Category: Department for Education

Categories
Department for Education Health and Wellbeing NHS England NNPCF

Our work with the National Health Service England

Our work with National Health Service England (NHSE) to develop health services.

Last year, the NNPCF was appointed the strategic partner for the Learning Disability and Autism workstream of the Children and Young People’s Long Term Plan.

In this capacity, we have been working alongside our NNPCF regions and local forums to develop services for children and young people (CYP) with learning disabilities and autism (LDA). We wanted to take this opportunity to share our work on two important areas – Autism in Schools and Keyworking.

Autism in Schools (AiS)

The foundations of the AiS programme were based on supporting families and schools in innovative ways.  

The aim was to

  • raise awareness of the needs of young people with autism,
  • listen to the voice of young people and their families, and
  • model and implement practical ways schools could improve the experience for young people with autism.

This involved bringing together health and education expertise to take steps to support children who were finding school a challenge due to their disability and ultimately to reduce inappropriate educational exclusions and hospital admissions.

After a successful pilot in the North East and Cumbria, this project is in the process of being rolled out across England.

To date there are 15 projects, covering 210 schools, these projects are about to embark upon the second year of delivery and take on more schools (minimum of 97 at the point of writing).  All projects are implementing the 3 key elements of building relationships, increasing knowledge and hearing the young person’s voice. 

The offer of the project differs from region to region, however there are 9 projects who are working with AET (Autism Education Trust)*, or using the AET resources, and 7 of the projects have made links with the mental health support teams in their locality. You can find out more about projects local to you from your regional NNPCF representative.

Improving outcomes for children in school with Autism

The pilot in the North East & North Cumbria was delivered in two phases, evaluations for these are below:

Click to access Autism-Accelorator-Phase-1-evaluation.pdf

Link to the autism accelerator PDF

Click to access Autism-Accelerator-Phase-2-1.pdf

Link to the phase 2 evaluation

Parents were telling us that there were too many missed opportunities with this in mind the ethos behind the project was to bring together parent carers & schools, by implementing ‘mini forums’ within schools, providing support, signposting, facilitating workshops to meet parent carer needs within the setting and ultimately creating a network of peer support for parents with children within the school setting.

Alongside this, a series of workshops were delivered to school staff and the parent carer forum representatives who were supporting the mini forums element, at the same time looking at potential reasonable adjustments that could be made which would benefit CYP in educational settings. There was also an ‘all about me’ element to the training, so that school leads could train the trainer and deliver the workshop to students.

Keyworking

The NHS Long Term Plan includes a commitment that ‘by 2023/24 children and young people with a learning disability and/or who are autistic with the most complex needs will have a designated keyworker, implementing the recommendation made by Dame Christine Lenehan in ‘These are our children’.

Initially, keyworker support will be provided to children and young people with a learning disability and/or who are autistic who are inpatients in, or at risk of being admitted to, a mental health hospital. Keyworker support will then be extended to the most vulnerable children with a learning disability and/or who are autistic, including people who face multiple vulnerabilities such as looked after and adopted children, and children and young people in transition between services.

The framework (which was co-produced with parent carers and children and young people) that underpins the service is that children, young people and their families should:

  • feel safe and happy
  • feel listened to and informed
  • feel involved in their plans, care and support
  • experience a reduction in stress and uncertainty and an increase in stability

In their role as strategic partner to NHSE, the NNPCF sit on the national steering group, the evaluation group and the workforce development group to ensure that representation is made on behalf of the parent carers who feed into us via regions and localities. Though the workforce development group we have ensured parents voice has helped shape the design of the mandatory training. This has been informed both by those with lived experience and feedback from our various network meetings, including the PCF Community of Practice.

Alongside this, parent carer forums are involved in their regional projects. The first two waves of the project (initial pilot and early adopters) have already been rolled out. We are currently (2022/23) in wave three of the projects, which brings keyworking to all remaining localities in England. Because of this phased approach, projects are in different stages of delivery.

NNPCF representatives and regional forum members have regularly attended the national Community of Practices (CoP) for each of the stages. We have taken the opportunity to deliver presentations on partnership/coproduction with forums at the various CoPs. We have ensured the parent perspectives are shared in the CoP and some regions have co presented on their project with their regional partners.

NNPCF have also been hosting a CoPs for parent carer forums to attend, share good practice and learn from others who at differing stages of project delivery.  These CoPs offer an opportunity for forums to share a more focussed discussion, around keyworking from a parental perspective, than can be achieved in the CoPs with wider partners.

Joining links are shared on NNPCF social media and can be sent by your NNPCF steering group member.

*AET are a not-for-profit organisation supported by the Department for Education

Communication Access UK is an initiative developed by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in partnership with charities and organisations that share a vision to improve the lives of people with communication difficulties. The NNPCF have been part of the steering group to create and develop the Communications Access Symbol from the beginning. It is a new disability access symbol underpinned by a completely free training package and standards. The NNPCF is currently working towards accreditation of the symbol, and you can join us by registering your forum, and sharing with your Local Authorities and health services. You can complete the training either as an individual or as an organisation. Find out more about the symbol here: https://communication-access.co.uk/about/

The training consists of 4 short e-modules that can be completed in your own time and is free to do. Once completed you will receive a certificate that will be valid for one year.

To hear why the symbol is important to people with communication difficulties please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD5_p_YZ1PY&t=1s

Categories
Department for Education NNPCF SEND Review

Department for Education update

New Minister with responsibilities for SEND announced

The new government continues to formalise ministerial responsibilities and last week, Kelly Tolhurst was announced as the new Minister for Schools and Childhood with responsibility for SEND. Minister Tolhurst is the second most senior minister in the Department for Education behind the Secretary of State Kit Malthouse.

NNPCF co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia have written to Minister Tolhurst to introduce the NNPCF and ask for a meeting.

What next for the SEND Green Paper

The consultation period for the SEND and AP Green Paper closed before the summer holidays (22 July 2022). The DfE received several thousand responses, many of which came from parent carer forums and individual parent carers. DfE also held 175 engagement events many of which were hosted by or involved parent carer forums.

There were also responses from local authorities, schools (mainstream, special and AP) and health providers amongst others.

The NNPCF have attended several meetings with DfE officials over the last few weeks to discuss the next steps on the green paper and we continue to have input into the next stages of the proposals. Key points from these conversations include:

The DfE will publish a response to the green paper consultation in a National SEND and AP Improvement Plan by the end of the calendar year. This will set out government’s response to the consultation, and the next steps for delivering these reforms.

We have engaged in conversations about the formulation of national standards.

Whilst the contents of these discussions remain confidential, we can share that we have continued to make the following points.

  • National standards must drive and enable early intervention, particularly for those children and young people that do not have an EHCP Standards should be based on the holistic needs of the child and young person, not on diagnoses or conditions
  • Standards should be based on the holistic needs of the child and young person, not on diagnoses or conditions
  • There needs to be a strong link between standards used by practitioners when supporting individual families and standards that are used when planning, designing, and commissioning services.
  • Coproduction must be the core principle throughout all standards

The SEND and AP Green Paper and its progress remain a high priority for the NNPCF and we will continue to keep you updated on progress.

However, we are also very clear that our children and young people cannot wait for new legislation and reforms to improve services- there also need to be programmes of work targeted at improving services now. We are also working with the Department for Education and NHSE to focus on these areas.

We will update you on these over the coming weeks.

Categories
consultations Department for Education NNPCF work SEND Review

NNPCF response to the SEND Green Paper and Alternative Provision consultation.

The NNPCF ‘s consultation response has been submitted today 22 July.

Our response has been extensively coproduced with parent carers:

  • We ran a survey for all parents which received nearly 1300 responses – parents gave us a very strong steer on the key issues. We will publish the results of this survey in full.
  • We ran a webinar on 11 July to share the interim results from the survey with our membership – you can watch this webinar here: Find out what parent carers have told us about the SEND Green Paper and coproduce the NNPCF consulta – YouTube
  • We have hosted many regional events over the last 15 weeks with parent carer forums – some with the DfE team in attendance and some exclusively for parent carer forums.

We focussed our responses on those areas that will directly impact service delivery to families because this was where we got the most and the strongest responses from parent carers. We touch upon those areas that deal more with the structure.

In addition to this formal consultation response, we have had regular dialogue with the DfE about the Green Paper proposals where we have continued to make the key points in our consultation response:

  • NNPCF co-chairs, Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia continue to be members of the SEND review steering group which has met twice during the consultation period.
  • Senior civil servants from the DfE attended the webinar we held on the 11 July (see link above)
  • We have meetings scheduled over the coming weeks with the DfE to further analyse the results of our survey

We will continue to update you on the progress of the Green Paper as we have more information.

You can download our response here: https://consult.education.gov.uk/send-review-division/send-review-2022/consultation/my_response?user_id=ANON-EXGA-GCYM-N&key=4e7902bd78ecf85c7a57aa2ee04102bde9ae9802

Below you can find the responses we received to our SEND review survey, which informed the response we submitted to the Green Paper consultation.

SEND-review-results-NNPCF-2022Download
Categories
Department for Education Government Minister for children and families

Confirmation of Ministerial changes

The last few weeks have been very turbulent for the government with Boris Johnson standing down once a new Prime Minister (PM) has been voted in by the Conservative party.

As you will know , Will Quince stood down from his Ministerial role of Children and Families Minister.

This caused a lot of questions regarding the Green Paper Send review, including whether the review would be continued, postponed, or concluded early.

We have now received confirmation from our colleagues at the Department for Education (DfE) that Will Quince has accepted a new position in the government as the Minister for School Standards which includes SEND and the SEND and AP Green Paper.

This gives the new government ministerial continuity, which of course we are very pleased to hear, however, we know there will be more changes once the PM is appointed.

The responsibilities of Minister Will Quince can be found on the government website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-of-state-for-school-standards

The Alternative Provision (AP) brief is with Brendan Clarke-Smith, Minister for Children and Families, who will be working closely with the DfE team to ensure the links work with Alternative Provision and the wider children and families agenda.

Knowing this information, we would encourage you to complete the SEND Green paper review, https://consult.education.gov.uk/send-review-division/send- review-2022/ which remains open until 22 July 11.45 pm

Our own NNPCF SEND green paper review survey closes next week too, there is still time to get involved:  https://bit.ly/NNPCFGPAP

Categories
Department for Education NNPCF work parent carer forum guidance Parent Carer Forums SEND Review

Ministerial changes and what’s next for the SEND Green Paper

The last 24 hours of political turmoil have seen changes in the ministerial team responsible for the SEND policy and legislation including the Green Paper. Nadhim Zahawi has been promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer and Michelle Donelan has replaced him as Secretary of State for Education. Will Quince, Children and Families Minister has resigned his position. At time of writing we have no news of his replacement.

Since 2017, there have been seven Children and Families Ministers (soon to be eight). The NNPCF are well versed in meeting new Ministers and introducing them to the work of parent carer forums. Whilst Ministers change, the challenges faced by our children have deepened and regardless of who is in post, we will continue to represent the views of parent carer forums to the best of our ability and work with officials behind the scenes.

What does this mean for the SEND review and the work of the NNPCF?

At time of writing, the SEND Green Paper remains in place and reform of the SEND system remains government policy. The NNPCF are continuing to meet with Department for Education officials to progress the work of the Green Paper and we will carry this work on until plans formally change. We continue to engage with the continuing consultation process – for example, yesterday NNPCF Co-chair Mrunal Sisodia met with DfE officials to plan a series of “stress test” workshops to look at how the new proposed system will meet the needs of some of the children that have been let down by the current system and today, the NNPCF board are meeting with DfE officials to brainstorm what the new national standards might look like.

Webinar with Minister Quince Monday 11 July

Clearly, Will Quince will no longer be attending the webinar planned for Monday. However, we intend to proceed with the Webinar and are currently in discussion internally and externally (including with the DfE) on alternatives.

We know this time will be especially unsettling for our families but do rest assured we will continue to focus on our priorities and will keep you updated on any developments.

Categories
Bills and legislations Department for Education NNPCF Steering Group white paper

NNPCF Meeting with DfE Schools White Paper Team

Last week, members of the NNPCF steering group and management team met with officials from the Department for Education working on the Schools White Paper.

The DfE team covered the main tenants of the Bill outlined here Schools Bill: policy statements – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Key amongst these are the ambitions laid out in the Bill and the four strategies that underpin the legislation focussed on teaching, standards, targeted support and changes to the schools’ system.

The NNPCF are very concerned about the headline provisions in the bill around attainment, attendance and behaviour. When crude and simplistic approaches are taken, these are areas that can challenge children and young people with SEND. The overarching messages surrounding the Schools’ Bill are very troubling for our membership.

However, within the detailed provisions, there are many measures that we welcome and have been asking for over many years such as promoting an enriched curriculum and access to specialist support. But these more positive messages have been lost in the detail. The headlines around attainment, attendance and behaviour are dominating the agenda and we believe will come to overshadow the implementation of the Bill unless corrected.

The headlines from the Schools’ Bill are very concerning

The NNPCF expressed significant concerns to the DfE on some of the messages being promoted about the proposals, most notably:

Attainment

The White Paper lays out ambitions for attainment at key stage 2 (90% of learners to reach the expected standard in English and Maths) and key stage 4 (a rise in the average GSCE grade for English and Maths from 4.5 to 5). The NNPCF have several concerns with this approach

  • There is a danger that these “ambitions” for the whole system very rapidly become “targets” or “benchmarks” for schools, multi-academy trusts and local authorities. The DfE team took great lengths to emphasise that individual schools, trusts or local authorities will not be held to account for reaching these targets and Ofsted have confirmed that this will not form a part of their inspections. However, the NNPCF believes that these will become de facto measures of success and further incentivise schools to be less inclusive.
  • The focus on academic attainment devalues the more holistic success of many children and young people with SEND. We urged the DfE to look to broader, more individual measures of progress beyond grades.

Behaviour and Attendance

The legislation calls for a “relentless focus on behaviour and attendance”. Again, this poses significant risks for the SEND community:

  • This fails to take into account the underlying causes of behavioural concerns and lower attendance for children and young people with SEND. Unmet needs, blanket policies and emotionally or anxiety based issues are increasing in the SEND community and taking a harder line on behaviour and attendance will entrench existing concerns and cause further issues. Please see our recent post in response to the Attendance Audit by the Children’s Commissioner Children’s Commissioner’s Attendance Audit – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C (nnpcf.org.uk)

The regulatory system

The schools Bill proposes changes to the regulatory system for multi-academy trusts – namely a shake-up of the regional schools’ commissioners into new regional Educational Directorates with increased powers and the rationalisation of schools regulation into a single common rule book for academies.

  • However, there remains much ambiguity between the role and accountability of individual schools, multi-academy trusts, regional DfE directorates and local authorities. This lack of clarity carries significant risks for the most vulnerable children including those with SEND who may fall through the cracks (as many do now). You can find more on our concerns here The SEND Green Paper: NNPCF briefing – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C

However, there are some more positive details that we welcome

  • Most importantly, a strong multi-academy trust is defined as one that provides “high quality and inclusive education.” From the outset, we are pleased that there is a recognition that goods schools are inclusive schools.
  • The Bill contains measures for a diverse and enriched curriculum which will benefit many children with SEND in a way that a narrow academically based curriculum limits them.
  • Provisions on mental health and pastoral support are included which are so important to enable many children with SEND to flourish.
  • There are specific requirements on targeted support that is holistic covering academic, pastoral and specialist interventions (or a combination) where needed
  • Increased powers for a local authority to admit a pupil to a specific school
  • Greater controls on cases where pupils are moved between schools

The DfE will be launching a review into the new regulatory system proposed and a consultation into the new statutory pupil movement framework. The DfE agreed to engage with the NNPCF on both these activities.

Categories
consultations Department for Education Education NNPCF work Parent Carer Forums SEND Review

NNPCF launch SEND Green Paper consultation survey for all parent carers.

The NNPCF have recently launched their parent carer survey on the SEND and Alternative Provision Green Paper consultation.

They hope to collect as many responses as possible from all parent carers, not just those who are involved in their local parent carer forums.

The responses of the survey will help to inform the NNPCF’s own response to the SEND Green Paper consultation.

Co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia stated that, “The Green Paper is an opportunity to reset the SEND system after the 2014 reforms failed to deliver the improvements that families of children with SEND so desperately need. It is vital that every parent carer’s voice is heard and so we have launched a short, simple survey to gather parental views that we will use to inform our response to the Green Paper. We will, of course, also publish the survey results.”

You can complete the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/J63QX22

The survey should take no more than 10-15 minutes to complete and remains open until the 30 June.

Categories
Bills and legislations Department for Education Education NNPCF work Parent Carer Forums SEND Review

The SEND Green Paper: NNPCF briefing

What does it say and what does the NNPCF think about it?

The NNPCF co-chairs, Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia held a briefing on the contents of the long-awaited SEND and Alternative Provision Green Paper consultation for parent carer forums on 23 May.

A recording of the session can now be viewed by following the links below:

YouTube recording of the briefing

Slides from the briefing

Mentimeter survey results

The NNPCF have also published their parent carer survey.

They hope to collect as many responses as possible from all parent carers, not just those who are involved in their local parent carer forums.

The responses of the survey will help to inform the NNPCF’s own response to the SEND Green Paper consultation.

Co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia stated that, “The Green Paper is an opportunity to reset the SEND system after the 2014 reforms failed to deliver the improvements that families of children with SEND so desperately need. It is vital that every parent carer’s voice is heard and so we have launched a short, simple survey to gather parental views that we will use to inform our response to the Green Paper. We will, of course, also publish the survey results.”

You can complete the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/J63QX22

The survey should take no more than 10-15 minutes to complete and remains open until the 30 June.

Categories
consultations Department for Education Education Minister for children and families Parent Carer Forums SEND Review

SEND Green Paper engagement events with the Department for Education and parent carer forums

The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision (AP) consultation was published at the end of March. The NNPCF have been working with the Green Paper team at the Department for Education (DfE) to organise a series of engagement events for parent carer forums to feedback and discuss the plans outlined in the Green Paper.

There are three different categories of events:

A national webinar hosted by NNPCF co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia – 12 noon 23 May

At this event Mrunal and Tina will share the initial NNPCF response to the proposals. The session will step through the Green Paper outlining which proposals the NNPCF supports and which we have concerns about. The session will be interactive, and we will be seeking flash feedback from parent carer forums on their views of some of the proposals in the Green Paper. We will also outline the different ways that parent carer forums as well as individual parents can respond to the consultation and have their voices heard.

To sign up for this event please use the following link: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZModeCvrTwoGNUve-OwXisL0SQaUniHSchz

Regional events hosted by the Department for Education for Parent Carer Forums

The DfE Green Paper team will be attending NNPCF regional events to share the thinking behind the Green Paper and to have a discussion with regional parent carer groups about their thoughts on the proposals. In these sessions the DfE team will offer a short presentation of 20-30 minutes and then will take feedback and questions relating to the Green Paper for the rest of the hour. The objective of these sessions is to offer parent carer forums the opportunity to have frank and honest exchanges with the DfE team. The sessions will not be recorded due to confidentiality reasons.

The schedule of events is as follows:

RegionDateTimeVirtual or in person meeting
North East26 May11am – 12.30pmVirtual
North West   
Yorkshire and Humber24 May10amIn person York
West Midlands16 May1pmVirtual
East Midlands8 June10amVirtual
East of England12 May10am-2pmIn person – Cambridge
London
16 May 10am-12.30pmVirtual
South East20 May10am-12noonVirtual
South West10 May12:30pm-2pmVirtual (Teams)
Please note, any gaps to the table will be filled once confirmed by the DfE.
Details of how to join these meetings will be sent out through the usual regional parent carer forum channels.

National SEND review briefing hosted by Minister Will Quince

We are currently working with the DfE to organise a national webinar. This will give parent carer forums the opportunity to discuss and feedback to the DfE on the proposals set out in the Green Paper. Children and Families Minister Will Quince will host this event. Once the dates have been confirmed we will publish the webinar, with more information including how to register for the session.

Categories
Department for Education Education white paper

Initial NNPCF response to the Schools White Paper

Yesterday saw the publication of the Schools’ White Paper, Opportunity for All (Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk)). This will form the basis of new legislation for schools and part of a package of reforms along with the SEND review.

This paper outlines our initial response to the contents of the document. Many of the key proposals in the White Paper have been discussed in the mainstream media, we will not focus on these broader proposals here, rather we will focus on those elements that are most relevant the children and young people with SEND.

Some key points include:

  • We are pleased that a strong multi-academy trust is defined one that provides a “high quality and inclusive education.” The review, regulation and enforcement of this will be key.
  • The target for 90% of children to meet targets for reading, writing and maths could be a very strong incentive for schools to focus on getting SEND provision right – if approximately 15% of children have SEND, it will be impossible to reach this target without strong SEND focus. However, we do have strong concerns about unintended consequences of this:
    • because this is across the whole system and will not apply to individual schools or trusts there may be incentives for individual schools to schools to off roll or discourage SEND pupils from attending. The accountability, inspection and regulatory framework will need to be strong to counter this.
    • a purely academic measure of success and focus on tests may be harmful to the mental health and well being of many pupils – we would like to see wider definitions of what success looks like for pupils.
  • The “Parent Pledge” may offer additional rights to parent-carers of children on SEN support to get support more quickly. However, the paper is silent on a more diverse range of support such as therapy services.
  • Likewise, the emphasis on targeted support is very welcome – however, the focus remains very strongly on tutoring – we would like to see more about the other non-academic support (e.g. speech and language or occupational therapy) that many SEND children need.
  • We have repeatedly called for greater clarity in the accountability of mainstream schools and in particular academies when it comes to SEND (see our post on our discussions with Baroness Barran NNPCF Steering Group meet with Minister on Schools White Paper – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C.). The White Paper goes some way towards tidying up the current confused accountability in the schools system. However, the responsibilities for ensuring that schools and trusts meet the needs of SEND children remains unclear – it is vital that the role of DfE Regional Directors and Local Authorities are clarified. At the moment, SEND children risk falling through the gaps again.
  • There remains a strong focus on behaviour and attendance throughout the paper – if implemented crudely, this may again prove a disincentive to inclusive schools. We would like to see more said about a requirement on schools to meet children’s needs promptly and an understanding that much “bad behaviour” results from unmet needs.
  • There is no mention of SEND in the remit for the new curriculum body that is proposed – the relationship between this and the minimum standards for SEND proposed in the SEND Green Paper requires greater clarity.
  • Finally, there are several welcome proposals for the SEND community such as the additional training of SENCos, the mention of school mental health teams, the continued focus of Ofsted on off-rolling and the steer towards a broad curriculum featuring sports, music and culture.

We will be working with the Department for Education as these proposals are further developed and we will be organising events for parent carer forums to gather your views over the coming weeks.