With the new Children and Families Act 2014 now live since 1st September 2014, SEN professionals are working with a refreshed and challenging framework.
From my research and work with SEN in the last two months, similar patterns have been emerging with regard to their management and delivery of the reform.
The key changes in the reform are:
• There is significantly reduced assessment time for children with a special educational need identified
• Access to services has increased to the age of 25
• Migration of children and young people with Statements to an Education, Health and Care Plans (EHC)
• Matching interventions to believed outcomes
This work is already underway in authorities everywhere, but the key challenges are not chiefly those administrative changes. Rather, they are simply stated as the following:
Challenge 1
How to provide holistic solutions to a child or young person with disparate organisational structures and budget management systems?
Many local authorities have childrens’ and social services now working closely together. However, the health element is for many, still slightly removed or not engaged at all. Additionally, there is the issue of separate budgets to overcome also.
Professionals all reported that this is still very much in the early stages and that wider cultural and infrastructural changes will be needed to ensure that the reforms desire to ensure that children and young people with special needs can access more easily the services they need by providing a holistic assessment (EHC plan).
The second key issue, is the one keeping professionals up at night:
Challenge 2
How to ensure that the identified package outlined in the ‘EHC’ plan, matches the expected outcomes for that child or young person?
There is no argument that this makes common sense, to ensure resources are used in the most effective way and produces the desire results and outcomes for those in question. However, the task of knowing for sure, based on the limited array of resources available at any one time, that this will produce a fixed outcome in a future time can sometimes be something of crystal ball gazing.
Of course there is many years of data tracking outcomes vs inputs but the new reforms but greater pressure on schools and SEN teams to demonstrate that those outcomes are being achieved.
However, it also depends on what and who decides what outcomes are good (value for money, prospects, quality of life etc) and what outcomes are not.
Finding ways to track this is the biggest challenge ahead. It’s not all difficult however.
Once authorities have tapped into their wealth of knowledge and start working more closely with schools and health professionals (however culturally difficult that might be to begin with), good quality tracking can be achieved.
Additionally, going a step further and creating a way of tracking cost avoidance is another key tool in the way forward (particularly in the expected knock on effect to SEN transport).
So, whilst all the important work of migration from ‘Statements’ to ‘EHC’ plans is underway and reduced assessment time frameworks are being tested, spare a thought for some creative tracking systems to really shine the light on the improved access and outcomes for children and young people that the reform holds at the heart of its’ purpose.
Sue Naughton-Marsh is director of Parallax Associates
