Agenda item

The Board considered a report of the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland SEND and Inclusion Alliance which provided a progress update of Phase 2 of the work of the Alliance. A copy of the report, marked ‘Agenda Item 10’, is filed with these minutes.

Arising from discussions the following points were noted:

(i)           The SEND and Inclusion Alliance had been set up using funding from the Department for Education. The funding was for two years and the Alliance was four months into its work. The Alliance comprised of the 3 upper-tier local authorities in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, the three parent carer forums, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, the Integrated Care Board and the Schools Development Support Agency (SDSA) which was an LLR based organisation that supported regional development and schools in relation to SEND. University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL) was not currently a member of the SEND and Inclusion Alliance and was welcome to engage with the Alliance, however the main thrust of the work was to enable people with SEND to thrive in the community. Consideration was being given to how the partnership could be developed further.

(ii)         The SEND and Inclusion Alliance did not hold a commissioning budget but hoped to be able to influence those organisations that did commission services. The idea was that the Alliance worked in the gaps between partner organisations.

(iii)        The strategy of the Alliance was to support people with SEND based on their level of need rather than on their specific diagnosis. People would be supported even if they did not have a diagnosis. Board members welcomed this approach and emphasised that the actual diagnosis was less important than the needs they presented with.

(iv)       One of the priorities of the SEND Alliance was mental health. The work of the Alliance included tackling exam stress in people with SEND. Young people with SEND were also being linked in with Social Prescribers to improve their social life and address loneliness. In the future it was hoped to place social prescribers in schools.

(v)         Another priority of the Alliance was preparing young people with SEND for adulthood and life post 16. There had been some success getting people with SEND into employment particularly apprenticeships. Kevin Allen-Khimani (VAL) chaired the Business and Skills Partnership and offered to link the SEND Alliance in with some of the organisations that were part of the Partnership.

(vi)       Adults with SEND were disproportionately represented amongst prison inmates and therefore preventative work needed to take place with SEND children and young people early in their lives to stop them entering the criminal justice system. Some inmates had already had interventions from the Youth Justice Service which had not been fully successful. The SEND and Inclusion Alliance had identified a cohort of people aged 18-25 with learning disabilities and complex needs that needed to be worked with in this regard.

(vii)      It would be useful to link the work of the SEND Alliance in with Neighbourhood Hubs. The Neighbourhood Board could give consideration to how to achieve this and the Chair of that Board Professor Aruna Garcea was very interested in developing that work.

(viii)    Most parents were of the view that children with SEND were best placed in specialist schools. However, the SEND Alliance was of the view that the ideal venue for SEND children to receive their education was mainstream schools that were more adapted to the needs of SEND pupils. Conversations needed to be had with parents to explain to them the benefits of a mainstream education.

(ix)       The SEND and Inclusion Alliance requested that the Health and Wellbeing Board scrutinised every report it considered for whether the proposals within the report improved access to services for people with disabilities particularly SEND. Board members welcomed this suggestion.

RESOLVED:

(a)        That the progress of Phase 2 of the LLR SEND and Inclusion Alliance be noted along with the approach to Phase 3 and beyond;

(b)        That the Board continues to support and work in partnership with the LLR SEND and Inclusion Alliance.