Agenda and minutes

To welcome all to the meeting, introduction and receive apologies.

The Chair welcomed all to the meeting.

Apologies were presented from Debbie Corcoran, Greater Preston Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Sarah Gorst, SEND Partnership Manager, was welcomed to her first meeting.

Members of the Sub-Committee are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

There were no disclosures of any pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests.

To agree the minutes of the previous meeting.

Resolved:  That the minutes of the meeting held on 3 February2021 were confirmed as a correct record following the amendment below:

Action 2: Joint Commissioning, second bullet-point

·  Current policy arrangements in each Integrated Personal Commissioning (IPC) had been identified and a process of engagement was on-going to obtain feedback.

Sarah Callaghan, Director of Education and Skills, Lancashire County Council and Zoe Richards, Senior Programme Manager for SEND, Lancashire and South Cumbria provided an update on the Accelerated Progress Plan.

Following suggestions at the previous meeting, that members would find it useful to have some more detail on the data that is used to shape the response in the Accelerated Progress Plans, a presentation, Lancashire SEND Data Dashboard, had been circulated to members of the Sub-Committee prior to this meeting.  The presentation aims to give an understanding on how the data is used and also the process behind the data.

One of the areas that is subject to ongoing monitoring is that Leaders have an inaccurate view of the experience of children and young people with special educational needs in Lancashire, therefore the application of data is really critical for that better understanding. To facilitate a better understanding, Sarah presented some data on children and young people with SEND in Lancashire to the Sub-Committee.

Slide 2 – This indicated how many children and young people across Lancashire have special educational needs, as a percentage of those children who attend school.  There are 176,456 total pupils at all schools and of that number, there are 17,705 pupils who have SEND support and 8,085, that have Education, Health and Care Plans.  The reason for highlighting this is that typically in Lancashire the percentage of children with Education, Health and Care Plans hovers around 3.4%, which is in line with national figures, however, in contrast to national figures is that the number of children with SEND in special schools which is higher in Lancashire than the national figure.  The aspirations of the SEND Reforms that were introduced nationally in 2014, was to enable a higher number of children with special educational needs to stay in mainstream schools, as this is better for them in terms of their ability to develop life skills, and it prepares young people with the life skills to be more independent.  It is not always appropriate for all young people with SEND to be in mainstream schools but where it is possible that has to be our ambition as it supports better outcomes and it is often more cost effective. 

The Council's ambition is about supporting the best outcomes, so to enable those children with special educational needs to stay in mainstream provision where appropriate, is what the Council wants to do.  The data also included a breakdown of children with SEND who are also electively home educated, currently 62 children with special educational needs, are Electively Home Educated, this is where parents/carers have made the decision to education young people at home.  In total across the County there are approximately 1700 children and young people who are Electively Home Educated and 62 of those have Education, Health and Care Plans.  In comparing this data with national and Lancashire's statistical neighbours, anomalies can be identified, and discussions prompted where it appears that the Lancashire data is at odds with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

An item of Urgent Business may only be considered under this heading, where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the minutes, the Chair of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Members' intention to raise a matter under this heading.

There was no urgent business received.

The next scheduled meeting of the Sub-Committee will be held at 10am on 21 June 2021.

Monday, 21 June 2021 at 10.00am, format/venue to be confirmed.