Surrey Inclusion and Additional Needs Partnership Strategy (2023 to 2026)

Surrey's Local Area Partnership

This document is also available to download as an Easy Read version:

Inclusion and Additional Needs Strategy (Easy Read)

What is a local area partnership?

"Local area partnership refers to those in education, health and care who are responsible for the strategic planning, commissioning, management, delivery and evaluation of arrangements for children and young people with SEND who live in a local area."

Area SEND Inspections: framework and handbook, 29 November 2022.

Surrey's Additional Needs and Disabilities Partnership

In Surrey, the Additional Needs and Disabilities (AND) Partnership Board is the governance mechanism for partnership accountability. The AND Partnership Board meets every half term, and the membership includes representatives across Education, Health, Social Care as well as our third sector and user voice partners.

The AND Partnership Board will exercise partnership accountability for the delivery of the strategy.

Surrey Local Area Partnership includes:

Accept, Teach, Listen, Access, Support (ATLAS) (user voice)
Family Voice Surrey (FVS) (user voice)
Surrey Youth Focus (third sector and user voice)
SEND Advice Surrey (impartial advice)
Children and Family Health Surrey (health providers)
Mindworks Surrey (health providers)
NHS Surrey and Boarders Partnership (health providers)
Schools Alliance for Excellence (SAFE) (school improvement)
Surrey Schools Forum and Phase Councils (Early Years, Primary, Secondary, Special Schools) including links to post-16 Education, SENCO and Governor networks
Surrey Heartlands ICS (including commissioning and clinical)
Frimley ICS
Surrey County Council (children's social care including Surrey Virtual School)
Surrey County Council (education)
Surrey County Council (adult social care)
Surrey County Council (commissioning, including home to school travel assistance)
Alternative Provision (commissioning and provision)

Our Ambition

Our aspiration is to enable Surrey children and young people aged 0 to 25 with additional needs and/ or disabilities to lead the best possible life.

This strategy sets out our ambition that all Surrey children and young people with additional needs and/ or disabilities and their families:

are heard and are involved in the decisions that affect them
achieve positive outcomes, including the opportunity to lead healthy lives
develop positive relationships
learn and achieve their educational potential, and
become increasingly independent where possible and flourish within their community

To achieve this, we will work in partnership with families and colleagues across education, health, social care and the third sector to:

improve experiences and outcomes for children, young people and their families and ensure that no-one is left behind
be a champion for children and young people with additional needs and/or disabilities
ensure children and young people are rooted in Surrey and educated locally, wherever possible
learn from our feedback and continue our improvement journey

Examples of feedback received

"We need to listen to parents and children and value their contributions about the strengths and needs of their child as an individual and not assume a diagnosis or type of need makes us the expert".
"On those occasions where professionals focus their attention on the needs of the child and the family rather than their own organisational processes, the outcomes can be very positive, and the sense of distrust and animosity starts to dissipate surprisingly quickly".
"We need to have a more systemic and joined up approach to our practice that is child or young person centred and comes together seamlessly instead of feeling disjointed".

Our principles

These are shown in our 'Five Pillars of Partnership' below (list items one to five).

In addition to these we have principles around the ways in which we will deliver and govern to ensure the best outcomes for our children and young people (list items six and seven).

We will seek to co-produce our individual assessments as well as systemic changes alongside children, young people, parents, carers and partners.
We will invest in early identification of SEN and offer comprehensive information and support to all those experiencing SEN and those around them.
We will work as a partnership to ensure that all pupils are included where possible in their education establishment and broader community.
We will work with adult services to ensure our young people with SEN are well prepared for adulthood.
We will jointly commission key services to ensure we focus our collective resources around those with the greatest need, and that services collaborate well in their endeavours to meet needs.
We will work to ensure that our systems connect well and that our practice is of the highest standard to improve children and young people's outcomes.
We will ensure excellent leadership, governance and accountability.

A Partnership Endeavour

We recognise that children and young people with additional needs can face additional pressures and complexities as they develop and learn however we also know that the foundations of an independent, economically active, and resilient adult life are rooted in having a good level of development in early childhood and an inclusive education.

We believe that our partnership approach to embedding the social model of disability, underpinned by strength-based practice, and informed by children and young peoples' needs will enable them to build on the best start in life and positive outcomes in adulthood.

Language

We recognise the importance of language and are committed as a partnership to embedding the language set out in the Surrey ATLAS Preferred Terminology report. This includes the use of "Additional Needs and Disabilities" rather than "Special Educational Needs and Disabilities or SEND", wherever possible, however, we will sometimes need to continue to use the term 'SEND', while this is the term used in national legislation.

Context

The Surrey Additional Needs and Disability Partnership works within the statutory requirements of the Children and Families Act 2014 and has regard to the guidance within the associated SEND Code of Practice to "ensure that all children and young people are able to access the right support and provision to meet their needs". This also means strong engagement of children and parents in individual and strategic decision making, publishing our local offer, jointly commissioning effectively and providing excellent information, advice and guidance. This Inclusion and Additional Needs Strategy 2022 to 26 replaces our previous SEND Strategy 2019 to 22.

Our Partnership has been on an improvement and transformation journey since 2016 to not only respond to growing demand and new legislation, but to also ensure a whole system approach to assessing and responding to need which integrates the roles of health agencies, and schools as well as the local authority. This is expressed in our Community Vision for Surrey in 2030 which states that "by 2030 we want Surrey to be a uniquely special place where everyone has a great start to life, people live healthy and fulfilling lives, are enabled to achieve their full potential and contribute to their community and no one is left behind."

Supporting children to get the best start in life is also a clearly prioritised within Surrey's Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and in the Fuller Stocktake, which Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership outlines our approach to partnership working with primary care on a neighbourhood level, as well as how we will work together to create and support healthy communities.

Our journey to this integrated partnership approach has been undertaken in a changing environment which has included a global pandemic, an evolving health system to Integrated Care System, accompanying new joint commissioning arrangements, new case management systems and much more.

This journey has been neatly summarised in the image in Appendix 1: SEF Roadmap. As a partnership we have spent a significant amount of time reflecting on our strengths and weaknesses, which are outlined in our Self Evaluation, our Joint Commissioning Strategy for Children and our Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. Our partnership approach is visible through our commitment to transformation and 'rooting children, young people and families in our hearts and minds'. Surrey established the Additional Needs and Disabilities Partnership in 2019 to provide leadership and system-wide transformation to support our ambitions.

In Surrey in 2022 the number of statutory Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans was approximately 12,700 which constitutes approx. four.six% of the school population, compared to four% as the England average. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) was recorded as the primary need in 34% of EHC plans, and the majority of plans were for males (73%). Autism, Social, Emotional and Mental Health and Moderate Learning Difficulty were the need areas of largest growth over the last five years. Surrey's All-Age Autism Strategy sets out our plans in detail for meeting these needs.

To respond to growing levels of need, as well as to balance the local market, SCC have invested just under £140m in the maintained special school estate, bringing about just under 2,500 new specialist school places before 2027 (1600 on track to be delivered by 2024) for children with significant needs identified in their EHC plan. This, coupled with a strong focus on inclusion in mainstream schools will ensure children with an EHC plan have excellent, local provision available to them. The full range of services available to children and young people with additional needs are detailed on the Surrey Local Offer website.

Population

Surrey has a large population, (38.7% per 1000) of children and young people with SEN statement or EHC plan compared to our statistical neighbours, the South East and nationally (High needs benchmarking tool).

To complement this, Surrey also has a relatively large number of state special schools compared with statistical neighbours, with over 1,600 places per 100,000 pupils (pupil numbers and place numbers in state funded special schools.

General Population

By 2030 it is estimated there will be an increase in the number of 15 to 24-year-olds in Surrey (with Guildford having the highest number of children and young people).

Children with Additional Needs

An analysis of current EHC plans tell us that the following areas of need have increased significantly in the last 5 years:

Autism: up 117%
Social Emotional and Mental Health needs: up 116%
Moderate Learning Difficulties: up 65%

There remains a significantly higher proportion of males than females who have an EHC plan, 79.2% and over a quarter of pupils with SEN Support and/ or EHC plan are eligible for free school meals, compared to 10% amongst their peers.

As well as higher rates of EHC plan compared to nationally, Surrey also has slightly higher rates of SEN Support (13%) compared to England (12.6%).

Inclusion and Schooling

Surrey County Council and Schools work hard to include children with an EHC plan in mainstream settings wherever possible. In January 2022, 35% of children and young people with an EHC plan were educated in mainstream school, which is one of the highest in our benchmark group and higher than the South East average of 32%.

Nearly 12% of Surrey pupils with an EHC plan are educated in independent or non-maintained specialist schools, which is above the national average and higher than our statistical neighbours.

Co-production

Our ambition

"Co-production brings together individuals to be heard and to collectively and actively shape the support and services they need."

What works well

Surrey is strongly committed to engagement, participation, and coproduction at a strategic, operational, and individual level in all our work with children, young people, and their families, and this is shown through our Co-production Charter. The charter sets out our shared understanding of co-production, which is:

Our commitment to co-production:

Arrangements are made to ensure everyone can take part
Views are valued, respected and acted on; differences are respected; and skills are recognised in an equal way
Everyone communicates respectfully and in the agreed timeframes
Everyone works together to support children and young people to achieve their aspirations
There is an ongoing feedback loop that provides openness and accountability

We work closely with schools, our parent carer forum, Family Voice Surrey as our strategic partners who have a strong presence on several boards, reference and steering groups and with SEND Advice Surrey our impartial advice service. We value and put emphasis on the parent carer voice as part of the co-production process. We also work with Surrey Youth Focus who act as a representative for voluntary sector providers to ensure we meet the needs of all communities. Our voluntary and community sector have come together to form a Third Sector Additional Needs and Disabilities Group which gives greater voice and strength to this part of our system – pulling together smaller voluntary sector organisations to ensure consistency of approach and good feedback mechanisms.

We have strong representation from young people themselves who have additional needs to help shape our approaches, processes, communications and documentation to ensure the lived experience is threaded through our work together. Our young people are represented through Surrey Youth Voice. We have also established a Children's Autism Partnership Board to support involvement of autistic children and young people. Both parent/carer and young people's groups can raise 'Action Cards' with services in Surrey to challenge, clarify or support our activities. The groups meet on a regular basis and highlight through the Action Cards what they would like to stop, start, or change about the services they access. The responses to the action cards have been well received by the authors and are valued by members of the Inclusion and Additional Needs Services as a positive tool to help us reflect on and improve our practice. We also publish monthly 'You Said, We Did' reports. These are integral feedback loops to assist in continuous improvement. Between June and August 2022, we published the Our Voice Matters survey to gain the views of children and young people in Surrey and this has had high levels of engagement.

In the summer of 2022, we undertook a survey of parents' views on their satisfaction in how additional needs are met in Surrey.

A total of 1,085 parents and carers completed the survey and reported on the experiences of 1,359 children and young people with additional needs and disabilities (AN&D). This was a statistically higher response rate than in previous surveys.

When asked about their satisfaction with support for their child, 52% of those on SEN Support and 46% of those with an EHC plan were satisfied or very satisfied.

What we will strengthen over next three years

We wish to ensure more children, young people and their families participate in decision-making about their individual plans and support. This will involve developing our webinar series so families understand all aspects of the statutory assessment process, as well as improving the quality of information on our Local Offer and Family Information Service portals, its accessibility and navigability. We also wish to investigate opportunities with social media to connect with children, young people and their families. We will instigate a children and young people's Shadow Board that will feed into Surrey's Children's Autism Partnership Board, as well as develop an engagement plan for both our Community Health Services developments, and our mental health and emotional wellbeing services.

We will also reinforce training and advice to schools and other professionals as to the importance of the child's own lived experience in informing the best way to support them. As a result of engaging with the ATLAS group after they published their Ableism Report (2022) identifying the importance of language used by professionals, Surrey SEND has adopted the term 'additional needs' instead of 'special' or 'SEND' and this will be rolled out across all our publications and language in the coming years.

The revised post 14 EHC plan template places additional weight on capturing the views and aspirations of young people as experts in their own needs and lived experience, enabling young people to participate in informing more actively how they would like their support provided and facilitates planning for post-16 education or training. We need to collate this information to inform service planning. ATLAS are evolving and we wish to support them to recruit new and increasing membership through our User Voice Participation Team, as well as link the Action Cards produced by them with our Partnership so that they can hold us to account at a strategic level.

We will work together to identify and implement actions and learning points arising from Parent's and Our Voice surveys, and repeat
them within next 12 months to further explore topics or issues of particular interest and measure improvement against 2022 baselines.

Early Identification and Support

Our ambition

Children and young people's needs will be identified at the earliest opportunity, providing the right level of help at the right time. We will work together as a partnership to promote independence where possible as well as provide up-to-date information to support communities to self-help early. Additional needs will be identified and responded to in a timely and effective way by those already working with children, young people and their families. This will prevent escalation of need where possible.

What works well

Our information, advice and guidance is provided through a comprehensive Local Offer and Family Information Service. These provide detailed information, advice and links to resources to support both families and providers in utilising or accessing evidence-based interventions from the earliest stage. We also provide information and advice through our All Age Autism Strategy which has a workstream focused entirely on this, as well as a brochure produced by the Surrey Wellbeing Partnership based on the iThrive principles to support emotional and mental health and wellbeing. The Designated Clinical Officers have been meeting quarterly with the Local Offer team to ensure the health information and advice is up-to-date and easily accessible.

We have introduced a countywide single point of access any concern about a child's learning called our Learners Single Point of Access (L-SPA). This provides early intervention, support and challenge to providers to improve inclusion in mainstream settings, as well as signposting to education support services, early help or partner agencies. We are seeking to increase the numbers of Request for Support through this pathway, rather than requests for an EHC plan needs assessment. A close working relation with the Early Help Hub has enabled more families of children with additional needs to be made aware of our offer of early help and support in accordance with our Family Resilience model. We also have an Inclusion Service which has robust working together agreements with Children Services, Targeted Youth Support, and the Virtual School to ensure that no child is left behind. A recent Teacher and SENCO survey (summer, 2022) showed that 81% of schools' professionals agree or strongly agree that identification of special educational needs is timely in Surrey.

We have good collaborative relationships throughout Surrey, which is embedded within the Best Start for Surrey Strategy. One example of working in this way is joint initiatives such as the two-year-old integrated review, which promotes the sharing of information and identification of suitable intervention strategies. Our early years providers work together to guide SENCOs on implementing a graduated response for children with additional needs which includes a comprehensive training package and termly early years SENCO networks. Furthermore, since April 2022 the SEND, Education and Early Years Commissioning team have been managing Statutory Support Notifications which means young children can get help quickly in accessing structured EY settings and additional support.

A neurodevelopmental profiles pilot project has been implemented by Mindworks in six schools to help staff identify and assess neurodivergent children and young people earlier using a social diagnostic pathway. This supports our Partnership vision for Neurodiverse Friendly Schools.

What we will strengthen over next three years

Although we have a good Local Offer website, which links to the Family Information Service, we are continuously looking to improve its quality via improved information advice and guidance, increased interactivity, and the accessibility of information through a variety of online platforms. Over the next three years, we will work hard to ensure our information is as navigable, relevant and accessible as possible. As part of this we wish to create and publicise more short videos on topics of interest to families, such as the EYIPP process. Provide support to all at the earliest opportunity, with or without a diagnosis.

Working with settings

We wish to build on our individual Team Around the School project, neurodevelopmental profiles, and pilot schools for emotional and mental health to ensure joined up pathways within these settings, as well as co-ordinated use of resources beyond these settings. A priority for intervening early is children and young people's mental health and emotional wellbeing. We have seen an increase in children experiencing mental health difficulties and anxiety who find attending school regularly challenging, school absence and additional needs has also been a strong theme in parents' and carers' feedback. This is generally referred to as Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSNA).

Children and young people with EBSNA may also have additional needs and/or an EHC plan. These are a priority group in terms of early identification and Inclusion Officers work with parents and the school to understand the reasons for persistent absence which may be linked to EBSNA. Over the coming years, we wish to develop our multi professional network that we've established with partners from Surrey, Health, and the voluntary sector to look at mental health conditions that impact on school attendance. This will need to lead to more practical support such as our training package developed by our Educational Psychologist for schools and professionals on this issue. Our relatively new Mindworks alliance has a earlier help offer through its voluntary sector elements, including Barnardo's and the National Autistic Society

Early Years

We also wish to work closer together in the early years by ensuring the mandated Health Visitor checks at 2.5 years are done in collaboration with the child development checks that early years settings undertake at the same time. This would increase the take-up of the Health Visitor checks, thereby ensuring any issues are spotted early, but also that information, advice and guidance can be offered regarding additional health needs. Current rates of the 2.5 year health visitor checks are low, and take-up is lower in areas of greater deprivation and by ethnic minority families.

Our Best Start Strategy 2022 provides a single overarching strategy that encompasses First 1000 days, Early Years Strategy (Second 1000 days) and 0 to five Additional Needs. It seeks to offer a child and family-centred approach; a holistic view of transformation activity focusing resource in the right areas; one single strategic ambition; greater clarity for the workforce; and a single, streamlined governance.

Inclusion in Education and Community

Ambition

We want all children to access education, feel empowered and be able to challenge judgement, stigma and negative behaviour that can be a barrier to their future outcomes. This means we will embed the social model of SEN whereby communities, educational settings and spaces are inclusive and accessible. Barriers will be removed – whether physical or cultural – so that all our children and young people can thrive and achieve in Surrey. This must be a 'needs-led' approach.

What works well

Surrey County Council's Inclusion Strategy 2022 sets out ten objectives that our Partnership is working towards. It's adopted inclusion statement, based on UNESCO statement of inclusion, is: 'Inclusion is a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all children and young people through increasing participation in learning, by cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion with and from education'. It is about inclusion in its widest sense, from celebrating diversity to ensuring accessibility to co-producing services with parents and broader stakeholders.

We have a successful Healthy Schools Programme, driven by our Health and Wellbeing Strategy, which works with schools across the county to ensure an inclusive and 'healthy' culture. Our programme has a dedicated online presence and employs a robust approach to communications and support ensuring that it is recognised and embedded as a systemic and valued resource. It also develops and provides training and information events for parents, carers, and partners as well as schools and internal services and publishes guidance documents in addition to the Surrey Healthy Schools Self Evaluation Tool.

The All-Age Autism Strategy has been brought together by autistic children, young people, adults, and family carers together with professionals from across Surrey's service system. Its aim is to promote a cultural shift so that community and service settings are understanding and welcoming and with a dedicated workstream focused on community, including tackling stigma, accessibility, and inclusion this is already underway.

Through the revised Local Offer and Family Information Service, families and professionals have easier access to information which helps them understand how best to meet their child's needs, as well as identify universal and specialist services and opportunities in their area. This is also well communicated through our new Ordinarily Available guidance (Oct 2022) which outlines the support available within mainstream schools for children and young people with SEN Support needs (not necessarily those who have reached the EHC plan threshold). The term 'ordinarily available provision' comes from the SEN Code of Practice and refers to the support that mainstream schools or settings should be able to provide for a child or young person through their agreed funding and resource arrangements. Our guidance provides greater clarity of normal differentiation addressed through Quality First teaching, and when schools provide further support within their own resources.

The Personalised Resilience and Engagement Programme (PREP) is a partnership approach between Surrey Heartlands ICS and Surrey County Council that aims to address the barriers to engagement with education, work, and everyday life. It supports young people who may have been affected by anxiety, school refusal or other trauma, including those with autism. The intended impact is to promote community inclusion to improve young people's health and wellbeing and facilitate their journey back into education or employment – a keyworker programme has been instrumental to this.

What we will strengthen over next three years

Although we have made considerable advances in ensuring our collective services are inclusive, there is still much to do. We are just starting our school-led Inclusion and Innovation Programme, a group of over thirty Headteachers who are coming together to focus on three priorities for the year ahead, with further priorities likely for following years. For 2023 the focus will be on: autism, transitions and behaviour, including developing neurodevelopmentally friendly settings. The programme will test ideas and innovations in a variety of forms, new pilot projects, changes to staffing, changes to timetable, different ways of working with the local authority and health colleagues to improve outcomes in these three areas. Once fully evaluated, those that work well can then be considered for roll out across the county.

We are looking to significantly improve the information and advice we offer to Surrey families through our Local Offer workstream. This includes taking the Local Offer 'live' into communities to offer help, support, and advice in less formal settings such as libraries and family centres. Training of Libraries staff to be able to act as an initial first point of information and advice to the public is beginning and we hope to roll this out over the coming year. We're also looking to improve our Local Offer website to offer a directory whereby one can type in a need and location and be directed to a local service to match those needs. All those working with children and young people will be asked to do this as a first step to getting needs met. Only after local options for meeting need have been tried will assessments for further support be considered. This 'try local first' route is very much in line with our partnership thinking around place-based commissioning and multi-agency teams around local settings.

We have recently undertaken a review of EHC plan funding allocations to mainstream settings and have identified some changes to implement from 2023 and beyond. We wish to see new banding funding focused on the individual needs of children and the actual provision they require, rather than a notional allocation. Our new template for creating an EHC plan will define need and provision and the actual funding linked to that. Initial consultation with schools has provided a positive response but more work is needed to support a roll out of this new approach and an invitation has gone out to schools to be part of a working group to test ways forward with approximately 10% of them as a pilot before full roll out. This approach builds on the success of the banding funding changes with special schools (launched Sept 2022).

Transitions and Preparing for Adulthood

Ambition

We will take a partnership approach to preparing young people for adulthood from the earliest years, working towards smooth transitions at every stage, and together support them to be independent where possible and resilient so that they can live fulfilled and healthy lives in their own communities. We will work with young people to support them into meaningful employment that is fulfilling, giving a sense of purpose and belonging wherever possible.

What works well

One of the key programmes of work for children and young people in Surrey, is our Preparation for Adulthood Programme (2021-23). This programme draws together adults services with children's services, and operates across health, education and social care to ensure that young people have the best transition possible to adulthood, whether it's a move to independence or (in limited cases) requiring support from adults services. We have a variety of post 16 pathways for young people with EHC plans. Though standard educational pathways are open to many of young people with an EHC plan, alternative options can provide support to enable progression to employment or develop independence. A revised "preparing for adulthood" brochure has been developed to support young people to assess and review their options. This will be designed for young people aged 14-25 with additional needs and disabilities, and their parents/Carers, to provide them with a resource for their transition into adulthood. An example of one of our commissioned pathways that works well is the Halow project, a Surrey based charity that supports more than 200 young people aged 16 years and over with learning disabilities, focusing on transitions to adulthood ensuring young people with disabilities have the same life choices and chances as any other young person.

Through analysis of the outcomes for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities into adulthood, including the higher than national average of independent and non-maintained provision, we have further developed our approach to place-based commissioning and have invested in provision and services that allow children and young people to stay closer to home and grow and thrive as part of their community. This is scaffolded by the Working Younger collaboration between Children with Disabilities and Adult Social Care which enables planning to take place at an earlier age so that young people and their families have more time to make decisions and engage with professionals about what their options are in adulthood.

Professionals within the Inclusion and Additional Needs service are working together with Social Care colleagues to identify and reduce numbers of those who may be at risk of becoming NEET when transitioning to post 16 education or training. This include young people who may be vulnerable to exploitation, as well as Care Leavers. This helps to focus resources at those that need it most.

What we will strengthen over next three years

We are seeing growing demand in EHC plans for 16 to 25 year age ranges so we plan to review vocational, education and employment pathways to ensure current commissioned services are meeting need. This means ensuring young people have adequate housing, independent travel, educational attainment, are in education, employment or training and are prepared for every transition. We will undertake a programme of work to develop new services for young people wishing to access local education, employment and/or independent living opportunities/skills in their local community. This work will be developed with and aligned to adult services provision so that any re-commissioning of post-16 provision is enhanced in the future, improving long term outcomes and supporting improved transition between services.

Reviewing feedback from engagement with young people and partners, and building on the work already undertaken as part of the children and young people with additional needs Sufficiency Strategy, we will review of all post-16 contracts and services to ensure all services meet emerging need. This includes refreshing the existing needs analysis for young people to ensure the pathways developed are ones that respond to new and emerging needs within Surrey. In addition, this work will be done in conjunction with local partners from across health, education, social care and the voluntary and community sector, recognising the strength in local communities.

Building on feedback received from young people around support programmes for specific needs, we will pilot the implementation of PREP for academic year 2022/2023. PREP is a personalised, reduced hours programme that addresses barriers to engagement with education, work, and everyday life. Week by week the service help young people to build resilience skills, re-engage with the world and become an active citizen.

Over the coming years we wish to build on our successful apprenticeship scheme across Children's Services. To date, 17 young people with EHC plans have been supported as part of this programme, developing the skills required to transition into successful employment within the local authority. The current programme ensures young people are equipped with the necessary skills for employment, ensuring our Partnership is closely aligned to the preparing for adulthood outcomes. In the future, we'd like to be able to offer apprenticeships across all organisations in our Partnership and grow this programme of work.

Additional programmes of support and services will be developed as a result of ongoing engagement and feedback. This includes better understanding of accessibility challenges in future employment schemes to ensure a greater diversity of need is supported. In addition, further work will look to strengthen supported internships, review the impact of the PREP pilot in supporting young people with mental health needs, identify and design support services for young people who may require more intensive support to access local employment opportunities.

Joint Commissioning, Sufficiency and Evaluation

Ambition

Our vision as a partnership is to commission, provide and plan services together to support children and families holistically to live healthy and fulfilling lives. We will strive to work with families in a seamless, yet targeted way which maximises the use of our resources and reduces duplication across agencies. We also wish to learn from children, families, practitioners and other models of good practice, as well as from where we have identified further improvements are needed to evaluate our provisions and set them on a continuous improvement journey, quality assuring periodically.

What works well

We have created a strong base for our joint commissioning activity by establishing a shared department, through a section 75 agreement, which operates across Surrey Heartlands ICS and Surrey County Council to commission services for children, young people and families. There has been significant focus on supporting children's emotional wellbeing and mental health and we have commissioned a new, jointly funded service, Mindworks Surrey which is an alliance of local and national health, education, social care and voluntary sector partners.

To better understand our populations, the Joint Strategic Needs assessment (JSNA) 2022 provides a comprehensive overview of need including key demographic data. This that supports our ability to provide services and commission resources for the future and has informed our Joint Commissioning Strategy 2022. The JSNA has been co-produced with children and young people and families to ensure it is and accessible and relevant.

There has been significant investment in special school places in Surrey to enable children and young people to remain local to their families, with an additional 1,600 places created locally (by 2024) in specialist provision. Our strong partnerships with local special schools has enabled this to happen alongside robust forecasting of need to understand what the profile of need will look like county-wide over the coming years. The Coming Home project has sought to identify which children and young people can move back from educational placements out of county, and will consider jointly funded placements too.

Our Joint Commissioning Strategy 2022 sets out a number of strengths to build on in our joint commissioning practice, including services for children with complex health needs (where we have evolved our joint commissioning panel), our First 1000 Days programme which seeks to provide ambitious change in the early years, the HOPE Service which is a multi-agency, Ofsted 'outstanding' provision as an example of how we pool budgets to create innovative and effective provision, and our new Learners Single Point of Access (L-SPA) arrangements to improve accessibility.

What we will strengthen over next three years

As a partnership, we have identified nine areas for improved joint commissioning in Surrey. These are:

Social, Emotional and Mental Health, increasing the range of specialist provision for SEMH, whilst also ensuring Mindworks provision allocated to each school is impactful on this cohort of children
Children with Disabilities Social Care alignment to health services, including continuing care, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, community paediatrics, and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS)
Personalisation, including increasing take-up of and streamlining personal budgets, direct payments and personal health budgets
Health of Looked After Children and Care Leavers including better use of health assessments, as well as a richer deep dive into the mental and emotional health of these children and young people
Ordinarily Available services to support additional needs in schools enabling those that work in universal services to know what is available in their communities and through their own comprehensive offer
Community Health Services and making sure waiting times are reduced, workforce issues are addressed and services are more impactful on joint outcomes the Partnership wishes to see
Vulnerable Adolescents - Anxiety and Suicide Prevention to address the rising numbers of young people who are experiencing mental health crises, heightened through the pandemic, particularly through our Targeted Youth Offer.
Neurodevelopmental Pathway ensuring practitioners and services come together around a family at every stage of their journey
Post Adoption and Special Guardianship Order (SGO) support ensuring therapeutic provision to prevent adoption or SGO family breakdown

Our Capital Strategy to expand Surrey's state maintained Specialist Education Estate, is set to deliver more than 1,800 places by 2025. This includes the delivery of three new ASD designated special free schools. Our Children and Young People with Additional Needs and Disabilities 2022 to 2030 Sufficiency Plan provides an analysis of what data is telling us about projected demand and forecast EHC plan growth, a summary of our provision in Surrey and finally an action plan addressing each of our 24 sufficiency statements.

Two of our priorities for the next three years are to implement both the Home to School Travel Assistance policy and learning so that pupils are appropriately supported to access their place of education, and the Alternative Pathways and Reintegration Strategy. This will ensure that Alternative Provision is high quality and that pupils are supported to reintegrated into mainstream education where appropriate.

Our voluntary and community sector is growing from strength to strength and now with a Third Sector additional needs and disabilities group, we hope this will continue. This group enables smaller organisations voices to be amplified, as well as ensure a consistent approach to our strategy throughout the county.

We are seeking to have a continuous evaluation loop which links our contract monitoring, children and young people's views and staff feedback into our intelligence for future service planning. This will be brought together through the SCC Evaluation Service.

Systems and Practice

Ambition

We seek to develop positive and meaningful relationships with children, young people and families in all our practice which are trusting and insightful for everyone involved, with safeguarding considered front and centre at all times. Our systems will support this type of work, making it easy to prioritise time to build trusting relationships as colleagues, record key information, share it timely where appropriate and to draw on a range of levels of expertise to fully understand the needs of the children we work with. A focus on partnership recruitment, retention initiatives and continuing professional development will be integral to success.

What works well

In 2019 we set out to integrate different systems within children's, adults and education so that all practitioners supporting a child or young person had a 'single view' of that family. This is our new shared database, called EYES, which went live in August 2022 to transform the ability of services to record, manage workflows, understand demand management, and improve service efficiencies across the whole system. The greatest benefits will be:

A unique record for a child or young person to allow for a holistic overview of the child's journey and the ATOM function to provide a 'helicopter' view of the child alongside family and key agency relationships
Automatic feed from mainstream schools daily informing on attendance
Reduced administration time entering data into the system, and document storage from across agencies
Consistent standards of communication and improved timeliness

We have been developing our multi-disciplinary practice in a number of settings to support children and young people with additional needs and disabilities. This includes piloting our multi-disciplinary Team around the School approach in 16 schools where services and agencies are organised differently with named practitioners allocated to work with a school or a cluster of schools to form a wider "team". A co-ordinator is appointed whose role is to "mind the system", to identify and track children and to ensure effective communication systems and integrated working with school staff. It is a referral "in" model rather than the current system of referral out where it is hoped that someone else will pick up the problem. The referral "in" model is where the school asks partners and specialist services to come and help with problem solving and provide support, advice and practical interventions. Risk and responsibility are shared together – the team "holds the baton" for the child or family. This model will be evaluated and considered for future roll out. Other models of multi-disciplinary work include at our Learners Single Point of Access (L-SPA) and C-SPA.

We are in the process of adopting a new restorative practice approaches to our work with children, young people and families. This is a new, relational based approach which aims to develop community and to manage conflict and tensions by repairing harm and building strong relationships. Through this approach we understand behaviour as an indicator of feelings. We have begun to roll out training in restorative practice across our frontline SEN staff groups.

What we will strengthen over next three years

We will embed our restorative practice approach across our Inclusion and Additional Needs workforce, whilst at the same time, prioritise each contact with families, to ensure it is about forming and strengthening trust between the practitioner, child and family. This enables a shared ownership of the pathway ahead and the joint outcomes sought for the child and family. We will develop Practice Standards for our Special Educational Needs teams which will outline how this can be achieved. We are also starting to roll out additional training on trauma-informed practice so that everyone working with a child and family is able to recognize, understand, and empathize with the impact of trauma on an individual and those around them. In addition, we are looking to more widely roll out autism awareness training across the partnership.

We undertake a regular programme of casework audit to oversee of the quality of casework and recording. These are audits of EHC plans by a range of stakeholders, including schools, parents and carers. The most recent audits highlighted that we identify SEN well, with 71% of cases independently audited showing this area as good or outstanding. This process has identified the following areas for improvement:

Timeliness and quality of EHC plans
Annual Reviews have not been processed as efficiently as required meaning we cannot fully assess impact on good outcomes
Health and Social Care elements of the Plans continue to require further improvement
A recent deep dive into children and young people Education Otherwise Than At School (EOTAS) highlighted the need for more consistent understanding of this type of education, and an EOTAS Action Plan to be pulled together

Where EHC planning is effective, intended outcomes and precise strategies are set out clearly. As this is an area that we wished to continue to prioritise a training and development programme is being rolled out to all departments that are linked to the EHC plan process. This includes a basic awareness e-learning module that is mandatory for Children, Families and Lifelong Learning (CFLL) staff and also available to the wider workforce. We will be setting up a new working group to oversee the workforce development required for the wider workforce including recruitment and retention of staff.

We will improve the alignment of the practice and information sharing between the Children's Single Point of Access (C-SPA) and Learners Single Point of Access (L-SPA) to ensure that children with additional needs and their families can access a wide range of help and support in a timely way. This will allow us to more clearly identify the socio economic and inequalities factors that may impact on the identification of additional needs in children. Both single points of access do currently meet daily with the CAMHS SPA to consider children and young people who are or may be approaching a crisis to suggest joined up and solutions focussed responses and actions.

We have made EYEs available to nearly all schools who can use it to get an overview of a child's needs to inform more holistic assessments and provision. We now wish to extend this availability of the system to our parents, carers, children and young people, and colleagues and partners in the ICB and in Health Provider trusts, such as Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Community Paediatricians.

System practitioners are our experts; we will involve them in creating solutions that work for all.

Leadership, Accountability and Governance

Ambition

Our partnership will work together to lead our system for inclusion and additional needs by creating change, overseeing and being accountable for improvements to our services. We will have an accurate, shared understanding of children and young people's needs in Surrey and will engage with children, young people and their families in our leadership roles. We will strive to create an environment and culture of excellent practice where multi-agency support around a family can flourish and we will comprehensively evaluate our provisions as part of a continuous commissioning cycle.

What works well

Surrey has an Additional Needs and Disabilities Partnership, established in 2019, which drives transformation and change across our system. It upholds accountability across different organisational boundaries and promotes positive and meaningful communication while reducing duplication and allowing for development of best practice. Together, we have a mutual understanding of what 'good' looks like for children, young people, and families. We recognise where improvement needs to be made and hold ourselves and others accountable through a culture of high support and high challenge. We work together effectively to make our visions a reality. In practice our partnership approach is evidenced through the Joint Commissioning Strategy, our Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, and our ambitious Additional Needs and Disability Transformation Programme. This programme (see appendix three for an overview) has a focus on Inclusion and Partnership themes but also maintaining oversight of the Capital Developments, Placement Values and Outcomes, and Preparing for Adulthood Programmes. Our governance structure which brings all this together can be found in appendix two.

Our Partnership has recently undertaken a self-evaluation which identifies the following across 11 domains of service delivery:

what we know about the impact of our arrangements for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities,
what our plans are for the coming 12 months to improve their experiences and outcomes, and
what are children, young people, their families and our partners telling us?

An action plan will follow our self-evaluation that focuses our activity and planning on building on our strengths and addressing areas for development. The action plan and future updates to the self-evaluation will be reported to the partnership board to ensure that these contribute towards the strategy and measures of success where appropriate.

Examples of strong leadership across our system are our commissioning of Schools Alliance for Excellence (SAfE) to lead on statutory school improvement including school governance and system leadership thus enabling schools to deliver high quality teaching and learning to all children including those with additional needs. We have also worked hard with colleagues in the voluntary and community sector, particularly Surrey Youth Focus, to support a Third Sector SEND group which brings together all voluntary sector organisations in Surrey working to support children with additional needs and disabilities, to ensure consistency of approach and a strong voice for that part of our system.

An example of our joint understanding of need informing our leadership decisions is through the needs analysis informing our SEND Capital Building programme, resulting in more places for autistic and neurodiverse children and young people in Surrey to allow them to stay closer to home and access education in their own communities. This has also highlighted to leaders the need for additional school places in the north and southeast of the county for Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs which we are actioning together.

What we will strengthen over next three years

Our refreshed partnership arrangements and simplified governance structures will enable a better focus on what we need to achieve as leaders over the coming three years. This will include:

Embedding the social model of disability throughout our partnership working. This model recognises that children and young people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. These barriers can be physical or attitudinal and our Additional Needs and Inclusion leaders will work to remove these barriers to create equality and offer children and young people in our SEND system more independence, choice and control.
Seeking new ways of engaging with seldom heard groups to ensure our approach meets the needs of all communities, groups, and cultures and gain a better understanding of we can support them to meet their aspirations
Utilising the principles of appreciative enquiry celebrating success and sharing positive achievements.

We wish to work closely with our new partners, the ICB (encompassing the statutory roles of CCGs from July 2022) to continuously evolve the formulation and delivery of our shared priorities for children and young people and to understand the new ICB's leadership of improved outcomes for this cohort. The statutory duties which apply to ICBs are explained in the SEND Code of Practice (2015) and outline how each ICB must set out their accountability structure for applying those duties to children and young people up to the age of 25 with SEND. To ensure meeting the needs of children with additional needs and disabilities receive sufficient focus in ICBs, NHS England have agreed that their statutory guidance will direct an ICB executive lead to be accountable for SEND. This will provide greater strength and clarity to the delivery of our Strategy across our systems.

We will be held to greater account by ATLAS, our user voice forum, who will have an increased role in participating in strategic decision making through Action Cards. ATLAS are a network of children and young people with additional needs and disabilities living in Surrey sharing their lived experiences and giving feedback to bring about change to services. ATLAS stands for: Accept, Teach, Listen, Access and Support. The group have set out a number of priority areas that they are now, and in the future, working with our leadership on to bring about change.

Measuring Success (1)

This Strategy draws together a number of focused strategies and plans into a central place. Each of the documents that sit beneath this strategy have a series of Key Performance Indicators to measure impact, and each agency in the Partnership has it's own performance analysis to ensure it is on track to always improve. However this Strategy does need some overarching statements of quality to demonstrate what good looks like and how we will measure successful achievement of the aims of this document. Below are three quality statements for each of the seven principles of this document. These should be read in conjunction with our Self-Evaluation Framework and the Inspection Criteria and KPIs also allocated to each of the seven principles in that – included in Appendix four.

Our principles	Quality Indicator 1	Quality Indicator 2	Quality Indicator three
Leadership, governance and accountability	A strong and trusting partnership which meets regularly and has senior representation from a broad range of partners, including Surrey Heartlands ICB, Frimley Health and Care ICB, SCC Joint Commissioning, Social Care and Education services, Schools and voluntary and community sectors.	Leadership is well informed of current and forecasted needs through a Joint Strategic Needs Analysis, and outcomes and experiences through data and surveys of children, young people and their families.	A comprehensive transformation programme is in place, which speaks to children's needs, identifies areas for change and allocates resources accordingly. This is governed by the Partnership.
Systems and practice	Regular audit and analysis of casework shows year on year improvements in the quality and timeliness of assessments and provision secured. Audits are triangulated with KPIs to provide strategic intelligence.	Families have trusting relationships with our practitioners – training is taken up in Restorative Practice practice across the Partnership, and the stability of practitioner-family relationship is good (i.e. not changing workers)	Lines of communication between practitioners is digital and effectively informs holistic assessments of families' needs. This is complimented by the EYES system, which is fully rolled out and made available across the Partnership, including to parents and children themselves.
Co-production	The Co-Production Charter is implemented and CYP and families are engaged in the overarching transformation programme – through ATLAS, and continuous feedback through surveys	CYP and families engaged in the individual support packages they receive – e.g. by the caseworker recording their views and developing strong relationships. Also through a strong advocacy service, such as Family Voice.	Views are impactful whereby a strong evidence based system is in place, such as the Action Card system – 'you said, we did'.

Measuring Success (2)

Our principles	Quality Indicator 1	Quality Indicator 2	Quality Indicator three
Early identification and support	The L-SPA and Early Help Hub reach increasing numbers of families and divert children and young people from needing more intensive support	A greater number of staff in schools are able to identify and assess neurodiverse children and young people earlier using a social diagnostic pathway, and offer support at an earlier stage within local communities.	More practitioners are brought together around school populations so early support is more accessible as well as being delivered in a holistic, joined up way, with different types of expertise used to inform assessments and interventions. This could be an extension of the 'Team Around the School' model if it is found to be successful after evaluation.
Inclusion in education and community	An inclusion strategy is in place and is being monitored for impact. It sets out how schools, the LA and other settings and agencies will work together to include children with additional needs and disabilities.	The local offer and family information service is sufficient for many families to seek support within communities. Usage of these websites and contacts increases year on year, and feedback from families on content and outcomes is positive.	Funding for schools with pupils in SEN support is based on meeting pupils needs rather than notional number of hours
Preparing for adulthood	Young people and their parents feel informed about post 16yr options available to them locally and how these will support independent living skills and access to employment opportunities or education.	Partnerships are strengthened across local education providers, employers and vocational provision within county.	There is an increase in the number of young people with an EHC plan accessing local employment, educational or vocational schemes.
Joint commissioning, sufficiency and evaluation	1600 additional special school places are created by 2024 and the additional needs and disabilities Sufficiency Plan is followed to create sufficiency across all provisions.	The Joint Commissioning Strategy is actioned with all nine priority areas having a commissioning plan attached to them with smart goals included.	Our services are well evaluated, using quantitative evidence on experiences and outcomes, as well as softer data including children and young people's views.

Appendix one: Inclusion and Additional Needs Strategy Roadmap

View the full-size Inclusion and Additional Needs Strategy Roadmap or click on the image below.

Appendix two: Governance Structure

View the full-size Governance Structure Diagram or click on the image below.

Appendix three: Additional Needs and Disabilities Transformation Programme Portfolio

Inclusion Programme

Increasing the proportion of children able to thrive in a mainstream or specialist-maintained provision closer to home along with their peers and siblings.

Preparation for Adulthood Programme

To develop shared pathways into adulthood across the local health and care system, supporting young people with complex physical health, mental health needs, additional needs and disabilities and/or autism to lead independent lives.

Partnerships and Accountability Programme

Ensuring all partners across the local area, including Council departments and local providers are working effectively together to support improvements in outcome, experience, and sustainability of the 'SEND' system in Surrey.

Capital Programme

The 'SEND' and AP Capital Programme consists of over 70 projects and is delivering additional specialist places for children with additional needs and disabilities so that they can be rooted in their local communities.

Placement Values and Outcomes Programme

More of Surrey's children who are looked after and/or have additional needs and disabilities will live and be educated in the county. In parallel, we will take forward cultural, procedural and structural change that will consolidate the improvements we make for children and move us towards a more sustainable future.

Safety Valve Agreement

The transformation programme activity and impacts are directly aligned with and make an important contribution to returning the 'High Needs Block' budget to a position of financial sustainability, as set out in Surrey's 'Safety Valve Agreement'.

Further details of this agreement can be found in these articles:

Appendix four: Key Inspection Criteria and Performance Indicators

In addition to the Quality Statements in the 'Measuring Success' part of this Strategy, it is also important to cross-reference the key Inspection Criteria we're measuring ourselves against, as well as some Key Performance Indicators which will demonstrate evidence for each principle. This cross-referencing was created through our Self-Evaluation process and is well known across our Partnership.

Thematic Area	Related inspection criteria	Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Leadership, governance and partnership accountability	Leadership and partnership accountability are threads throughout the framework	Self-evaluation and strategy in place Effective governance via multi-agency board Agreed set of joint KPIs, RAG-rated and reported regularly to monitor progress
Co-Production	Children and young people with SEND are valued and included in their communities Children and young people and their families participate in decision-making about their individual plans and support Leaders actively engage and work with children, young people and families	Tribunals Complaints Survey responses
Early Identification, information, and support	Children and young people people's needs are identified accurately and assessed in a timely way Children and young people and their families participate in decision-making about their individual plans and support Leaders are ambitious for children and young people with SEND	Numbers accessing local offer website and successfully finding required information SSN Identification of SEN (% of SEN Support and EHC plans)
Inclusion in education and community	Children and young people receive the right help and support at the right time Leaders evaluate services and make improvements Leaders create an environment for effective practice and multi-agency working to flourish Children and young people with SEND are valued and included in their communities	School attendance Exclusions Progress and outcomes for CYP on SEN Support School inspection outcomes
Systems and practice	Children and young people receive the right help and support at the right time Leaders evaluate services and make improvements Leaders create an environment for effective practice and multi-agency working to flourish	EHC plan timeliness EHC plan quality Progress and outcomes for CYP with EHC plans
Preparing for Adulthood from the earliest years and achieving good outcomes	Children and young people are well prepared for their next steps and achieve strong outcomes Leaders are ambitious for children and young people with SEND	NEETs Supported Internships Destinations Progress and attainment
Joint Commissioning, sufficiency, and evaluation	Leaders have an accurate, shared understanding of the needs of Children and young people in their local area Leaders commission services and provision to meet the needs and aspirations of Children and young people (including Alternative Provision) Leaders evaluate services and make improvements	Waiting times for key education, health and care services (e.g. SLT, OT, Mindworks etc) CME and Children awaiting a school place

Local Area SEND Partnership Improvement Plan

In response to the Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC) Local Area SEND Inspection report published on 24 November 2023, the Surrey Additional Needs and Disabilities (AND) Partnership have worked together to develop an Improvement Plan.

This Improvement Plan specifically addresses the areas of improvement identified by inspectors and builds on the existing Surrey's Inclusion and Additional Needs Partnership Strategy (2023 to 2026), which was published in January 2023. This information has been published as a separate document due to the timescales for publication in relation to the inspection process. In time, its contents will be incorporated into the wider strategy.

You can read the post-inspection AND Partnership Improvement Plan below:

Surrey Local Area SEND Partnership Improvement Plan

More information on the inspection outcome and identified areas of improvement here: Local Area SEND Inspection outcome.

Both the Strategy and Improvement Plan support the AND Partnership's commitment to enabling Surrey's children and young people aged 0 to 25 with additional needs and / or disabilities to lead the best possible life.

Members of the AND Partnership have recently reaffirmed their determination to deliver against the objectives outlined in both documents, to improve services at pace and to ultimately
deliver better experiences and outcomes for Surrey's AND children and young people.

A special meeting of the Surrey County Council Cabinet was held on 11 December 2023 for partners to review and respond the Inspection report.

Updates on plans and progress will be provided as this work continues.