| answer text |
<p>The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms introduced by the
Children and Families Act (2014) were the biggest in a generation. Since then, we
have given £391 million to local areas to support implementation of the new duties
under the act and a great deal of progress has been made with 98% of statements transferred
to education, health and care (EHC) plans, where appropriate, by April 2018.</p><p>We
want to ensure that families are able to participate meaningfully in developing local
services and have a contract worth £20 million with the Council for Disabled Children
(CDC) and Contact, to improve local information, advice and support and provide a
national helpline; and a contract worth £3.8 million with Contact, in partnership
with KIDS and the CDC, to promote and develop strategic participation by young people
and parent carers.</p><p>We have in place a new contract with the Whole School SEND
Consortium to embed SEND within approaches to school improvement in order to equip
the workforce to deliver high quality teaching across all types of special educational
needs. The programme of work includes building a community of practice with the involvement
of 10,000 schools by 2020 and 15,000 schools by 2022, across the eight regional schools
commissioners’ regions.</p><p>We are establishing a SEND Commissioning Board for children
and young people with high needs to help support local authorities and Clinical Commissioning
Groups to improve planning and commissioning of SEND provision.</p><p>We have published
a roadmap for reforming alternative provision that will see us focus on sharing best
practice across the sector and launched a £4 million innovation fund. We have also
announced an externally led review of school exclusions, carried out by former children’s
minister Edward Timpson CBE, looking into why certain groups of pupils – including
those with SEND – are more likely to be excluded than others, and launched a review
into the outcomes of and support for children in need.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, we have
asked Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission to design a programme of further local
area SEND inspections to follow the current round and to develop an approach for further
inspection or monitoring of those areas required to produce a written statement of
action. The inspections consider how effectively local areas identify, meet the needs
of and improve the outcomes of children and young people with SEND. They have proved
a catalyst for supporting local areas to improve their services and deliver better
outcomes for children and young people.</p>
|
|
