The SEND inspection carried out in July 2021 identified eight key areas for improvement, which are addressed in the written statement of action. These are:

• Culture - we need to tackle cultural issues that have led to weak partnership working across the system, and with families and children
• Evaluation – we must improve leaders’ self-evaluations and ensure more focus on the lived experiences of children and young people
• Co-production – we need to work much more closely with families, children and young people to co-produce services
• Sustainable services – our services must be more sustainable and recruitment challenges need to be overcome
• Graduated response – there has been inconsistency in our graduated response, leading to slow identification and inconsistent access
• Education and health care plans (EHCPs) – we need to improve variations in EHCPs caused by weaknesses in joint working, access, timeliness and quality assurance
• Joint commissioning – poor joint commissioning arrangements have limited our ability to meet local area needs so this must be tackled
• Exclusion and inclusion – too high a proportion of pupils have not accessed education because of exclusions and a lack of inclusion

We are working with children, young people, parents, carers, schools, health providers, education providers and the voluntary sector through the SEND Improvement Board (SIB). The SIB was set up in August 2020 to oversee the development and implementation of our improvement plans.

The SIB’s agreed approach is that leaders and professionals will lead but not direct – the actions and outcomes that are needed will be co-created and co-produced with those who need them and use them.

Read the full written statement of action on how we will improve SEND services.