11 October 2024 weekly update

Dear Colleagues,

SENCO conference

Two highlights this week. Firstly, the second annual SENCO conference took place at the Detling Showground on Tuesday attracting almost 500 delegates, with circa 450 schools represented.

As the LA is often thought of as the SEND system, we opened the conference by introducing the other key partners which together constitute the system. The NHS was represented by Abigail Kitt, Deputy Director Children’s Services, NHS Kent and Medway; parents and carers represented by Bernie Hannon, Chief Executive of Kent PACT (Parents and Carers Together); and the education sector represented by Dr Alison Ekins of Valley Invicta Academy Trust. Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, Rory Love OBE also talked about the political role of KCC in supporting SEND.

The first keynote speaker, Dr Pooky Knightsmith put the focus firmly on children and young people, giving them a voice by talking about both the importance of relationship building and suggesting simple techniques to achieve the aim of making pupils feel heard, held and healed. Senior HMI Aimee Floyd presented on Ofsted’s current approach to inspection of provision for children and young people with SEND and planned changes, including strengthening Ofsted’s teams inspecting special schools.

As we move towards implementation of our own Communities of Schools delivery model, Mark Southworth, Keran Currie, Sonal Desai and Mel Farris presented on their experiences in Croydon; and Kevin O’Neill of IQM (Inclusion Quality Mark), the final keynote speaker, certainly celebrated inclusion. Delegates also had the opportunity to attend a range of workshops and find out more about support available through a marketplace. We will be circulating a report including the evaluations which were plentiful and positive. A huge thank you to all of those involved in the planning and presentation of this fantastic event, and to those that participated.

The Big Mental Health Conversation for young people

On World Mental Health Day, 200 13 to 16 year olds came together to talk about how to support young people’s mental health, supported by Young Leaders from Kent Youth County Council (KYCC) who played a key role in planning and presenting the event. Responding to feedback from previous events, this year the event was made more accessible so pupils with additional needs were able to attend and the marketplace was expanded to include more animals, which were very popular. Organisations attending included Therapy Ponies from Tutsham Academy and Nelson Park Riding Centre, PAT (Pets As Therapy) dogs, NELFT, Porchlight, Salus, Rising Sun, MIND and Kent Police.

Staff attending were able to participate in training led by young people on bullying and creating a safety plan about self-harm. Hearing directly from children and young people about their own concerns helps providers to improve the services and the outcome of the day will be used in planning. A fantastic day and we look forward to reading the report.

Help and support on emotional wellbeing and mental health

• For more information about the mental health support available for young people, go to the NHS Kent and Medway website
• Find out more about i-THRIVE, mental health support for young carers and the general importance of good mental health for children and young people on kent.gov.
• Learn about Kent Youth County Council (KYCC) elections, which are now open, and the key issues KYCC members work to support, including mental health and wellbeing.

Kent County Council is also currently seeking views on proposed changes to the council’s emotional wellbeing support for children and young people aged four to 19 with mild to medium emotional wellbeing and mental health needs.

The proposal is to fund a new Therapeutic Support Service rather than the current Kent Children and Young People’s Counselling Service.

Find out more and take part in the consultation

Finally, Abigail Kitt of the NHS shared at the SENCO conference that Kent and Medway Children and Young People’s Mental Health Service is screening and triaging mental health referrals very quickly (normally within 24 hours) and where a specialist mental health intervention is appropriate, children and young people are being seen very quickly.

If you have pupils that would benefit from a mental health referral, please do contact the Single Point of Access (PDF, 406.0 KB).

Watch out for information which will be shared soon about a dedicated professional consultation line (PDF, 1.1 MB) that the mental health service will be launching imminently.

Data update

Last week I shared the improvement in completion of EHCPs within 20 weeks and I thought you would be interested in seeing the trajectory of improvement since last year. The challenge for us is to ensure we keep up the improvements in quality in parallel and we are revisiting our various quality assurance mechanisms to monitor this carefully.

At the beginning of the improvement journey we took the decision to prioritise children and young people that had been waiting the longest as that seemed right and fair, rather than prioritising new applications. This did slow improvements in the performance indicators but it does mean that we now have no child or young person waiting more than 29 weeks to have their EHCP issued.

In September 2023 61.4% of Annual Reviews were overdue and in last month this had reduced to 34.7%.

Key meetings

It has been a relatively quiet week for meetings and I attended JCC, the Pathways for All post 16 reform Board and the Schools Funding Forum, where the agenda included Budget Principles 2025/26 onwards, Dedicated Schools Grant forecast update (including Safety Valve update), Communities of Schools tariff update and timescales, STLS consultation update, Core Schools Budget Grant, Review of Terms of Reference for School’s Funding Forum and updates from the Chairs of the High Needs Funding Sub Group and the DFFG. A big thank you to John Dennis who has stepped down as Chair of the Forum after many years of dedicated service and welcome to the new Chair Ben Cooper.

And finally

Scrutiny Committee is undertaking an evidence gathering exercise on SEND and so we were very pleased to welcome Chair Cllr Andy Booth who joined the SENCO conference this week. A number of focus groups are taking place during October and November including:

• KsENT
• Parents and PACT
• Kent school and MAT leaders
• Professionals and headteachers with an external view.

I am keen that Members of the Committee have the opportunity to hear a variety of voices and so if you are interested in sharing your views, please do contact me and we will arrange for you to join a Teams meeting.

With all best wishes

Christine McInnes
Director of Education and SEN