Archived decisions
Response to the recommendations made in the report of 22 May 2006 to the Children's Services PRC by Councillor Mrs Anna McNair Scott.
Report of the Children's Special Needs Task Group
The special educational needs statutory assessment process
The task and finish panel recommended the following to the Children's Services Policy Review Committee:
1. That it adopted and put forward the following recommendations to the lead Member for Children's Services:
a) The lead Member for Children's Services is asked to agree in principle the potential benefits of expanding the preventative work of the Parent Partnership Service (including the Inclusion Partnership Agreement pilot), and to consider extending it where possible within existing resources.
b) That the data management systems and use of management information across Children's Services in this area be improved.
2. That the Policy Review Committee continues to review outcomes from the above, initially through a briefing in October.
The responses are:
1.a) There are considerable benefits to be gained by expanding the preventative work of the Parent Partnership Service. The service has an extensive network of contacts with services within Hampshire County Council, with Health and with other service providers including the voluntary sector. Although current resourcing within the Children's Services Department doesn't allow for the direct expansion of the Parent Partnership Service, the continued development of networks will be sustained during restructuring. A key focus of the service improvement plan will be to consolidate and build links to ensure parents/carers of children with SEN can access support and advice when they first need it. This will be further improved through the development of Locality Teams.
The Inclusion Partnership Agreement is intended to provide an alternative to some statutory assessments for children/young people with high incidence needs (behaviour, emotional and social difficulties, moderate learning difficulties and specific learning difficulties). The process will be introduced throughout the County during the course of the autumn term and its impact carefully monitored and evaluated during the 2006/07 academic year. It would be helpful to report on the success of the Inclusion Partnership Agreement in July 2007.
1.b) Data management systems and the use of management information in SEN took a significant retrograde step with the implementation of the new SEN database. The requirement to replace the existing system followed from the corporate decision to remove the mainframe computer. On cost grounds the decision was made to adopt a module of the Education Department's core pupil database rather than write a new system in house. In hindsight this was probably the wrong decision. The protracted implementation project, from September 2001 - February 2005, took staff resources away from the production of SEN management information. Until that time, SEN management information had been produced on a regular basis and had received favourable comment in the former education department's OFSTED inspection.
When the database implementation went ahead in March 2005, a date forced by the closure of the mainframe system, software problems continued and the accurate SEN dataset which previously existed was lost. SEN is not the only Children's Services section to have experienced problems with the new software, but having previously had an effective system and regular reporting of management information, SEN has arguably suffered the most. An additional factor has been the unsuitability of the reporting software recommended by the software supplier and used both on the Core system and the SEN module. The timescale for recovery from the present situation is uncertain.
A new post has been created to cope with the additional work arising from the new database system, including that of correcting user input error which is higher than in the previous system. Additionally, further time is being purchased from IT Services to unravel the data problems arising both from the original implementation and the issues with the software since then. In the interim, efforts will continue to produce management information within the constraints that currently exist.
Although Members understandably wish to see a quick and significant improvement it would be unrealistic, given the experience of the past 5 years, to guarantee that this can be achieved by a specific date, or, once achieved, that the situation will remain stable. It must also be noted that SEN information requirements are one element of an extensive, and currently under-resourced, development programme required to meet the `information sharing' agenda resulting from the Change for Children programme.
2. A progress report regarding the Parent Partnership Service and the use of the Inclusion Partnership Agreement can be provided in July 2007, if that would be helpful.
It is recognised that management information is a critical issue in respect of both operational and strategic delivery for Children's Services and a further up-date can be provided in July 2007.