4.1 Ordinarily Available Provision
In addition to ensuring enough childcare places, the ‘sufficiency duty’ means that places are good quality, accessible, affordable, and inclusive. There is also a statutory requirement that all childcare providers must fulfil their obligations under the Early Years Foundation Stage guidance (where appropriate), the Equality Act 2010 and the SEN Code of Practice.
The local authority expects all childcare and education settings to be inclusive and provide a graduated approach to support the needs of children that have SEND within the high-quality provision. To support settings to do this, the local authority provides support and advice, and allocates resources based on a child’s need.
There is an expectation that settings will usually meet the needs of children through their ordinarily available provision, that is the range of support, strategies and activities that are available as part of basic good practice in early years settings to support young children with additional needs without the need for formal diagnosis or specialist support.
Children’s needs may change over time and are identified at different ages and stages. The majority of children with SEND will have their needs met within mainstream provision with access to SEND support that is ordinarily available. Children that require additional support may need an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) and, in some cases, access to specialist provision.
Recommendation: Provide support and challenge to providers to ensure they are meeting the needs of all children.
4.2 Early Years SEND Support (ESS) funding
The fund is available to ensure the inclusion of children under 5 who:
- have low level or emerging additional needs
- may at a later stage, require an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP)
- have an EHCP in place
The aim of the Early Years SEND Support funding is to support settings to provide enhanced provision and intervention that will impact on the children’s progress and outcomes. The ‘support’ may take the form of training, physical or sensory adaptations, small group or targeted interventions, or additional targeted adult time to enable the child to meet their targets.
Where a child has a draft or final EHCP in place settings can request additional funding to support the child to provide the additional provision and support needed as outlined in the child’s EHCP plan.
Over the last two years 553 children have been funded to ensure SEND provision and support is in place.
An understanding of the range of needs of children in the Early Years is important to support the local authority to plan and allocate resources to meet the needs of children with SEND currently attending provision, as well as the future demand for SEND support and school places. We continue to work with providers to ensure a fully graduated approach is in place and evidenced in all settings so that all children are benefitting from a fully inclusive environment before funding is sought to further enhance this provision.
Recommendation: include in the ESS application form an additional section to complete with SEND/Inclusion training they have accessed as part of the graduated approach in support of their application, with an expectation that all early years providers access the Dingley’s Promise Inclusion training prior to applying for the ESS funding. This will be closely monitored by the panel for impact.
4.3 Survey feedback
From our survey 23% of parents that responded feel an inclusive option for their children with SEND is currently missing from the range of suitable childcare options offered in Dorset and that a child having SEND needs is a barrier in arranging childcare as their child requires extra support.
81% of group providers and 34% of childminders reported having the children attending their setting have SEND. This is a significant increase of 69% more group providers and 27% childminders are reporting children with SEND needs since 2022. How settings are identifying these needs and reasons as to this reported dramatic increase, need further investigation.
19% of pre-school parents responded to our survey to say their child had a special educational need and/or disability. 32% of parents of school aged said their child had a special educational need and/or disability. More work may need to be done here to support parents with understanding what their child’s needs are and how to support any needs that may be presenting.
One of the current challenges for childcare providers in Dorset is around supporting children within mainstream settings with SEND needs and the phase transfer of these children to their school setting. With a limited amount of special school placements available, difficulties around over reliance on the EHCP process and need for specialist school placement prior to school has arisen. In the period between April 2022 and March 2023 SENDIASS (Special educational needs and disabilities information and advice service), reported the highest number of enquiries were related to 4/5 year olds. SENDIASs report this shift in demand was mainly in relation to exclusions and unsuitable placements.
Recommendation: Support all practitioners to view themselves as SEND educators and actively encourage all practitioners to access the role of the SENCo training.
Recommendation: Ensure early years and advice officers are fully trained and confident in supporting the increased need to support children with social communication needs in settings.
Recommendation: Work with schools to increase confidence in supporting the phase transfer process from early years setting to school, especially for children with more complex needs.
4.4 Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs)
From school census data 2023/24 Speech, Language and Communication needs, followed by Autistic Spectrum Difficulties are the main categories for which EHCP’s are awarded in Dorset.
At SEN support level Speech Language and Communication (SLCN) needs outweigh all other needs and is over 5 times more prevalent than the second most identified category of social, emotional, and mental health needs (SEMH). SLCN needs remain a high priority, this number of children as a group has remained stable with 657 in January 2022 compared to 656 in January 2023.
Recommendation: review historic data of children in the early years with an EHCP to investigate how many hours of early education funding they accessed, if they had delayed entry to school and what type of school they attended i.e., Specialist or mainstream.
Recommendation: Work with parents and health partners to support access and promotion of resources and offer within the Balanced System.
Recommendation: Work with early health professionals (health visitors, speech and language therapists, community nursery nurses) and parents, to target early language development.
Recommendation: Carry out an audit of WellComm to understand the impact of the toolkits and training on the impact of children’s outcomes in speech, language, and communication targeting those settings who identified children with an SLCN delay.
4.5 Home Education Support
Currently all early years providers across Dorset in each locality have access to trained Portage consultants. Portage is an educational service for pre-school children with SEND and their families that provides home visit for some families.
Portage aims to play a part in minimising the disabling barriers that confront young children and their families, support the national and local development of inclusive services for children and work with families and settings to enable and be included in their community.
There are currently 321 cases open for children currently receiving support from a Portage consultant.
Providers that have used this service, rate it alongside speech and language support as the second most impactful after the support received from Early Years and advice Officers. Of the parents who access this service, 79% rated Portage as having ‘some’ or ‘great impact’.
We have recently carried out a review of how we deliver services to support children’s access to early education entitlements and learning and this included the Portage Services. We intend to strengthen our approach. We are in the process of making changes to how we provide information, advice and training to the providers, to ensure more children are supported at the right time with increased access to skilled professionals when they need it.
Recommendation: embed outcomes from formal consultation into CSA.
4.6 Child protection, Children in need and Children in care
There are currently (January 2024) 107 children aged 0 to 4 years on a Child Protection plan and 224 within the category Child in Need.
There are currently 27 pre-school children in care all of which have a Personal Education Plan. Early Years Advice Officers attend PEP meetings to support effective target setting for the early years children in their settings. The digital Early Years Personal Education Plan is used to record targets and progress on the PEP and early years settings are offered training through the Virtual Schools Team.
All vulnerable children are clearly known by the early years support team. They are discussed regularly through vulnerable child calls and recorded on the early years dashboard. Children of concern are discussed at the monthly ‘Best start in life’ meetings where a team of professionals examine the provision in place for the child and/or family and the actions needed to secure good outcomes for the child.
Recommendation: All children in care are eligible for early education funding are attending an early years setting and have a Personal Education Plan in place to support quality outcomes.
Recommendation: EYSAO with lead area for CP, CIN and CIC to ensure all children are accessing their full entitlement and provision for these vulnerable children is carefully monitored to ensure quality of outcomes.