Agenda item

A period of 30 minutes has been set aside for members of the public to ask questions on the agenda for tonight’s meeting.

A period of 30 minutes has been set aside for members of the public to ask questions on matters considered at the last meeting and set out in the minutes or on the agenda for tonight’s meeting.

Questions and responses, received in advance of the meeting are attached.

Minutes:

The following questions from members of the public were received in advance of the meeting:

Question one: My question refers to the SEND HAF funding; please can the Cabinet member confirm - how much scrutiny has been given to the SEND HAF Funding including the number of children in attendance, those that had multiple spaces and what efforts were made to include children with SEND that parents/carers weren't members of Bury2gether? Emmajane Michael-Okocha

In response Councillor Tamoor Tariq, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills reported that HAF was new to Bury this year; we worked with the VCFA to encourage local organisations operating in local communities to provide provision for as many as our FSM children as possible, and for as many of them to be as inclusive as possible.   This was advertised through Bury Council and the VCFA.

We provided a number of provisions with additional funding for a SENCO to ensure they were able to open their provision to as many SEND Children as possible. Local Organisations (including Bury2Gether) completed a grant application form which was scrutinised by members of the HAF Steering Group, which included the VCFA and the Children’s Services Commissioning Team to ensure scrutiny.

In order to advertise all available provision to eligible children, we developed a leaflet of all activities which was sent to all parents of FSM children (using the current list of children eligible for FSM)

Data in respect of all HAF activity has been submitted to the Department for Education.

Supplementary Question: I am asking specifically regarding the SEND HAF funding, a lot of the activities in the leaflets would not accept children with SEND, therefore I am asking specifically in relation to the funding given to Bury2gether for SEND children.

In response to the supplementary question Sandra Bruce advised the HAF funding was specific to children eligible for free school meals. All children who were eligible for free school meals whether they had additional needs or not were contacted, and enough spaces were available. We requested from the Department for Education if we could allocate some of the funding that was available to other children who may not be eligible for HAF activities. Then we put out a different form for other children in different communities to apply this included SEN children. Bury2gether made an application and requested some of that money. FSM children were prioritised in the activities and we had around 23,000 places for children over the summer holidays.

Question 2: When the child’s voice is supposed to be central to their care and support why does the CWDT think it is necessary to remove an early help worker because of process, ignoring the children's wishes. Why does the continuum of care for a child with disabilities not favour consistency? Kiera Delaney

In response Councillor Tamoor Tariq, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills reported that he is in complete agreement that consistency for children, young people and their families is very important. We do not remove Early help workers from cases, but on occasion EH workers demonstrate that their work has identified unmet need and it may appear that a child or young people meet the threshold for CWD involvement. When this occurs the decision as to whether we support by consulting with the family and EH worker or whether we supersede the Early Help worker to enable the family to benefit from our support is made in discussion with the family themselves. We have examples of families we are supporting who wish to remain with the EH worker and families who have requested an assessment from CWD.

Supplementary Question: At no point in the assessment process my family or my child’s wishes and feelings were taken into consideration. This was detrimental as at the point of losing our early help worker we were in crisis. We then had to go over our whole situation again which led to support systems getting things wrong as they don’t understand the full picture. I ask, are the child’s wishes and feelings considered going forward and what do the Council do to ensure situations like this don’t happen in the future.

In response Councillor Tariq, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills reported that he is sorry for the experience Ms Delaney and her family have had. Cllr Tariq made a commitment that as Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills he will look into some of the specifics of this case to ensure that experience is not repeated. He thanked Ms Delaney for bringing this matter to the Committee and being so brave to share her story. Councillor Tariq stated he will look to ensure family’s in the same circumstance as M Delaney do not go through this same experience.

Sandra Bruce, Assistant Director (Early Help and School Readiness) stated she is unhappy to hear this experience has happened as the purpose of her role is to support families. Sandra Bruce, Assistant Director requested to catch up with Ms Delaney outside of this forum to ensure this does not happen again.

The next three members of the public were unable to attend so the Chair, Councillor Wright choose to read out the questions to the Committee.

Question 3: My question is in the report about school place projections are there none for SEN specialist school places needed? Deb Hirst

In response Councillor Tamoor Tariq, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills reported that the paper presented to the Scrutiny Committee on pupil place planning responds to the statutory duty on the Council in respect of mainstream school places, and the important role of the Council in managing the sufficiency of high-quality school places and taking appropriate action to ensure sustainability where the demand for places is in decline.

The provision of specialist school places is subject to different statutory duties, and the demand for places, and the manner in which the Council ensures the sufficiency of places differs to the arrangements for mainstream places.

Through the work that the Council is doing in respect of Project Safety Valve, which was the subject of a report to Scrutiny at its last meeting, plans are being developed to increase capacity of specialist provision.

Further details about this will be provided when an update on SEND is provided to Scrutiny at a future meeting.

Question 4: Was the HAF funding for SEND children provided through Bury2gether effectively spent considering the cost of the activities, how many places were available, how many individual children accessed these places, how many children accessed multiple places, were all children eligible for free school meals and how was this eligibility checked? Dawn Airey

In response Councillor Tamoor Tariq, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills reported that prior to the summer holidays, the DFE confirmed that we were able to use some of the HAF Funding to support children with additional needs, rather than those eligible for FSMs.

Bury2Gether made an application which reflected the HAF eligibility of an activity and food.

Due to data protection, we do not have the names of individual children who attended all HAF Sessions, but now that HAF Funding has been confirmed for future years, the Council are looking at a centralised booking and reporting system which will provide this level of detail.

Question 5 What is Bury Council's eligibility criteria for a disabled child to have a child in need assessment carried out? Where is this eligibility criteria document published? (so as to be publicly available to councillors and public alike). Catherine Black

In response Councillor Tamoor Tariq, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Children, Young People and Skills reported that the document explaining access to support on the Children With Disabilities team can be found on the council website. The link is: https://www.bury.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=11365. The accessibility of this document, where it is found and how the contents are presented are matters being considered within the scope of several working groups. I can confirm that members from Bury2gether attend these forums to ensure that such documents are co-produced. The eligibility criteria will be reviewed in co-production with Bury2gether.

As there was time left from the 30 minutes set aside for Public Question’s the Chair opened up to members of the public present.

Question 6: How many parent/carer assessments have been done in the past two years and what the eligibility for those assessments is? Kiera Delaney.

Isobel Booler Director of Education and Skills advised parent/carer assessment is something we need to look at. We do have work on this at the moment which is in co-production with Bury2gether as our partner. Isobel Booler offered to have a discussion outside the meeting regarding this matter.

Question 7: How many EHCP haven’t been reviewed when they were supposed to be reviewed and how many EHCP’s have needed to be reviewed straight away as soon as they have been finalised as they have been finalised incorrectly. Emmajane Michael-Okocha

Isobel Booler, Director of Education and Skills advised we hold around 2000 EHCP’s and we have a statutory duty to annually review. Colleagues are aware from the last Scrutiny Committee that we have challenges around SEND. We are currently recruiting to the Education Health and Care Plan Team and have a new manager that starts next week and have just employed four new case workers. Last year assessments completed within the 20-week statutory widow only reached 27% so this year a lot of work has taken place to close the gap; this year we are around 53% on the 20-week statutory window. In comparison nationally it is around 58% and so this is a national issue also.