Sheffield SEND Manifesto

SEND Manifesto Commission: January 2025 Update

As you will be aware, Learn Sheffield has been commissioned by SCC to support improvement in SEND in the city. We used the Leader Breakfast last week as an opportunity to update colleagues on the progress that has been made since my last update on 30 September. The slides from the breakfast will be shared alongside this update.

We plan to use the Leaders Conference (Friday 4 July), Governance Conference (Saturday 5 July) and a festival week across the following week as an opportunity to set out the final SEND Manifesto and its implications for 2025/26 and beyond. This update comes, therefore, one term into this initial three-term piece of work.

In the breakfast presentation we set out how our thinking has developed during the autumn term, shared the key activities to develop the manifesto across the spring term and discussed how the building blocks are being developed at the same time. The commission includes both leading the development of the strategic approach and the delivery of some specific activities and reforms. We continue to develop the strategic approach and work on the building blocks at the same time.

We remain convinced that the strategic planning must be long-term and based on genuine shared accountability from all partners in the local area SEND system, without this we do not believe that significant or lasting change can be achieved. Senior colleagues from SCC, health and care are engaging constructively in the development of the SEND Manifesto.

The manifesto seeks to increase the number of children who have positive experiences and achieve good outcomes without requiring additional or different provision at the same time as transforming the arrangements for identifying, assessing and meeting the needs of those who do. We see these goals as connected and inter-dependent.

When we provided an update at the end of September we were working on five building blocks, As you might expect this has expanded during the autumn term and we discussed the nine areas below at the breakfast:

• The Learn Sheffield SEND Team is now in place – we are considering how it will need to develop to provide access to additional expertise by September 2025.
• We have paused the development of Locality SEND processes until we know more about changes to funding (to avoid doing this twice) but the support of the Inclusion Taskforce has now moved to Learn Sheffield along with some additional project support form SCC,
• The Resourced Provision quality standards were published in October and we will have completed 20 enquiry visits by February half term. Almost every Sheffield setting completed the audit and we will publish the learning from this in March. A second cohort of 20 further visits will take place by the end of the year, when we will again publish the learning.
• The development of more effective health pathways continues to involve colleagues from SCC, Sheffield Children’s Hospital, the Integrated Care Board and the Parent Carer Forum. We anticipate that a pilot to explore earlier assessment will be scoped this term and be completed by the end of this year.
• We have scoped an intense SEND Enquiry over 5 days in late February and early March. This will quickly build the evidence base upon which the Manifesto’s shared priorities are built. The enquiry will also be the first time that we have used the Sensemaker tool to collect the experiences of young people, parents/carers and professionals.
• The work to develop a detailed and holistic description of healthy child development has been scoped by a wide multi-disciplinary group of colleagues. The writing group has been formed and will provide a first draft of birth-11 years this term before moving on to 11-18 years in the summer term.
• Work to reengineer the graduated approach has also begun, initially involving the Learn Sheffield SEND team. We will discuss a phased test and learn approach this term with the intention of completing this in the summer term to inform the manifesto proposals. We also discussed the general and unique differences approach that we have been exploring at the breakfast.
• The developing manifesto is also exploring how to rebalance accountability and measure those things that we value, rather than those things that are more easily measured. We are working with national partners, including ISOS, to support this.
• We shared some conclusions from the Institute for Fiscal Studies Report into SEND funding at the breakfast. The options of delivering more support within mainstream schools and enhancing services to support children align with the SEND manifesto position appears to reflect the long-run position of the new government. This report underlines that doing nothing is an increasingly unviable option and that the transition to a new system will be likely to entail some strategic overspending to enable double funding for a period of time. This aligns with local thinking.

The breakfast presentation concluded by reflecting on when the changes will lead to a different experience in Sheffield. This returned to the conclusion of the September update, recognising that colleagues will be sceptical about change in advance of feeling and seeing it. Clearly there is a huge amount of work taking place, but we appreciate that this will not impact everywhere at the same time and is often the groundwork that is required for system change rather than change itself.

We believe that we have the expertise and resources to make a difference to the local area SEND system in Sheffield but also recognise the extent of the impact of these challenges on all our settings. It is helpful to have the scale of the problem recognised by external bodies and the new government, but there remains much to do before you and the communities you serve feel a practical difference in the way that you experience SEND.

The spring term will be another period of intense work and we will try to keep sharing as much information as possible, in the hope that you will feel that the SEND Manifesto can deliver the shared accountability that will be required for long term and sustained change in Sheffield.

Stephen Betts (10.01.25)

SEND Manifesto Commission: September 2024 Update

The update below, from the Learn Sheffield CEO, was shared with setting leaders in September 2024.

Learn Sheffield has been commissioned by SCC to support improvement in SEND in the city. This commission includes both leading the development of the strategic approach and the delivery of some specific activities and reforms.

One of the challenges in this work is the need to develop the strategic approach and start to develop aspects of the delivery at the same time. Ordinarily you would develop the strategy and then use this to inform the thinking and decision-making underpinning the action. This would be unrealistic in our current position in relation to SEND in Sheffield.

It is crucial that the strategic planning is long-term and based on genuine shared accountability from all partners in the local area SEND system. For this reason, we are taking this term to work with the senior leaders from our local system, including those from health and the local authority. The buy in to this work from colleagues is already encouraging.

Our intention is to then consult widely (and quickly) on the detail of a new long-term SEND strategy on behalf of this group. The proposed title of this work is ‘Better lives for Sheffield children with additional needs: a manifesto’. The title will clearly be less important than the content, and in turn the impact, but the choice of the word manifesto is deliberate. It is a public declaration of policy and aims, which everyone in the system needs to be able to hold each other to account for.

SEND is a space in which no-one can succeed unless we all do. Any individual setting, provision, service or organisation could be excellent but the impact of this will not be sufficient if other parts of the system are ineffective. In addition, ‘fixing’ the SEND systems and processes will not make a big enough difference unless we also seek to make changes which lead to fewer children and young people needing something additional or different in the first place.

This is a moral imperative to work together to increase the number of children who have positive experiences and achieve good outcomes, but also a practical necessity. SEND is in crisis for education, health and local authorities in equal measure. We need to recognise this but stop using crisis-style responses, and we need to do this together because none of us can do it effectively without the others.

We will continue to share information about the development of the thinking through this term (this began last term with Nick Whittaker’s input – Are Schools Healthy Human Systems?). The quality of the manifesto will be crucial but, as I said earlier, change also needs to begin more quickly and in parallel to the development of the manifesto.

For this reason, a number of the building blocks that will be part of the manifesto are being developed in parallel this term by Learn Sheffield, supported by the new commission. A stronger analysis of quality in relation SEND will lead to clearer and better structured long-term priorities for the city, but we are confident that the activities below will form a useful part of the strategic approach moving forwards. Current developments include:

• a review of locality processes alongside locality leads - this will make recommendations to the Inclusion Taskforce in November with a view to changes from January 2025.
• a restructure of the sector SEND team (which will now be led from Learn Sheffield) – appointments to new roles were made last week and will all be in place by January 2025 (some sooner) alongside more resource in localities.
• the work to develop a detailed and holistic description of healthy child development begins this half term, supported by a wide multi-disciplinary group of colleagues.
• the development of a new speech and language strategy will also be informed by a detailed programme of case studies this term (led by Nick Whittaker alongside a similarly experienced colleague with a health inspection background).
• the launch of a new approach to supporting quality and improvement in resourced provision (including IRs and hub provisions across the city) this half term - including resources for everyone and the first commissioned enquiry visits by a team of colleagues who will support improvement in the city.

A great deal of other partnership work is also taking place, led by colleagues from SCC, Sheffield Children’s Hospital, the Integrated Care Board and the Parent Carer Forum. This includes the transformation work being led by Meredith Teasdale within SCC, the development of the education funding model and the work being led by Inclusion Taskforce on the continuum of provision in the city. There is also a working group which is exploring how to tackle the long-standing challenges relating to neuro-disability pathways. All of this work is characterised by much greater openness to different approaches than has been the case before.

It is important that colleagues across the education system have an awareness of this work, including the significant influence of the sector through Inclusion Taskforce, Locality SEND Leads and sector partnerships. We also recognise the significant and (still) growing impact of these challenges on all our settings and the fact that many of you will not be feeling much practical difference in the way that you or the communities you serve experience SEND.

Learn Sheffield has made significant changes and additions to enable us to seek to make a difference in this space. This has been made possible by a much-improved relationship with SCC. We know that you will support these developments (as you have told us you would like us to get more involved in SEND often and in numbers in recent years!) but we also know that you are sceptical about change that you have yet to see.

We believe that we have the expertise and resources to make a difference to the local area SEND system in Sheffield. Our hope is that you will retain faith in the possibility that this can be profoundly better and commit to being part of that change.

Stephen Betts (30.9.24)