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February Policy briefing

Dynamic support register and Care (Education) and Treatment Review 

NHS England has a new policy to help people with learning difficulties and autism get the right support for their mental health at home instead of in hospital which will be implemented from 1st May 2023.

Dynamic support registers DSRs – Local areas must create a list of people with learning difficulties and or autism who are at risk of needing mental health hospital care, to try an ensure they receive appropriate care and reduce the need for an admission for hospital. This list is called the dynamic support register (DSRs). The DSR should be organised in such a way that adults, children, and young people can be identified when their health and care needs are increasing or complex, and may require a multi-agency response, monitoring and prioritisation for extra support.

Note: the term “At Risk of Admission Register” was originally used, this term continues to be used in some areas. Similarly, the Dynamic Support Register is also known in some local areas as a Dynamic Support Database (DSD)

Forums may wish to read the core standards for dynamic support registers, which also includes minimum requirements on standards and datasets. There is also a section on carer contingency planning for unpaid carers which may be of interest to forum members.

Care (Education) and Treatment reviews C(E)TRs – A C(E)TR is a person-cantered review to ensure the care (education) and treatment and support needs of the individual person and their family are met, and that barriers to progress and/or discharge are challenged and overcome. All autistic children and young people and those with a learning disability are required to have a community C(E)TR if they have been admitted to or are considered to be at risk of admission to a mental health hospital.

There is an increased focus on advocacy for the child or young person, physical health, quality of life, as well as looking at participation in meaningful activity.

Forums can find out more about DSRs and C(E)TRs in the Dynamic Support Register and Care (Education) and Treatment Review Policy and Guidance document. Easy read and plain English versions are also available.

The NNPCF are working with NHSE to ensure that parent carer forums are engaged in the implementation of the new policies including a webinar for PCFs to explain the changes on 8th March. Details of how to sign up will be released shortly.

Mental health issues affecting a pupil’s attendance: guidance for schools

The government has recently published guidance for schools where mental health issues affect pupil’s attendance as well as giving some examples of effective practice.

Integrated Care Systems – Public Accounts Committee Report

The Public Accounts Committee have published its response to its inquiry into Integrated Care Systems.

SEND and Alternative provision Green Paper

The NNPCF is awaiting the release of the SEND improvement plan which is the Department of Education’s response to the SEND and AP green paper consultation paper, which we believe is due to come out before March.

The DofE will be coming to our conference on 28 February to lead an interactive co-production session on the next steps of the AP and SEND improvement plan. We would really like to encourage forums to come to our conference to be part of these vital discussions.

Details of the NNPCF conference can be found on our website.

Children’s Social Care Review

The government recently published its response to the Independent Review into Children’s Social Care. The response can be read in the Stable Homes, Built on Love: Implementation, Strategy and Consultation paper.

There is little detail or content in this paper about the SEND social care system – the Department for Education has indicated that the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement plan which they intend to publish shortly will aim to align the two systems. However, some of the key themes that the NNPCF raised are explicitly picked up in the strategy, namely: 

  • The call for a more joined us system across education health and care 
  • The need for earlier intervention 

But some of the more specific things that we asked for in the independent review are not picked up: 

  • A call for a “support not safeguarding” for the majority of SEND families 
  • The quality of social care input into EHCPs and a recognition that too often this is non-existent. 
  • A huge variation in consistency and standards across the country

In March, the NPPCF will be engaging with forums to help formulate our response to the strategy; in particular our response to question of the consultation “What more can be done by government, local authorities and service providers to make sure that disabled children and young people can access the right type of help and support? “

Details of how to be involved with this will be included in our March consultation briefing. The NNPCF response as well as further details for forums are available to read on our website.

Census Data on Carers

The Office of National Statistics has published data on Unpaid Care in the UK. Their data includes anyone aged 5+ who indicated they provided unpaid care in the 2021 census. They found regional variability in number of hours of unpaid care given: the local authority with the highest proportion of unpaid carers was found to be St. Helens; whereas the North East was found to be the region with the largest proportion of unpaid carers.

More updates are due on the health, disability, and unpaid care series over the next year.

Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer programme

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NHIR) has published the final report from the early evaluation of Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer programme. The trailblazer programme, led by the Department of Health and Social Care, Department of Education and NHS England, was launched in 2018. The programme saw the creation of mental health support teams and training education mental health practitioners working directly in schools.

The report can be downloaded here and NIHR have published an infographic with a summary of the key findings.

Reports on location

The Child of the North All Party Parliamentary Group has issued a report highlighting areas where children and families in the north may have a different lived experience of parenting a children or young person with a disability.

The Coastal Communities Alliance have published their report highlighting challenges for disabled people in employment in these regions as well as higher levels of disability and long-term sickness.

February Policy Briefing
NHS England has a new policy to help people with learning difficulties and autism get the right support for their mental health at home instead of in hospital which will be implemented from…
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Department for Education Government Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing NNPCF NNPCF Steering Group NNPCF work

Meeting the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing

On Tuesday 10 January 2023, The NNPCF Steering Group (SG) met with the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing, Clare Coutinho, via Teams.

This was the first time the minister had met the SG and we wanted to inform her what we had been hearing from our forum membership.

It was an excellent opportunity to give an overview of the work that the SG has been involved in, what the challenges are to the SEND system, but also the good production work that has been happening.

We know that in order to make the change to the SEND system, it has to be done in coproduction.

We gave the minister a brief overview of the NNPCF, our membership and the number of forums that we have, their locations and how they are split into regions.

We then spoke to her about the top issues forums have been raising via our regional meetings.

The subjects included:

Access to community-based health services – including access to speech and language therapy (SALT), Autism and ADHD pathways and paediatricians.

Cost of living – how this affects parent carers differently. Not being able to work more hours due to caring responsibilities, the need to use electricity for live saving equipment, the need to keep the heating on constantly as some of our children cannot move independently or regulate their temperatures.

SEN Support and EHCPs – this included the lack of reasonable adjustments in school that can lead to the rise of low attendance, and the need for EHCPs. EHCPs taking longer than the statutory 20 weeks and having to wait months for annual reviews to be completed.

We then talked about the coproduction examples we have in our annual report

In Cornwall they were the first year of the key work project that is now in it’s 3rd year. They have just completed their evaluation. There have been no negative responses to the evaluation. Parent carers, young people and practitioners agree, that the keyworker project is not only needed, its life changing. We have cases of families who are risk of being admitted into tier 4 beds and families who are at risk of going into crisis- this project has saved them. We have children and young people who could have gone into tier 4 beds who are now at university.

In Telford & Wrekin – PODS Parent Carer Forum identified a gap in provision for families whose child was awaiting an assessment on neurodevelopment pathways.  They worked together with Educational Psychologist (EP) team and ran support sessions (in person and online) for families to support them with ‘Challenges at Home’.  These were based on feedback from families via Annual Surveys.  The sessions covered support around anxiety, routines, behaviour and wider concerns within the family. Further evidence was identified, and they have also ran 1:1 sessions.  Funding was agreed for two years for the project and this was made available from health

In West Sussex they have established a relationship with Chichester University where they train teachers and SENCo’s. They regularly join sessions and talk through what good practice looks like and what parents carers have encountered. Bringing real life stories to the classroom has had a huge impact on the trainees. They have now been asked to do the same with trainee social workers too.

The session concluded with a discussion on the next steps for the green paper. There is concern, not just in the system, but with parent carers too about what happens next. There is much anticipation for the green paper response and there is concern.

The minister fully engaged with the conversations and reassured the SG that SEND was a priority for her, as was the green paper response.

We are in communication with her office, and hope that she will join us in person at our conference, in Bristol on 28 February.

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Conference Contact NNPCF NNPCF conference

Bristol Conference Update

The agenda for our face to face conference in Bristol on 28 February has now been confirmed.

The conference opens at 10.30am, with the event starting at 11am

There will be light refreshments available on arrival.

11.00-11.20 Welcome and introductions


11.20-12.00 Keynote from Ofsted – SEND and inspections – the new local area inspection framework and Ofsted’s annual report


12.00-12.40 Keynote from CoChairs – What next for SEND? Shaping a strategy during a crisis.


12.40-14.00 Lunch- a choice of hot dishes will be available


14.00-14.30 Address from Claire Coutinho, Minister for Children, Families, and Wellbeing


14.30-15.45 Session led by the DfE:


Delivery of the SEND and AP improvement plan

An interactive co-production session led by the Department for Education, looking for thoughts on the next steps of the SEND and AP implementation improvement plan being developed in response to the SEND AP Green Paper


15.45-16.00 Break-refreshments will be available


16.00-16.45 The Q&A Panel will include:

Alison Ismail, Director for SEND and Alternative Provision at the Department for Education

Tina Pagett, HMI, further education and skills from Ofsted

Phil Brayshaw, Acting Head of Children and Young People, National Learning Disability and Autism Programme NHS England

Amanda Allard, Deputy Director for Health, Council for Disabled Children.

You can submit a question for the panel by completing this Menti Poll: https://www.menti.com/al59jhm9tjip

When the conference finishes, light refreshments will be available in the market place area.

Attendees can then return to their accommodation to freshen up and have some food in preparation for the evening social event, which starts at 7.30pm.

During the evening, there will be a bar, where you can buy soft and alcoholic drinks as well as a disco and some complementary canapés

If you are unable to attend the conference, a live stream will be available to watch. You can sign up for the live streaming here.https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83666170897

Shortly after the conference , the live sessions will be available to watch on YouTube- details will be shared after the event.

Find out more and book your place by completing the booking form available on Contact’s website

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Contact NNPCF conference NNPCF Steering Group NNPCF work Parent Carer Forums

NNPCF and Contact Virtual Conference news

January 31, February 1 and February 2

Our joint virtual conference with Contact has now been finalised

The details and booking links can be found below:

Tuesday 31 January

10am – 10.30am Introduction to the virtual conference

Join your conference hosts Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia from the NNPCF and Carolyn Deveney from Contact as they introduce this year’s joint NNPCF and Contact conference.

They will provide an overview the presentations, workshops and coproduction opportunities over the next few days and provide a lead into the face to face conference in Bristol on the 28 February

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88112873094

11am – 12.30pm Coming together on inclusion

A chance to get together with peers to share what works and what might challenge us when it comes to Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). This session focuses on interactive discussion, space to engage, challenging our own biases, understanding who is around us, and finding our ‘blind spots’.

Contact is offering all forums EDI training this year as part of the core support offer at the DfE’s request. We hope that by the end of the year all forums will have participated in the training.

Numbers for this session will be restricted, however, the session will be run another five times during the next few months.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82239692261

1pm – 2pm Planning the recovery in children’s community services

The NNPCF has heard throughout the year of the challenges faced by families accessing community based services including SALT, ASD / ADHD services and paediatricians in the wake of the covid 19 pandemic.

NHS England has created a new recovery team to address these issues around children’s services who have agreed to speak to NNPCF membership about what NHS data is telling them and the steps they are exploring to tackle the problems.


There will also be an opportunity to coproduce the latest thinking on what the model for recovery might look like.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86311272683

7pm -8pm NNPCF AGM

Join the NNPCF steering group to help coproduce the business plan for the coming year and shape our longer term strategy.

This session will include:

  • Review the first six months of our operation as a Community Interest Company from October 2021 to March 2022
  • take a look at what has happened in the world of SEND since April 2022 and put it into the broader context of political turmoil, cost of living and the NHS.
  • coproduce our priorities for the coming year 2023-24 that will form the basis of our business plan and longer term strategy.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82863344182

Wednesday 1 February

10.30am – 11.30am IPSEA SEND law

IPSEA, the SEND legal support charity, will lead a session that outlines the major pieces of legislation that protect children and young people with SEND including the Children and Families Act, Equalities Act, Chronically Sick and Disabled persons Act. They will cover the tools that families (and forums) have at their disposal to seek redress if they have concerns.

IPSEA will also cover the services and support that they offer and how forums can seek further help and training.

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84618605173

1pm 2.30 pm Delivering Better Value for SEND (DBVS)

This interactive session will provide an opportunity for parents and carers to understand the DBV programme, ask questions, and contribute to how it is set up for success. We will explore:

  • What the DBV in SEND programme is and how it sits alongside other DfE activities
  • The progress made and findings to date
  • How to best connect parent-carers into the work of the programme

See the following link to the local authorities participating in DBV – https://nnpcf.org.uk/2022/10/19/dfe-update-delivering-better-value-for-send-and-safety-valve/

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87686199480

Thursday 2 February

10am – 11.00 am Developing the Parent Carer Forum handbook with Contact

Last year, Contact asked what forums wanted in the new forum handbook – In this session they will share the survey results and discuss how to take things forward to develop a handbook that works for all parent carer forums

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84457866707

Booking is open for our face to face conference in Bristol.

Bristol Conference Update
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NNPCF NNPCF work parent carer forum guidance

Political Instability: What does it mean for SEND?

You will all have noticed the political instability over the last few months and weeks. Many parent carer forums and others in the SEND system have been asking what this means for SEND and how they should be responding.

Ahead of each financial year, the NNPCF outlines its strategy which includes a clear set of priorities for the coming year. You can see our presentation on this from our annual conference in March here NNPCF AGM – A review of the last year and coproducing our priorities for the coming year – YouTube

We outlined five priorities for the year. These included the SEND Green Paper, the Schools Bill and the NHS Long Term Plan. It is clear that the current political turmoil may impact these.

We do not yet know what will happen to some of our priorities

An uncertain legislative programme

At time of writing, the legislative programme of “in flight” bills (including the Schools’ Bill) has been paused for review by the new government. We have specifically asked the Department for Education what this means for the Schools’ Bill and at time of writing they are unable to share which pieces of legislation will proceed in the current session of parliament.

Similarly, it is impossible to say whether the legislation required to implement the SEND Green Paper will be part of next session of parliament – no-one (arguably including the current Prime Minister) is in a position to say with any certainty what will be a part of the first Kings Speech (see note below). However, we know that the DfE continues to work on the response to the SEND Green Paper as we outlined in our article earlier this month. Department for Education update – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C (nnpcf.org.uk)

An uncertain financial programme

Similarly, you will have noted the financial turmoil recently following the mini budget at the end of September. The government and new Chancellor are still working on what the changes announced will mean for public spending. We cannot rule out that there may be cuts in services and programmes associated with SEND. This includes parts of the NHS Long Term Plan.

A shift in our strategic focus

This has led to giving greater focus to some of our work at a national level. Namely:

  • We will continue to engage with national government and the NHS to shape and deliver the work that is ongoing including the SEND Green Paper, the Schools Bill and the NHS Long Term Plan.
  • Because of the legislative and financial uncertainty, we are placing greater emphasis on those parts of the plans that do not require legislation or are financially committed for the coming periods. The sequencing of changes that will make a difference to families become a relatively higher priority. For example, the new Ofsted / CQC local area inspection framework; the regional educational directorates being set up by the Department for Education and the new NHSE Dynamic Support Register and Care Education and Treatment Review policy.
  • Similarly, we are increasingly focusing our work on those initiatives that are looking at improving the SEND system here and now. These include the Delivering Better Value and Safety Valve programmes – please look out for an update on these over the next few days

What can parent carer forums do?

It is clear that we cannot depend on major national initiatives to “rescue” the SEND system. Even if there were clarity over future plans, they would take several years to have an impact whilst many SEND families are in crisis now.

This makes the local work of parent carer forums even more important. Forums need to continue to represent the lived experiences of local families and work with their local areas to coproduce better services and more intelligent commissioning. This includes being involved in local implementation of ongoing programmes from NHSE (e.g. keyworking and autism in schools) and the DfE (e.g. Delivering Better Value in SEND and Safety Valve). Please look out for our updates on these programmes over the next week or so.

Regardless of the political turmoil, we continue to have very strong engagement with officials in government and from the NHS and will continue to work with them to progress the SEND agenda and represent the lived experiences of families of children with SEND.

Note: Each “parliament” is broken into “sessions”. Typically, there are 3 or 4 sessions in each parliament. The legislative programme for each session of parliament is announced in the monarch’s speech – until recently this was the Queen’s speech, but it will now be the King’s Speech. A parliament is marked by a general election and the current parliament started with the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in December 2019. A change of “government” (e.g. a change of PM from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss) does not mean a new “parliament”.

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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
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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.

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Care Quality Commision NNPCF work

Care Quality Commision (CQC) presentation 20/04/22

Attended by Tina Emery and Sarah Clarke

Prior to the meeting a quick mentimeter survey was sent out with questions to all forums, about the CQC’s role in the LA SEND Inspections and how forums understood the CQC’s role in the inspections.  A limited number of forums replied due to the Easter holidays, although 65 forums did respond.

The mentimeter survey clearly demonstrated a lack of consistency in forum involvement and understanding of the role of the CQC. Even following a Written Statement of Action (WSoA) and a revisit.

The presentation was received well and generated discussion around the consistency of forums involvement in the inspection process and how could the CQC improve forums understanding and communications between forums and CQC.

This was the first time that the NNPCF have been asked to present to the CQC and the feedback at the meeting was positive and likely to lead to additional coproduction work between the CQC and the NNPCF.

CQC-presentationDownload
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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.