Warwickshire County Council and Coventry and Warwickshire CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) remain committed to improving services for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), several months on from the release of a joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC) report inspection of the Local Area provision for SEND.

The inspection report, released on 23 September 2021, looked closely at services provided by schools, health providers and the local authority, to children and young adults with SEND. Whilst several areas were commended, including the commitment of area leaders to improve the outcomes of children and young people with SEND, the report also highlighted weaknesses that the local area needed to address, particularly waiting times for autism assessments and the quality of the online local offer.

Since the release of the report several positive actions have been taken to improve the delivery of services provided, with partners working together with the support of Warwickshire Parent Carer Voice, our local Parent Carer Forum. These include:

• Improving autism assessment waiting times and support for families - Additional clinical staff are now in post and more assessments are being carried out. A new model of assessment is also being tested to improve the process of assessment and diagnosis, and information and advice for families is being improved.
• Improving communications and engagement with parent carers – the local offer webpages have been revamped with feedback from parent carers and Warwickshire Parent Carer Voice.
• A programme of engagement activities including Webinars, a new look Warwickshire SEND newsletter, and new Local Offer Facebook page, are in place. A Live Feedback Form has also been developed to capture feedback, positive and negative, and hear from parents, carers and young people to help us continue to improve services. 
• A Young People’s forum has been set up to capture the voice of children and young people with SEND. Register your interest for the Young People's Forum for SEND here.
• An Inclusion Framework for Schools trial is going well in 17 schools in Rugby. Staff have carried out SEND reviews with peer-to-peer support, to identify training needs. Learning from the trial will be used to roll out an inclusion framework across all mainstream schools with the support of 'change champions'.
• Workforce development - A multi-agency working group is reviewing current training and developing a programme of support to improve the knowledge, skills and understanding of staff in schools, with the aim of increasing parental confidence and improving outcomes for children and young people. This includes a pilot in 30 schools on a new approach called Collaborative and Proactive Solutions with Dr Ross Greene from USA, to support young people with behavioural challenges which can lead to exclusions. Parental and school confidence in the implementation of this pilot has been extremely positive to date.

For more information on Warwickshire’s Local Offer, please visit the Local Offer webpages or the Local Offer Facebook page.