Agenda and minutes

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

The Chair welcomed all to the meeting.

There were no apologies.

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 interest in relation to items appearing on the agenda.

To agree the minutes of the previous meeting.

Resolved: That the minutes of the informal meeting held on 21 June 2021 be confirmed as a correct record and signed by the Chair.

Zoe Richards, Senior Programme Manager for SEND, Lancashire and South Cumbria presented the Accelerated Progress Plan which highlighted the improvements made since the last meeting of the Sub-Committee.

Members were informed that the 12-month Accelerated Progress Plan (APP) monitoring review meeting would be taking place with the Department for Education and NHS England on 29 September 2021. At this meeting, it would be assessed if sufficient progress had been made on the five areas of concern as highlighted in the Accelerated Progress Plan. It was also clarified that sufficient progress did not mean that everything had been done but rather that the monitors were satisfied that sufficient progress had been made since the initial inspection of 2017 and the revisit inspection of March 2020.

The evidence to be presented at the monitoring meeting on 29 September 2021 included the Accelerated Progress Plan attached at Appendix A of the report and the Self-Assessment sheet attached at Appendix B of the report. It was noted that since the agenda publication for the meeting, minor changes had been made to the Self-Assessment document and the updated version would be circulated with the minutes.

It was also noted that officers were confident with the progress made since the initial inspection and they were able to demonstrate this at the monitoring meeting.

Members were given a brief overview of the Self-Assessment document, which contained the documents that were to be presented at the monitoring meeting and the following points were highlighted and clarified:

• In terms of the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Enable Document, it was noted that in March 2020, an agreement was made with the Department for Education and NHS England that the KPI scorecard being used in the Accelerated Progress Plan was not working well and was not a good measure on whether the improvements being made were working.
• It was noted that included in the evidence being provided at the monitoring meeting was the Accelerated Progress Plan Update document, the Self-Assessment document and the Accelerated Progress Plan presentation. The Accelerated Progress Plan Update document was included as it was felt that it was important to demonstrate to the Department for Education that work was being done instead of doing surveys that identified what people's opinion of the services were. A copy of these documents would be circulated to members after the meeting.
• Documents being provided as evidence at the monitoring meeting were the SEND Plan and the Turning Words into Actions documents and these were crucial in demonstrating that the work had been carried out.

It was further noted that shortly after the revisit in early March 2020, the Country entered the first national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This had an impact on the delivery during the early days, as staff members were redeployed or asked to work on the COVID-19 response. However, it was further noted that following the COVID-19 response, the integration with partners had grown in strength, and that working more closely together had quicker and  ...  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 were no items of urgent business.

To be discussed.

It was noted that there were no further meetings of the Sub-Committee scheduled and that the Sub-Committee was only established for 12 months.

The Board requested that following the monitoring meeting that was due to take place on 29 September 2021 with the Department for Education and NHS England, that a meeting of the SEND Sub-Committee be arranged for November 2021, in order to receive the outcomes of the review and to discuss further as to whether there was a need for the Sub-Committee to continue.