Ros Somerville at Suffolk County Council says work to improve SEND system ‘has yet to deliver the intended changes for enough children, young people and families‘

Delays with assessments for children’s special educational needs is due to the ‘limited availability’ of educational psychologists, according to the local authority – but there is a drive to recruit more.

Ros Somerville, assistant director for inclusion at Suffolk County Council, has written an open letter looking at achievements and accomplishments over the last 12 months, as well as what they have learnt.

Suffolk County Council, which runs children’s services and is the local education authority, has been accused of ‘failing’ families and children in terms of SEND (special educational needs and/or disabilities) provision.

Writing in December, Ms Somerville said it had been a busy term, which has seen the local area SEND inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) alongside the council’s ‘continued work to deliver a better SEND system for our children, young people and their families’.

“The Local Area Partnership remain acutely aware that all the work we are doing has yet to deliver the intended changes for enough children, young people and families. We will keep working until it does,” she added.

Outlining some of that work, Ms Somerville said as a system they had focused on improving the timeliness of Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessments.

This is an assessment of a child or young person’s education, health and care needs and is the first step to getting an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), an important legal document outlining the SEND support they must receive.

Ms Somerville said: “The low number of assessments completed within 20 weeks is because of the limited availability of educational psychologists (EP).

“Suffolk County Council (SCC) has a permanent advert out to recruit more EPs and seven new EPs joined the service in September 2023.

“We are also commissioning private companies and as many locum EPs as we can find to increase our EP capacity.

“There is a small and gradual upward trend to the data and we anticipate this continuing to grow as the new contracts with private companies have been procured. This will remain an absolute focus.”

She added they had continued their recruitment drive in SEND family services, reducing its vacancy rate to three per cent in September from 14 per cent in 2023.

Other work mentioned included:

- a new Local Offer website, coproduced with Suffolk Parent Carer Forum and partners;

-a new programme to work with schools to support them to identify and implement evidence-based interventions targeted at improving the core basic skills of children and improve their confidence to engage with the wider curriculum, preventing needs escalating;

-Community Inclusion Forums have been introduced as part of specialist education services’ work with schools. They are locality-based groups of schools invited to meet together to focus on promoting inclusion and achievement for children and young people with SEND and additional needs. As of next term every school in Suffolk will receive a termly visit from a specialist teacher to support inclusion;

-Working with Suffolk Education Partnership to prevent exclusions;

-Consultation for the Suffolk Local Area Partnership SEND Strategy, including feedback from about 900 respondents, which includes parents, carers, professionals and young people;

-Time to Listen events giving families the opportunity to meet with senior leaders across the Suffolk Local Area Partnership.

The report from the local area SEND inspection, which took place during October and November, is likely to be published this month or next.