Meeting documents

For the Committee to receive a quarterly update from Educational Psychology Services

Contributors:

Paulette Thompson-Omenka – Service Director Education

Anita Cranmer – Cabinet Member for Education & Skills

Ms Thompson-Omenka, Service Director Education introduced the item and the following main points were noted::

·         There had been an improving picture within SEN services and  significant progress had been made. The table within the report showed the progress made with education health care plans (EHCPs).

·         Integrated SEND had gone live in September. In April 2019, progress had been poor and the Service area felt they were heading in the wrong direction. Average time taken to complete an EHCP had been 31 weeks which wasn’t acceptable.

·         The national target for EHCP completion was 20 weeks. In order to meet this target the Service Area had to undertake a significant amount of work and issued a significant number of plans.

·         There had been a significant number of complaints from unhappy parents who had been waiting excessively for EHCP completion.

·         At present over 70% of EHCP’s were delivered within the timescale and staff were working to continue to improve this figure. The average time taken to complete an EHCP was 25 weeks in October 2019.

·         At the end of October 2019 the cumulative percentage of EHCP’s completed within 20 weeks had been 32.8% and the Service area had ambitions to get this to 40% by December 2019.

·         Buckinghamshire teams carried an average of 350 individual cases requiring an EHCP, while comparative statistical neighbours had a maximum of 180 individual cases.

·         Healthcare Co-ordinators were being recruited to have oversight over the process.

·         There had been some vacancies within senior posts within the service, which were due to be filled by January 2020. There would continue to be difficulties hiring workers within the main grades and also associates, but senior managers were working creatively to overcome this.

The Chairman requested to know what was being done differently to recruit Educational Psychologists. Ms Thompson-Omenka explained that they had run the recruitment campaign slightly differently, hosting an informal session and were anticipating applications from most of the individuals who had attended.

In response to questioning, Ms Thompson-Omenka told the Committee that:

·         Specific metrics were tracked to identify trends, including children who were home schooled, children under child protection, young offenders, gender groups, children in care and children in need.

·         The last 16 people who attended the informal session had been attracted via a creative social media campaign, which had been executed by the Human Resources (HR) team within a tight 3 week timescale. More creative recruitment tactics were planned, including a video which Ms Thompson-Omenka would be featuring in.

·         The Service Area would consider handing out leaflets at the local train stations to London workers, as suggested by a Member of the Committee. This had been a successful tactic in the past when recruiting for other roles.

·         They expected to recruit all 15 of the required Educational Psychologists from the last recruitment drive. If they managed to gain 12 new staff then caseloads would reduce to 150-180 per staff member. The service had been understaffed for a significant amount of time which had led to the backlog of work.

·         Buckinghamshire was not thought to be unusual statistically in terms of the Educational Psychology and SEND services - it shared current national challenges.

·         The success of the Service Area was attributed to the new Head of Service within integrated SEND and the support of their team. Improving the quality of the service and of reports had been high on the agenda. They always used parental views to critique the service and to feed into the care plan for their own child. The final EHCP’s contained the views of a range of relevant professionals, parents and often the child’s own views.

The Chairman thanked Ms Thompson-Omenka for her update.