Welcome to the SEND Partnership Bulletin, reaching over 400 professionals working in education, health care, social care and the voluntary, charity and social enterprise sector.
Our Local Area Partnership is committed to improving outcomes for all children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) and we want to keep you in touch with all the great work happening as part of Bradford district's SEND transformation journey.
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Please share our updates
SEND One Plan
Dan Careless (Assistant Director SEND and Inclusion, Bradford Council) has been working with key partners to identify our priorities and strengthen how we monitor the impact of our SEND work through the development of the ‘SEND One Plan’.
Engagement has taken place with SEND Board members, partners in education, health, social care and the voluntary sector and the parent carer network. Dan has also been meeting with school headteachers every half term and with parent/carers facilitated by the Parents’ Forum for Bradford and Airedale every half term.
SEND workstreams
There are a number of workstreams which develop and deliver improvements, including two new workstreams for 2025-26: Sufficiency and Workforce development.
'Communication and Engagement' workstream
SEND Local Offer awareness training
The Local Offer website is a statutory SEND website the council has a duty to provide to help families navigate SEND provision. A 15-minute Local Offer training package is available for staff working with families who may have SEND needs. Email: localoffer@bradford.gov.uk to access training for yourself or your team.
Engagement and co-production
Co-production is embedded throughout the SEND Code of Practice, clearly outlining how services should work with children, young people and their parent/carers. The SEND Partnership has made significant progress in this area, developing over fifty pieces of engagement work with children, young people and families.
To support this, the workstream has developed voice and engagement training which has already been rolled out to Children's Complex Health or Disabilities Team (CCHDT), Specialist Teaching and Support Services (STASS) and Commissioning teams.
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'Our SEND Journey' workstream
Our SEND Journey monitors the effectiveness of our partnership at identifying, assessing and meeting the SEND needs of children and young people. Key services from education, health and social care report to the workstream on their progress around assessments and provision.
- The timeliness and quality of Education, Health and Care (EHC) Assessments is monitored through updates to the SEND Board.
- The SEND Audit team can also provide support and training to anyone giving advice
- The SEND Audit team continue to speak with parents and carers on a monthly basis about their experience of the EHC Assessment process, with feeding findings into the workstream.
- Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) training for colleagues in the Bradford Childrens and Families Trust is running on a monthly basis with a high take-up.
- Dispute resolution officers are now in place in the Integrated Assessment team (SENDIAT) to support with mediations and tribunals.
- The workstream also has a termly agenda item looking at EHCP cohorts that are increasing.
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'Partnership Commissioning' workstream
This workstream focuses on commissioning across the SEND Partnership in areas to support children and young people with SEND and their families. The aim is to work together to identify gaps in provision and find solutions. For more information, visit: SEND Partnership Commissioning
Recent progress made includes:
SEND Short Breaks and Personal Care
A Short Breaks steering group has been established and the SEND Partnership’s Short Breaks statement has been approved. A family friendly guide to SEND Short Breaks can be found on the Local offer website, A 'One Minute Guide' to Short Breaks.
The SEND Partnership has reviewed the specifications for the new contracts that will be going live in April 2026. There has been excellent engagement to date with over 60 providers joining a market engagement event on 6, November 2025.
Other priorities identified include:
Children and young person’s speech and language support
The offer is being scoped and reviewed with a view to ensuring every child in Bradford develops strong communication and language skills through a connected, evidence-based, and inclusive system.
Bradford is currently reviewing the sensory processing support offer within the Partnership’s Graduated Approach/Thrive Model. This includes how Quality First Teaching can provide reasonable adjustments within the classroom, informed by a Sensory Processing Toolkit led by the Social Communication Interaction & Learning (SCIL) Team.
Integrated Health and Care team for children and young people with a Learning Disability/Autism (Intensive support)
The team will work in partnership to help, support and empower parents and carers to cope better and longer. This work will feed into wider sufficiency work around the Short Breaks offer, also supporting children on the Dynamic Support Register, or on the edge of care/placement breakdown/loss of school provision. There will be work supporting Early support and intervention.
Alternative Provision (AP)
The Partnership’s 3-tier AP Model was made fully operational in Autumn 2025, with a new referral route and panel set up. This is supporting pupils at risk of exclusion access tailored and specialist support, either via an offer into the school they’re attending or through a 'step out' offer. Work is ongoing to map this onto the other offers of support provided by Specialist Teaching and Support Services (STaSS) or Behaviour and Attendance collaboratives.
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'Preparation for Adulthood (PfA)' workstream
Preparation for Adulthood is about how we help young people from year 9 (aged 14 years) onwards prepare for their adult life.
Draft PfA passport for practitioners to use working with young people in school year 9 and above. The passport links to the ages and stages checklist.
A training package is being developed in Autumn 2025, for staff around supporting young people to prepare for adulthood.
This includes:
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statutory responsibilities.
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Bradford PfA priorities within the strategy.
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potential barriers, informed by lived experience.
Guides are being co-produced to support young people and their families with the barriers that are often experienced. The aim is for this to be published in Spring 2026.
Data sets are being monitored around destinations and young people at risk of being NEET (not in Education, Employment or Training) and partners are reviewing this and working collaboratively to address.
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NEW 'Sufficiency' workstream
The Sufficiency team within the SEND Partnership already plays a pivotal role in ensuring that children and young people with SEND have access to the right provision, in the right place, at the right time.
The SEND Sufficiency workstream will:
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Assess and forecast demand for SEND placements and resources.
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Identify gaps in current provision and propose solutions to address these gaps.
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Inform and influence the development of new or expanded SEND provision.
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Monitor and review the effectiveness and sufficiency of SEND services and placements.
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Ensure alignment of sufficiency planning with local, regional, and national policy frameworks and statutory requirements.
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Engage children, young people, families, and representatives in sufficiency planning and decision-making.
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Ensure that the High Needs Capital Allocation grant funding is used in a cost effective manner to establish SEND provision across the district.
NEW 'Workforce development' workstream
Workforce development has been highlighted as one of our priority areas as part of the SEND transformation work and is now embedded in the SEND One Plan.
Work has been evolving across the Partnership in different teams with training being offered in social care, Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) quality and more work around the graduated approach in schools and now a dedicated workstream has been established to develop this.
The first meeting of the workstream took place in November, 2025 where the multi-agency group agreed the scope of the district wide professional development SEND programme. This includes: the core offer, education, health and social care offer.
The Professional Development SEND Programme, is being informed by what training across the district has had the biggest amount of impact, the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) and other data sets to inform what the training needs are. The porgramme will be regularly reviewed.
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SEND inspection update
The SEND Partnership has made significant strides in preparing for the Local Area SEND inspection. The development of the ‘SEND One Plan’ integrating the SEND Strategy, Written Statement of Action (WSoA), and LGA recommendations demonstrates a unified and strategic approach.
Out of the 26 Department for Education core measures for SEND, Bradford district is tracking positively on 18 of them and in comparison, to our statistical neighbours (other similar authorities), Bradford is performing better across 15 measures that are exceeding Statistical Neighbour (SN) averages, including:
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EHCP 20-week compliance: Bradford 89.6% vs SN 50.7%.
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Key stage 1 Phonics, Key stage 2 Reading, writing and maths, and GCSE outcomes for pupils with EHCP's.
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Lower NEET rates for 16–17-year-olds: Bradford 8.3% vs SN 10.6%.
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Higher employment rates for adults with learning disabilities: Bradford 4.2% vs SN 3.1%.
Areas for development that are being addressed via the SEND One Plan and SEND workstreams include:
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Transitions, access to assessments, early Intervention SEND, placements, Ordinarily Available/Graduated Approach, communication and stakeholder engagement, workforce development, joint commissioning and data.
These areas of key focus are being delivered by the SEND Local Area Strategic Partnership Board and key workstreams.
SEND Change Programme - national SEND reforms
SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan
Bradford district has been supporting with trialling several changes. Change Programme success is reviewed at national level and that will determine the key focus areas for the reforms moving forward.
During the period September 2025 to March 2026, Bradford's Local Area SEND Strategic Partnership Board will be delivering the following projects:
Local Inclusion Support Offer, including:
- Inclusion Chartermark.
- In development - 'Team around the School'
- Development of a Primary Interventions Centre and Alternative Provision (AP) Quality Assurance (QA) Model.
- Currently reviewing the Quality Assurance processes that are followed for all Alternative Providers. This is to support a strong AP offer across the district that can support pupils to achieve their aspirations.
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Alternative Provision - Bradford Preventative and Inclusion Taskforce (BPIT) and 3-tier model.
- Enhancing transitions and service feedback.
- Developing a team of Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology (INPP) Lead Practitioners – Training
- Groups of lead practitioners have completed 50% of their training, supporting them to enhance skills in identifying and addressing neurodevelopmental barriers to learning.
- Early Language Support for Every Child (ELSEC) pilot.
- Assistive Technology Lending library.
- Bradford has acquired 15 AV1 Robots and is working with procurement to procure 30+ additional technology that will be lent to schools.
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Professional development
ECHO: Autism Health Passport awareness training
This 90-minute online session will cover the importance of the health passport to support autistic people when accessing hospital - useful information to include, and where to access support with completion. Date/time: Tuesday, 2 December 2025, 9am to 10.30am
Please share this across your network – anyone working in the Northeast and Yorkshire region can attend. To book a place, email: teresa.candido@nhs.net
RISE Partnership: Navigating SEND and health online training
This training is designed for and aimed at professionals working in SEND who would like to increase their knowledge of health in the context of SEND. Various dates and times are available, and all sessions will take place on MS Teams. Email: Joe Fautley at RISE@ncb.org.uk with any queries.
Signs4Life: Deaf Awareness workshop
The cost for a half-day workshop is £600+VAT (£550 for schools/charities/NHS), for up to 15 people. Signs4Life also offer longer accredited British Sign Language (BSL) and Makaton programmes and run regular free refresher programmes through the year to help maintain your skills and knowledge. Visit the website for info and to book: Signs4Life.
Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD): online training
RAD offer low cost online courses such as Deaf Awareness Training (£23.99) along with online BSL courses. Visit, RAD Learn.
Service spotlight
Hundreds more children across the Bradford district will benefit from early speech and language support as phase two of the Early Language Support for Every Child (ELSEC) programme begins in the school year 2025–26.
Phase one of the pilot saw 65% of children screened in participating settings being identified as having speech, language or communication needs. This was reduced to 36% of the cohort by Summer 2025 with various types of early support being provided in participating nurseries, schools and at home.
In addition to last year’s settings, the ELSEC team will also now be working with two to four year olds in a further 11 nurseries.
Nichola Rogers, speech and language therapy clinical lead at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “After fantastic results last year, we are keen to support more children and families during Phase two.”
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Resource to support autistic children's oral health
toothPASTE is a free, online resource developed with parents and professionals to support autistic children’s oral health and is also relevant to many children with additional needs. It includes small, practical steps to help with toothbrushing, reducing sugary foods and drinks, and attending dental appointments.
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Newsletters for professionals
National Children's Bureau (What works in SEND) – sharing evidence-based good practice: Newsletter sign-up.
Where to find more information
Visit the SEND Local Offer website to find out more about:
Contact us
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