Agenda item

This report provides the Health and Wellbeing Board with a summary of the SEND and Alternative Provision Local Area Inspection process and key themes from the Brent partnership self-evaluation as part of the SEND Area Inspection preparation.

Nigel Chapman (Corporate Director Children and Young People, Brent Council) introduced the report, which detailed the preparedness for the joint inspection of SEND services of both the local authority and health. In introducing the report, he highlighted the following points:

• The inspection was conducted by both CQC and Ofsted as a joint inspection of health and the Council, rather than a solely local authority inspection.
• The SEND inspection would use a new framework which was introduced just over a year ago, the details of which were in the report.
• Brent had been inspected as an area partnership in 2017 and 2019 in relation to SEND.
• Since the new framework had been introduced, approximately 18 inspection reports had been published nationally with a wide variety of outcomes. There had only been three published inspection reports in London, with Haringey’s inspection starting the day of the meeting.
• In Brent, it was felt that the local area partnership was in a reasonable place in relation to SEND. The strengths were detailed in the report, and Nigel Chapman highlighted the strong relationship with parents and carers that gave the opportunity to improve services and flow their voice through the work done around SEND.
• Shirley Parks (Director of Safeguarding, Performance and Strategy, Brent Council) added that the appendix provided a good summary of the SEND inspection process and the preparedness for that, which had been shared across the partnership. Where areas of development had been identified, work was already underway to address them, such as CAMHS waiting lists. She highlighted that Brent knew itself quite well, which was important for being inspection ready.
• Jonathan Turner (Borough Lead Director – Brent, NWL NHS) added that the borough-based partnership had been working closely with the local authority to prepare the self-evaluation and the documents that form the required annexes. As a result of the restructure which was currently underway in the Integrated Care Board (ICB), it was likely there would be a full-time Designated Clinical Officer for SEND which was positive news.
• Overall, it was expected that Brent would be inspected during the current year.

The Chair invited comments and questions from those present, with the following points raised:

·         The Board felt that the strengths identified under 3.2.5 were not evidenced, for example, where it stated ‘SEND provision in Brent schools is strong’, there was no explanation of how that was measured or how that conclusion had been arrived at. Nigel Chapman explained that the purpose of the paper was to explain the readiness and process for the inspection rather than specific details from the self-evaluation. The SEND arrangements had been scrutinised by the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee during the year where the Committee had scrutinised SEND performance around working with schools, outcomes for children, health provision and working with parents and carers, and the report was available online.

·         The Board was aware that the inspectors would choose some cases to review during their visit, and asked how that process would work. Shirley Parks explained that the Council would be asked to provide a list of datasets of individual children from which the inspectors would select a number of cases to look at in detail. The inspectors would then expect the Brent partnership to do its own internal audit of those cases to see how well Brent understood what good practice looked like. The inspectors would talk to the families and practitioners linked to those cases as appropriate. In addition to this, the Brent partnership would be asked to send out a survey to all parents with children with SEND to garner the views of families and children. This would be done both via schools and the Parent Carer Forum. The inspectors would then triangulate that information alongside other data.

·         The Board highlighted the need for the Integrated Care Board (ICB) to be cognisant of the fact that the new inspection regime would mean that they may face several inspections due to its wider footprint covering several London boroughs. Jonathan Turner confirmed this was being considered at an ICB level and there was now a specific CYP Lead who was aware of the upcoming inspections and had already made arrangements identifying who would be responsible at ICB level should the call come for an inspection.

RESOLVED:

i)              To note the report and welcome the Designated Clinical Officer for SEND post for Brent.