Any correspondence, communication or other business brought forward by the direction of the Chair of the Committee.
Minutes:
The Chair informed the Committee that she was unable to attend Full Councill on 15th May 2024, however, she did submit the following questions to Councillor Janet Sanderson, Executive Member for Children and Families and Councillor Annabel Wilkinson, Executive Member for Education and Skills.
What is the current rate of achievement of completing (Education Health and Care Plans) EHCPs within the statutory time limit and how is NYC dealing with the complaints and threats of legal action that have been received from some parents?
Since 2015 we have seen an increase of 233.6% new plans issued in North Yorkshire. Timeliness of EHCPs has decreased both Nationally and Regionally. We have now improved our timeliness 2 years in a row (2022 and 2023), moving us to a similar position to the latest reported national average and better than most recently reported statistical neighbour average. Requests in calendar year 2023 were the highest ever received, approx. 39% higher than the previous year, which was the then highest ever received number of requests in a calendar year. Since 2021, owing to the increase in demand for EHC assessments and the lack of Education Psychologists (EP) locally and nationally, we have commissioned external temporary support to meet EHC demand. Whilst this enabled the Council to meet an increase in demand and improve timeliness of assessments in 2022 and 2023, from the autumn of 2023 the availability of temporary EP’s was such that we needed to further strength our supply of temporary workers and increase rates to attract the required capacity. Whilst this has supported the meeting of demand into 2024, a backlog of assessment is being worked through. Fortnightly performance and improvement meetings are in place to constantly performance manage the temporary staff programmes.
With this increase in supply and rates now in place, capacity has increased and we forecast being able to clear the backlog this year. As the backlog is cleared, the out of timescales plan is then recorded. As a result of the out of date plans going on record, we see performance numbers drop, and this is what we are seeing on the current statistic reports. This will however improve throughout the year when the backlog is completed. It is also worth noting that the number of requests for plans has now dropped for 4 Quarters in a row, which is very welcome news, but still remains significantly higher than it did in 21/22. Alongside these temporary measures, we have strengthened our direct workforce. We have recruited a Principal EP, increased the team numbers and have recruited five EP’s from abroad that will arrive in our teams later this year. We then plan to recruit assistant and trainee EP’s to complete the team. In the interim the SEND casework team have strengthened their communication, so parents are aware of the current challenges within the statutory assessment process. There is a Caseworker attached to each child undergoing assessment and they remain the single point of contact in order to support parents through the process. Case work officers are trying to maintain regular communication with parents. Parents are also able to use the corporate complaints policy if they remain unhappy and of course seek out further assistance from the Local Government Ombudsman.
What percentage of children and young people in North Yorkshire are deemed to be disadvantaged? What percentage of funding for outdoor education have these children been able to access?
Research into the long-term impact of outdoor education residential visits for children and young people identifies lasting impacts including, increases in self-confidence, independence, improved communication and teamwork. 17% of all school age children and young people in North Yorkshire are deemed to be disadvantaged. For context, whilst this number has increased since the pandemic, it remains below the national figure which is around 20%. As I said in my response to a very similar question you asked at Full Council last July “It is the responsibility of the individual governing bodies to determine how they support pupils to attend all types of residential visit, whether with the council’s outdoor learning service or elsewhere.” The council’s outdoor learning service does not receive any routine ‘funding’ to support access. It is a traded service where each school /other organisation will make a booking for a group of pupils and the school / other organisation will decide if they use pupil premium or other funding source to support children with costs for residentials and other day-time outdoor learning activities (e.g. forest schools). These activities can take place in school, through one of the NYC centres or through a third party and so the council does not hold these records.
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