Category: Department for Education

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Department for Education

NNPCF cochairs meet with new Department for Education Permanent Secretary

Last week, NNPCF cochairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia met with Susan Acland-Hood, the newly appointed acting permanent secretary at the Department for Education.

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/susan-acland-hood

Susan approached Tina and Mrunal for a meeting and wanted to hear first-hand from parent carers about the what it was like to raise a child with SEND.

In a wide-ranging discussion, they discussed the following topics

  • An introduction to the parent carer forum movement, who we are, what we do and the way we are set up.
  • The difficulties faced by families with SEND in the current system. This included the problems families face being heard; the difficulties in getting early help before situations reach crisis point; inadequate funding in the system; and the disincentives for school leaders to be inclusive.
  • The problems faced by families with SEND during the Covid 19 pandemic – the challenges in the absence of schooling, social care and health services. The NNPCF have reported on these extensively over the past six months.
  • The future of the SEND system and the need for far reaching reform that the NNPCF outlined for the SEND review from our conference last year.

At all points Tina and Mrunal emphasised the importance of coproduction with families- actually listening to them and shaping services in a way that makes sense to them. Susan commented that the PCF movement was doing a great job in modelling strategic coproduction and asked for further a meeting with more parent carers again in the new year

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Department for Education Minister for children and families

NNPCF Steering Group meeting with Vicky Ford, Minister for Children and Families

NNPCF Steering Group meeting with Vicky Ford, Minister for Children and Families: COVID 19 and what needs to change with the SEND system

On Wednesday 18th March, the NNPCF steering group met with Children and Families Minister Vicky Ford. Because of COVID 19 restrictions, the meeting was a video-conference.

COVID 19

The Minister was keen to talk about the Education response to COVID 19.

Earlier this week, we issued shared the paper we had sent to the Department for Education and NHS England (add link). This was compiled following feedback from forums to regional steering group members and from discussions we have seen on our closed social media groups.

In our meeting with the Minister we re-iterated the key messages in the paper – namely that they could not take a blanket approach to children and young people with special educational needs and emphasised the key points:

  • The importance of supporting our families to have choice and control as much as is possible to protect their families in the most appropriate way.
  • We relayed the critical role schools/colleges and residential placements can play in some of our children lives and how it would be helpful for some families to continue to access the often vital support this can provide their children.
  • Alongside this we also posed the concerns about access to medical support and social care when services are also suffering from limitations of staff and restrictions due to isolations. We are pleased to see the recommendations
  • Finally, we urged the Minister to continue to coproduce the government response with the NNPCF

It is clear there is a challenging road ahead, and as we learn more about the pandemic advice will continue to evolve. We feel the best way we can support families is to reiterate to the DfE, NHSE, and Ministers the importance of clear and concise messages. We are pleased to see the recommendations we asked be considered have been heard and have influenced recent government proposals.

The NNPCF are listening to the concerns forums are sharing, both from within your communities and from within the forum itself. We are all impacted by the current situation in a variety of ways and are rightly concerned and trying to ensure our families are kept safe and well during this difficult time. We also recognise there will be ongoing challenges for forums which we are raising with the DfE and Contact. We are continuing to be in contact with the DfE and NHSE, we will keep you informed about what we are saying and hearing.

Please keep on telling us of how the response to COVID 19 is playing out in your areas. You can contact your regional NNPCF steering group member or post something on the NNPCF closed facebook page and we will incorporate it into our dialogue with the DfE and NHSE.

The SEND Review

We also talked to the Minister about our submission to the SEND review (insert link). She had read our paper and was interested in many of the key messages we have given the review.

We gave the Minister real examples of where children and young people were being let down by the system because of the failings we describe in our report. We also shared examples from across the country where the recommendations from our report had been implemented. We showed how coproduction with families does lead to greatly improved services and outcomes. The Minister promised to continue to work with us and keep us informed on the progress of the review.

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Department for Education Minister for children and families

NNPCF Co-chairs meet with new Children and Families Minister

On Wednesday 26th February, NNPCF Co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia attended a meeting with the newly appointed Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Children and Families, Vicky Ford.

In our meeting, we covered a lot of ground and shared the views of parent carers on the current state of the SEND across the country and what needs to be changed to improve outcomes and parental confidence in the system. It is encouraging that the new Minister is prioritising SEND in her first full week in the job. We passed on some key messages on behalf of parents and carers:

· We emphasised the importance of listening to the concerns of families and intervening early to stop concerns becoming problems and problems becoming crises.

· We discussed the value of coproduction and how the involvement of parent carers was key to all successful decision making. We urged the Minister to ensure that a wide range of views from parent carers is included in the ongoing SEND review.

· We shared our input into the SEND review and including the key points from our 2019 conference (http://www.nnpcf.org.uk/nnpcf-conference-gives-send-review-seven-clear-messages/)

o Listen to families and intervene early

o Make sure there is enough money and spend it well

o Align incentives for school and system leaders

o Increased accountability

o Right people, right knowledge, right skills

o Lifelong outcomes

o Coproduction

· We discussed the work and reach of parent carer forums.

We will continue to work with the Minister and her team and we are in the process of scheduling further meetings with her. We will keep you updated.

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Department for Education SEND Review

NNPCF engagement with the SEND Review

At the NNPCF conference on the 7th November, delegates will have the opportunity to create solutions to the issues facing families for input into the SEND review.

In September, the government announced a “Five years on” review of the SEND system. The NNPCF were delighted with this announcement as the we had asked Nadhim Zahawi, the previous Minister for Children and Families for a clear cross governmental strategy for SEND when we met with him in July. http://www.nnpcf.org.uk/nnpcf-cochairs-meet-with-nadhim-zahawi/

The NNPCF has been heavily engaged in the early stages of the SEND review, working to ensure that the voice of parent carers is central it work. At the onset of the review we met with Kemi Badenoch, the Minister for Children and Families and asked her to ensure that the review was truly cross governmental and came up with real, hard hitting recommendations that address the root causes. You can find a record of our meeting here

SEND Review Conference write upDownload

Since then, NNPCF co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia have met with the head of the review team to explain the work of parent carer forums, our lived experience of the SEND system and make some recommendations about what we think needs to change.

In October, members of the SEND review team attended the NNPCF steering group meeting. In our session, we shared feedback from our members on some of the root causes of the issues in the SEND system and suggested a series of changes that would make the system work more effectively for families.

We will also be hosting a session on the SEND review at our annual conference on the 7th of November when attendees will have the opportunity to co-produce some of the solutions to the issues that the SEND system faces. Although they are unable to lead the session because of restrictions on government activities during an election period, members of the SEND review team will be in attendance.

We are also working with the SEND review team to create more opportunities for parent carer forums including working with regions. We will keep you posted.