The level of assistance children with special educational needs receive from Wokingham Borough Council is improving since a damning verdict was reached two years ago.

The council’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support programme was inspected by OFSTED and the Care Quality Commission recently.

The inspectors found Wokingham Borough Council’s Children’s Services department, which has education and care responsibilities, had made improvements.

It follows a damning report in March 2019, where inspectors found six areas in which the provision for children with special needs and disabilities was lacking.

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These areas of serious weakness were:

1) The council lacked a clearly communicated co-produced strategy and action plans that were shared and understood across education, health and care department in the local area and are sharply focused on improving the outcomes of children and young people with SEND.

2) There were weaknesses in the timeliness and quality of Education and Health Care (EHC) plans.

3) There was lack of co-production at a strategic level to inform

effective co-production at all levels.

4) There were weaknesses in the quality of management information to inform accurate evaluation and energise service improvement across the local area.

5) There was a lack of well-coordinated and effectively joined-up work

across education, health and social care.

6) The area had an underdeveloped pathway to enable young people with SEND to make a successful transition to adulthood.

The inspection this year, which took place in May, praised staff at the council for making improvements in five of the six areas.

For the first issue raised, inspectors found that the borough now has an ambitious strategy for helping those with special needs and disabilities, which includes working with parent forums and volunteer organisations. The inspectors also praised leadership in the Children’s Services department and councillors for being aware of problems that families face.

On the second issue, inspectors concluded that EHC plans had been improved. They found that the majority of plans were being formed on time, but many parents told the inspectors that the EHC plan process still wasn’t good enough, and complained that regular staff changes meant the communication they received was poor.

The third issue identified was around ‘co-production’. In social services, ‘co-production’ means the extent to which members of the public are involved in creating the services that they benefit from. In this area, the inspectors found that the council had made strides by involving SEND Voices, Wokingham’s parent carer forum, and voluntary organisations in a ‘co-production charter’ to help make improvements in the future.

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For the issue over the quality of management, the inspectors praised the sharing of information, which has led to an improvement in staffs understanding  the needs of children and young people with autism and social, emotional and mental health needs.

The fifth issue the council had improved over was the lack of ‘joined-up work’ between the council’s various departments. Inspectors found that while parents and guardians were not always aware of the

existing expertise and support they could receive area, strides had been made in the early identification of children’s needs.

In these five “significant weaknesses” the inspectors found that the council had made “sufficient” progress.

However, the inspectors concluded the council failed to make progress on the sixth issue, improving transitional support from childhood to adulthood.

Although the council has introduced a new transitions team to monitor people with special needs going from childhood support to adulthood support, inspectors found that “young people do not routinely receive support for preparing for adulthood”.

Wokingham Borough Council’s executive member for children’s services has welcomed the report while re-iterating that there is more progress to be made. Councillor Graham Howe (Conservative), said: “We are really pleased with the outcome of the Ofsted re-visit which identifies that sufficient progress has been made in 5 out of 6 areas that were needing improvement.

“This is great news, but we know that this is not ‘job done’ in any of these areas.  We are committed to continue improving and to make sure these improvements are clearly felt by children with SEND and their families.

“Our next steps are to start implementing the co-produced SEND Strategy that builds on the work thus far relating to the Written Statement of Action however, crucially, moves us forward in taking a broader approach to improving services for children and young people with SEND.”