and its pivotal role in articulating our vision for children with SEND and where we want to be by 2027.
Parents and children are our experts by experience, and we make sure that they are the strongest voices that shape local arrangements.
The heart of our partnership is based on the child and their family at the centre of everything we do. We seek feedback on what they want and need from us and develop services in response to this.
We continuously check out what is working well and what needs to change, and review services through this lens.
Sometimes change takes longer than we want, but nevertheless, our focus remains on moving forward and driving improvement.
We are not without challenges and the inspection identified areas where the local area needs to make improvements at pace.
We knew this before the inspection and outlined in our self-evaluation where improvement was needed. Knowing ourselves well and being honest was important in the inspection process.
Looking forward, we want to review our education, health and care plans (EHCPs), making the documents more accessible and timelier for children and families.
Like many areas in the country, access to some services is taking longer than we want and to tackle this we are implementing initiatives to ensure needs are identified and met earlier. Finally, we use data and intelligence to predict need and inform strategic planning, but we need to do more of this to be future ready, with a greater understanding of what will be needed and commissioning for this.
Hartlepool local area will not rest on its laurels.
There is much still to do, and since our inspection visit, we have maintained momentum in delivering our strategy. Our ambitious plan outlines how we intend to reshape local provision to meet more need within Hartlepool.
We will soon be working with the Department for Education to pilot the proposals in its ‘SEND and alternative provision improvement plan: right support, right place, right time’.
Participating in this work will benefit our children and families in Hartlepool and help us lead system change to deliver on our vision.
- For more information, please visit www.hartlepool.gov.uk