Action plan for disabled children
AN action plan to improve support for youngsters with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) in Cheshire East has been approved.
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) highlighted ‘serious weaknesses’ after it inspected SEND services from Cheshire East Council and the borough’s NHS bodies in March.
They slammed the ‘unreasonable waiting times’ parents faced for education, health and care (EHC) plans – which inform families of the support they are entitled to receive – as well as the quality of the plans themselves, and the lack of an ‘effective pathway’ to help youngsters with autism.
At a meeting on Tuesday, councillors and NHS representatives on Cheshire East’s health and well- being board admitted the inspectors’ findings did not come as a surprise – and they endorsed a plan to bring in urgent measures for improving SEND provision.
Coun Jos Saunders, CEC cabinet member for children and families, said: “I think if we were all very honest we would have liked [the inspectors] to have come six months later because we already had a lot of this in place – we really did.
“It didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. We knew about the EHC plans and the autism pathway, but I think one good thing we can take away from this is that we are now working even more closely with our health partners than we did before.
“The amount of progress that has been made since then I think has been absolutely phenomenal.
“Our outcomes are really good educationally, so it’s not all negative, however we’re not complacent, we know what we’ve got to do and we are working really closely to achieve that.”
The written statement includes a 42-point plan to improve the timeliness and quality of EHC assessments – bringing in addi- tional capacity to process ongoing reviews, improving the databases used for records and boosting training for social care workers.
Sixteen actions will also be taken to improve provision for youngsters with autism, and 38 measures will be in place to improve the 20-week EHC assessments.
Kath O’Dwyer, acting chief executive at CEC, said: “On day one, we identified to the inspectors that we had more to do with the timeliness and quality of our plans, and we had more to do in terms of our offer on autism.
“Roll on four days and they played that back to us.”