Contact: Felicity Dickinson, tel: 01962 847996, e-mail: [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 This report provides an update on the questions raised by the Children's Special Needs Task and Finish Group report of 23 May 2006 in relation to why parents lodge appeals to the SEN and Disability Tribunal (SENDisT) and the response to the recommendations of their report made by the Executive Member for Children's Services at the Policy Review Committee of 10 October 2006.

1 Recommendations

There are no recommendations.

2 Background

The Task and Finish Group in May 2006 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 initial recommendations and the responses referred to above are attached as Appendix 1.

In relation to 2, an update was provided by means of an `Information dispatch', in December 2006, and this is included for reference in Appendix 2 of this report.

4 Parent Partnership Service

4.1 Background

4.1.1 The Hampshire Parent Partnership Service (PPS) was established in 1994. This pre-dated, by seven years, the statutory requirement to establish such a service which was contained in the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. This Act amended the 1996 Education Act and included a general duty for the LEA to:

· arrange for the parents of any child in their area with special educational needs to be provided with advice and information about matters relating to those needs.

The remit of the PPS is to:

· provide impartial advice, information and support to parents and carers of young people with special educational needs (SEN) throughout Hampshire.

4.1.2 It is a feature of such advice that it is confidential and is provided at `arm's length' from the Local Authority. The PPS is, currently, staffed at 3 FTE Parent Partnership Officers (PPOs) and 1 FTE Admin Support Officer. Occasional consultancy support for the PPOs has been bought in when levels of referral and work loads have become particularly heavy.

4.2 Current situation

4.2.1 The PPS deals with a high level of referrals with approximately 120 new referrals per month. Initially, parents/carers will have a telephone contact from the PPS admin support officer, but there is a concern amongst the PPOs that their response time to referrals has increased significantly, from two to three days some four years ago, to the current position of two to three weeks. This is due, not only to an increasing demand for their service, but also to the increasing complexity of referrals which, more and more, demand multiple contacts and interventions. The major impact of this is that almost 90% of the work of the service is focussed directly on dealing with case work, leaving little time for other work such as taking parents' views forward into policy development and providing training which could be particularly valuable in the development of local services.

4.2.2 The value of the work of the PPS can be gauged by the responses from service users. Of those who returned evaluation questionnaires between December 2005 and January 2007, 87% felt that the support and information they had been given was fair, 91% said that they would contact the Parent Partnership Service again if they needed help, and 96% said that they would be happy to tell other parents about the PPS. There has been an increase in referrals from other services and agencies (eg Social Care, CAMHS, Education Psychology) indicating that the work of the service is regarded as valuable and effective by other professionals. There has also been an increase in the level of requests for brochures, leaflets and other information provided by the service indicating an increasing and widening awareness of the role of the PPS.

4.2.3 In 1997 the PPS began to run `Special Needs Information Days' which provided an opportunity for parents/carers and a range of providers to meet and share information about services and resources etc. These days have become a feature of the service and, as well as being popular with parents/carers and local support agencies, are now attracting national organisations to attend and give presentations. The service also publishes a termly newsletter which provides a wide range of information and advice to parents/carers and professionals, on a range of issues and events connected with SEN. Both of these initiatives are at potential risk, however, as the increasing level of work limits the time available for activities outside of the core business.

4.2.4 The recent (May 2007) Joint Area Review of the Hampshire Children's Services Department noted that "The PPS is good and it focuses on major milestones such as initial assessment and transition planning at age 14".

4.3 The future of the Parent Partnership Service

4.3.1 The PPS is providing an effective and valuable service which is well regarded by service users and other professionals and is judged as a good service. The demand for the service remains high, with individual enquiries from parents/carers becoming more complex and lengthy. Response times have increased significantly as a result.

4.3.2 In the most recent (2006) national benchmarking exercise, 127 PPSs (from a national total of 148) supplied benchmarking data. Hampshire, as a very large authority, was the 10th highest gross spender on PPS but, when this was translated into `per head' spending, Hampshire came out in the bottom quartile. Hampshire is also in the bottom quartile with regard to the ratio of PPS staff per 1000 of the population.

4.3.3 At current staffing/resourcing levels, there is concern as to whether it will be possible to maintain existing levels of service and, at the moment, there is not the capacity to develop the work of the service further. In the longer term it is likely that, as Inclusion Partnership Agreements (IPAs) become established, some issues around statutory assessment and transition planning will be resolved at an earlier point in the process and involve less PPO time allowing them to reduce their response time to referrals and reduce their levels of direct casework. PPOs have, however, a crucial role in raising awareness of IPAs in schools and supporting schools and parents through the process. In the 2006/07 academic year PPOs responded to approximately 80 requests from parents for advice on IPAs and 16 referrals from schools and parents for actual support with the IPA process. In the short to medium term, therefore, it is possible that PPS involvement in exploring the option of IPAs with schools and parents will create additional demand on the service. Of the three FTE Parent Partnership Officers, funding for one of the posts is dependent on the annual renewal of an allocation from the Standards Fund.

5 Inclusion Partnership Agreement update

5.1 The Inclusion Partnership Agreement (IPA) has been developed over a period of almost three years, initially as an action research project in two areas of Hampshire. The impetus for this project was a growing dissatisfaction on the part of some parents, school staff and professionals working in the field of special educational needs (SEN) that, for a number of children, a statutory assessment of their SEN was a frustrating experience in that it neither led to a new or greater understanding of the child's needs nor to different provision from that which was already in place. Coincidentally, at the time the project was being planned, the Audit Commission published its report, `Statutory assessment and statements of SEN: in need of review' (June 2002). This report confirmed that the concerns being raised in Hampshire were shared across the country. The then Department for Education and Skills has also published guidance relating to reducing bureaucracy in SEN processes, and officials from the DfES have shown an interest in the IPA approach.

5.2 The outcomes of the project were encouraging and, following a presentation and discussion with the Primary and Secondary Headteacher's Standing Committees and the Primary Headteacher's Executive, the decision was taken to encourage the use of the IPA across the county. In essence, the IPA is a form that summarises a meeting (somewhat similar to a `team around a child' meeting) that has taken place between parents, school staff and other involved professionals, at which the child's strengths and needs are discussed along with the arrangements that are currently being made to support the child and what future arrangements might be necessary. There is a child-friendly version of the summary form, aimed at promoting participation. There is also a pre-school version.

5.3 The introduction of the IPA has been a beneficial initiative. It has been found to be particularly useful to support transition planning between phases, as a relatively formal way of recording arrangements made to meet a child's needs, as a process to support admission to resourced provision (for specific literacy difficulties) where a statement of SEN is not required, and as an alternative to statutory assessment where there is agreement that a statutory assessment would not make a difference. Some parents, who might have otherwise requested a statutory assessment, have agreed to an IPA. The numbers of completed IPAs are relatively small although current evidence indicates that this is rising, especially to help planning for pre-school children as they enter school. Several IPAs have been initiated in respect of SEN and Disability Tribunal cases and have helped resolve issues without recourse to a hearing.

6 Number of Appeals to SENDisT and their outcomes

6.1 The original report of May 2006 included a table analysing appeals for the period 1 April 2005 - 31 March 2006. At that point, the outcome was still pending in 25 appeals, and an updated table is now included (Appendix 3) to show the final position for that year. Only one of the 25 was heard by the tribunal, meaning that the others were either withdrawn or resolved locally.

6.2 A similar table showing the current position for 1 April 2006 - 31 March 2007 is also now included in Appendix 4 but, as with the 2005/06 table presented last year, there are 24 appeals where the outcome is still pending.

6.3 Comparing the two years, the number of appeals has increased by 10 (10.3%), from 97 in 2005/06, to 107 in 2006/07. There is no clear reason or discernable pattern to account for this increase. Appeals over assessment and statementing increased by 6 (13.6%) while appeals over the contents of statements increased by 4 (7.5%). Within these two headings, some categories show an increase in the number of appeals while others show a reduction. All categories, apart from `Refusal to assess' and `Refusal to statement', can relate to children who already have a statement. That said, the increase could reflect increased levels of activity e.g. new statements issued increased from 400 in the calendar year 2005 to 490 in the calendar year 2006 (note that the different time frames are as specified by government agencies for SEN data returns).

6.4 It is not possible to draw firm conclusions of the factors underlying these figures and, looking to the national picture for comparisons (see the table in Appendix 5), Hampshire does not appear to be out of step. The fact remains, as outlined in the December 2006 update (Appendix 2), that many parents submit an appeal before they enter into discussions with the County Council, so as to avoid missing the deadline. This is actively encouraged by voluntary organisations, the legal profession, and advocates/supporters. Additionally, as stipulated by the DCSF (formerly DfES), specific wording is included in letters at different points in the statutory process, highlighting to parents their right of appeal. In this context, it is likely that there will always be a certain number of appeals that are made and then subsequently withdrawn.

6.5 Officers in the SEN Service continue to implement the measures set out in the previous report (Appendix 2) and to monitor the numbers of cases which are the subject of appeal to SENDisT and any trends that the figures may reflect.

7 Data management information systems and the use of management information

There were two aspects to this.

7.1 Firstly, the information on tribunals contained in the May 2006 report had been delayed pending an `overhaul' of the tribunal database. This is now complete, and statistical updates are produced termly and monitored by officers. In addition, fortnightly spreadsheets are used to track current tribunal cases.

7.2 Secondly, recommendation 1 (b) reflected observations from the preceding report, `SEN Data Collection Report' dated 6 September 2005, that internal management information was no longer routinely available due to the problems arising from the implementation of the new SEN database. Progress here hinges on improvements to the operation of the SEN database, and while there has been some progress, there remains much more to be done.

7.3 Members may recall that the SEN Service response agreed with, and containing input from, the CSD Head of Information and Systems Management was that, until the new database project, SEN management information had been produced on a regular basis and had received favourable comment in the 2001 OFSTED. However, the substantial additional work arising from a problematical four and a half year database implementation project, and continuing problems with the live system, had taken resources away from other work including management information activities. Additionally, the accurate SEN dataset was lost in the March 2005 implementation and further affected by subsequent problems with the software.

7.4 There continue to be improvements and the system is now essentially working with a small number of outstanding issues to be resolved. The supplier's system upgrade, in August 2006, created fewer problems than previous releases, and addressed some of the issues in the previous version. Additionally, in Spring 2007, the supplier's continuing work to address the issue of SEN data `overwrites' in the termly school census data imports resulted in most of the causes being eliminated. However, a few problems in this area remain, and work to address these and other remaining bugs is still in progress. Some should be resolved in the next system upgrade; others need to be resolved sooner, and pressure for this to happen is continuing.

7.5 As previously mentioned, the SEN database is a module of the CSD core pupil database and problems are not restricted to SEN. Much effort has been put in to improve the situation. Recent visits by members of the CSD Information Systems team to other local authorities using the same product have identified that staff resources for system support are significantly higher in those authorities than in Hampshire. There was previously anecdotal evidence, but this confirmation has resulted in an agreement in principle to a proposal to redeploy more resources to database support. Formal steps to achieve this are in progress.

7.6 The original response to Members referred to a new post and to further time being purchased from IT Services to deal with the data problems. There was a secondment for a year until August 2006, but since the post became a permanent addition it has not been possible to make a suitable appointment. The current vacancy is now linked to the proposal referred to in the previous paragraph. The work undertaken by IT Services produced a number of listings for checking and action by SEN staff. These lists are extensive and require full-time work on them by an `expert' user. While there are staff in the SEN Service with the expertise, they are already fully occupied with their normal work. Progress is therefore linked to the proposals to deploy more resources to database support, mentioned in 7.5.

7.7 The data problems are not restricted to SEN, and the CSD Information Systems team is currently focussing on data quality in response to the agenda for a national index. This is a positive development, giving increased priority to the resolution of data issues, including those which SEN has experienced since March 2005.

8 Legal implications

8.1 There is a potential risk that it might not be possible to maintain existing levels of service to parents from the Parent Partnership Services. If longer response times impact on the effectiveness of the service then it could be argued that the County Council is not meeting its statutory obligation to ensure adequate resources and staffing to meet the needs of parents in Hampshire. The service response time will be monitored on a regular basis.

9 Financial implications

9.1 There are no specific revenue or capital implications resulting from the recommendations in this report.

10 Personnel implications

10.1 Review of resources to support the Data Management Information System from an SEN perspective will result in proposals to reconfigure existing SEN Service staffing to support an additional dedicated post within the Policy and Resources team. This will be from within current staffing establishment.

11 Impact assessment

11.1 Race and equality impact assessment has been considered in the development of the report and no adverse impact has been identified.

12 Crime prevention issues

12.1 There are no obvious crime prevention issues.

13 Conclusion

13.1 The report covers four areas originally identified by the Special Needs Task and Finish Group reported upon by the Policy Review Committee in May 2006 and responded to by the Executive Member for Children's Services in October 2006.

13.2 The Parent Partnership Service is providing an effective and valuable service which is well regarded by service users and other professionals and is judged as a good service. The service provides good value for money.

13.3 Inclusion Partnership Agreements (IPAs) have been introduced across the County as part of the toolkit of responses for children with SEN. The IPA has proved to be particularly useful to support transition planning between settings, as a process to support admission to resourced provision (for specific learning difficulties) where a statement of SEN is not required, and as an alternative to statutory assessment where there is agreement that a statutory assessment would not make a difference to the provision made for the child. The IPA has been used in some cases to help resolve issues without the need for a hearing at the SEN and Disability Tribunal. Overall the IPA is seen as a helpful addition to the range of planning processes for children with SEN.

13.4 Activity arising from appeals to SENDisT continues to be closely monitored and appears to be in line with the national picture. Managing a demand led set of statutory functions within a strictly defined legal framework, with prescribed time limits, within cash limited budgets and with the expectation of meeting parental wishes is extremely demanding, especially when there is a right of appeal against the majority of decisions taken. However, managers remain committed to regular case management review and planning to ensure that as few cases as possible run to full hearing at SENDisT.

13.5 Data management information systems continue to show improvement and are now essentially working. However, there is a long term need to ensure an enhanced level of resource to maintain database support and a review has started to achieve progress in this area.

Section 100 D - Local Government Act 1972 - background documents

The following documents discuss facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and have been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

None

Attachments

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5