Let's Talk (used to be called Time to Talk)
Answer: We are expecting the NICE guidelines imminently and the thing about foetal alcohol syndrome is that it crosses many health teams so it can have an impact on both physical and emotional health, so once we get those guidelines in place then it will fall to us at the CCG to work with our colleagues across the health teams and linking in with our local authority colleagues to look at that pathway and put a Dorset specific one in place.
You and our children told us that they wanted to have greater accessibility to all sorts of places:
- open spaces
- beaches
- schools and elsewhere
So, it is part of our children and young people’s plan. It's part of our priority to give a warmer welcome, a greater belonging for our children. As part of that the accessibility strategy is being looked at again.
Education colleagues and others are looking at having plans with schools. There's a great influencer role in the local authority. We will take that influence everywhere we can.
If we:
- have those accessibility plans shared with our schools
- have those conversations
- do some visits to schools who are not as accessible as we are and maybe they would like to be
gives us an opportunity to drive that focus up. It will show us where we need to have conversations with the academy leaders and / or the DfE about making some changes to that. So, it is high on our agenda, and we will make sure that we tell you about what’s happening and the timeframes.
In short, no, but we are looking at making sure that we have inclusion hubs across Dorset. Lots of schools have different approaches to this.
Some schools have nurture provision within their setting already. But resource provision in an inclusion hub will be for children with EHCP’s. So, we're not looking at that in every setting.
We are looking at a good spread based on our demographic information of where those children are. We are working with schools to make sure that children have got a pathway:
- from primary through to secondary
- or first through to middle and upper
in each of our six localities in Dorset.
We are working with the Mulberry Bush. Part of this is how that pedagogy links with the wider curriculum of the school.
What we don't want is our children being in an inclusion hub and then having a different teaching model when they get into the main classroom. So, it's about that synergy across the whole setting.
There is also the training that we offer to our colleagues in CCN’s and what we will be offering to inclusion hubs. It’s what we now call ‘Therapeutic Thinking’ (previously known as ‘Dorset Steps’).
Our specialist teachers and educational psychologists have joint planning meetings every term. This happens with all the schools in Dorset.
In that process they consult with the schools about particular children or groups of children. They make sure that those schools have good:
- training
- advice
- guidance
- opportunities to learn
from those really highly qualified and experienced professionals.
Our education challenge leads are working really closely with schools. They want to really understand the strengths of the school. They also want to know the areas that the school needs to develop and move forward on that development journey.
There is some exciting work happening between children's and adult services. This is around understanding the total journey for young people as they approach adulthood. There is also a large piece of work called the ‘Birth to Settled Adulthood’ program.
Where support needs to continue on into adulthood, we focus on planning well in advance. This is so that we in children's services aren't stacking up problems. There has also been some work around apprenticeships and internships. That's increasingly something that we're asking our SEND teams to consider.
This is such a significant piece of work and I want to give you some assurance. There is a significant ongoing commitment to improve services and experiences. NHS Dorset is undertaking an all-age Neurodevelopment review.
We have asked for lots of view-seeking and co-production with our stakeholders. There are some key themes that are coming out of this. These are around access to services as well as diagnostic pathways. There are also things around covid and how that has affected our children and young people.
We had a fantastic opportunity to take over a site that was the former Wimborne First School. Beaucroft School should be opening in the autumn of this year.
We are working with the head teacher at Westfield School. This is to think about how we could expand the post-16 provision.
We are proud of our outstanding special schools. Yet sometimes the land that they're sitting on limits what we can do.
We publish our SEND capital strategy on our website. Our SEND newsletter is always the best place to get the latest information.
In September we announced that second phase of Dorset Council’s investment plan. This is to expand specialist provision across Dorset to achieve an extra 228 places. There is lots more coming and we've made a good start already.
There is £18 million coming into the system nationally from government over the next three years. The plan is to double the number of supported internships. I think as a local authority we are keen on getting our hands on that money and doing something really positive with it.
We encourage SENCOs to be part of the leadership team. It is good practice but it isn't always possible particularly in smaller schools. If the SENCO is not, then we would absolutely advocate that all:
- the leadership team
- all the teachers
- all the staff
are prioritizing understanding the needs of all the children in their classes. We have a SENCO forum which gives our SENCOs the opportunity to come together and share good practice. Our senior educational psychologists lead this. It enables them to get into that space where they can learn from one another. They can also learn again from our expertise.
The code of practice says that every teacher is a teacher of children with special educational needs. So that is our aim. So, when we're working with our schools, we are looking at that whole school approach. We ensure the principle behind our inclusion hubs and the complex communication needs resource provisions is that the expertise is shared and spread.
Our ways of working and our decision making is collaborative, we make our decision making together. We work regularly with Social Care in terms of the way we make decisions on:
- education
- health and care plans
- provision
and that also involves the bringing together of advice. We do this through our educational psychologists and our health services. There is joint working going on and we know there's much more we can do to fully integrate our offer.
Our educational psychologists work with all our schools. They have a termly planning meeting with every school to think about emerging needs. This meeting is also to think about children with EHCPs and to undertake joint planning with schools too.
There is a very strong commitment to working together. There is also a very strong commitment to understand the journey of our children and young people, and their families and carers. We are often told that people have to tell their story more than once to lots of different services. We are trying to pull that together and join up a little bit more.
This is something that I and my associate DCO are aware of. It is not common, but it does happen. There does seem to be a misunderstanding sometimes between the paediatric teams and the schools.
We are addressing it through the pathway meetings that we have regularly. We are also addressing this through the neuro disability support nurses. They are within the paediatric teams meeting with the SENCOs within the school. We are getting that link there and doing some training and having some understanding of what the different roles are.
Ansbury Guidance has now come back into the local authority, and we have inherited quite a few staff. This service is very much focused on those out of education. We are working very closely with colleagues in that new service to support young people.
Clearly our young people with additional needs are very much a priority for us. There are other options that we are exploring around internships and apprenticeships but there is more to do around that.
We have a funding pot that we make available to early years setting called SENIF. This is essentially an inclusion fund (which Early Years settings will be aware of).
So, if your child is in an early years setting now, they will be aware of how to access that and work with our team on getting support quickly. It's not quite like the EHCP process but it's something that can be made available quite quickly to early years settings to support need early.
It is a specific pot of funding available to support early identification of SEND. It is also to put in place resources and support that your child would need. There is a process around that which is visible on our local offer.
We as a local authority put a lot of support out for schools and the academies, like:
- Dorset Steps (Therapeutic Thinking)
- our CPD offer
- our outreach
Our educational psychologists meet with:
- mainstream schools
- primaries and secondaries
- academies
as do our specialist teachers, so the support is always there for our head teachers. We talk about how that works and how they can access it. But I would like to talk in in particular around the Dorset Education Advice Line.
This is there for:
- SENCOs
- classroom teachers
- head teachers
- governors
but also for you as parents as a way of requesting support. It is also for thinking about where you may have questions about a learning need that you're identifying. DEAL can help if you've got concerns about your child not getting the provision they need and may have a learning need. It is for you to have that support in a conversational way and really to make sure that we're fully understanding the concerns.