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Latest Issue: February 2024
Improving the lives of children with special educational needs and disabilities in the Dudley borough.
Keeping stakeholders, parents and carers informed about Dudley’s
SEND Improvement Programme.
Sal Thirlway, Service Director of Education, SEND & Family Solutions
Welcome to our February edition of the SEND bulletin. In this edition we have separated the bulletin into the following sections:
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SEND news
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Events
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News and information for Educational Settings
It has been a busy and positive start to the year, and I am really pleased to see that we now have four of our five Early Years Inclusion Hubs fully operational with the fifth shortly to be agreed. This is a great development for Dudley, ensuring that high quality early years inclusion places are available in each locality township area enabling children with SEND to access mainstream provision with the right support.
I am also really pleased to announce that following a very competitive recruitment process, we have appointed Susan Powell as our permanent Head of SEND & CDT. Sue has been acting up into the role over the past year. She has already led a number of developments and improvements within the Dudley SEND arena. We are really pleased that she will provide consistency of leadership having now been confirmed into the role.
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What does a good SEND offer look like in Dudley?
A Graduated Model of Provision
Many children and young people are identified as requiring additional support for SEN (Special Educational Need), but the level and extent of need will vary significantly, and one size will not fit all. Settings need to be flexible and be able to adapt to a child’s needs.
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Delivering Better Value (DBV) Programme in SEND
The DBV programme has been commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) to support Dudley and 54 other local authorities across England to identify and implement changes that we can make to better support our local children and young people with SEND.
In the June SEND bulletin, we provided an update on the DBV programme, and we now wish to share details of the programme as we move into the delivery phase.
Supported by external consultants and funded by the DfE, the DBV review of our SEND offer considered stakeholder comments from parents and carers, education settings, and other partners. It reviewed our current spending patterns and undertook a number of individual case reviews.
It identified that Dudley, like many other local authorities across the UK, is struggling to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND within its government-allocated funding and locally our spending is increasing year on year.
This is against a backdrop of the Department for Education already acknowledging current challenges which local systems across the country are experiencing in delivering special educational needs and disability services (SEND).
Over the next few months, we will be providing updates on this programme on a monthly basis, focussing on one workstream at a time; for this month this will be on Workstream 1. Please see separate article in this bulletin.
Delivering Better Value – Update Workstream 1
Redesigning our specialist services and ordinarily available provision (OAP) within schools and settings to support children with SEN.
Workstream 1 focusses on utilising our existing services, and re-designing and re-organising our current specialist services and staff to maximise the positive impact for Children and Young People in Dudley, and to ensure they have the right support, at the right time, to meet their needs.
Alongside the reorganisation of our specialist services, we will coproduce a framework of advice, guidance, and specialist training to better support schools and providers. This will give a robust knowledge base for all stakeholders, including parents and carers, to ensure consistency and accountability.
We are at the start of this journey, and we want to co-produce a service with parents and carers, partners, settings and colleagues that ensures our services are sustainable and fit for the future.
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Parent Carers Forum Update:
Findings of Annual Survey released
We have recently published the findings from our Annual Survey which ran between 1st September and 8th November 2023. This is now our 3rd annual survey report and again we are seeing a number of challenges that parent carers are facing in Dudley, such as difficulties with Education, Health and Care Plans, poor support with 'preparing for adulthood' and general dissatisfaction with local services.
There are some positive upturns in data too which are good to see and we would like to see this continue into this coming year.
We are clear that there is still much work to be done in Dudley to improve services for children and young people with SEND and we will continue to work with the Local Authority and Health Services to encourage and support the changes that are needed."
If anyone requires further information about this report or would like to get more involved in the work of Dudley Parent Carer Forum please get in touch.
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Early years inclusion hub opens in Dudley
Wrens Nest Primary School has welcomed eight children to start at a new inclusion hub facility.
The early years facility is joining Netherton Park Nursery and others in offering specialist provision for children with additional needs, as Dudley Council continues to roll out the inclusion hubs model.
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Mayor visits Caslon Primary Community School and new years inclusion hub
The Mayor of Dudley called into a Halesowen primary school which has also recently opened a new inclusion hub facility. The mayor saw the school in action and all the hard work of the staff and children which make it a true community school.
The mayor stopped by each classroom in turn to meet the children and learn about what they were doing. She also visited their Beech Tree base attached to the school which hosts 14 children from across the borough who all have SEMH needs
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Local primary school first in Black Country to become asthma friendly
A local primary school in Dudley has been named as the first ‘Asthma Friendly School’ in the Black Country.
Caslon Primary School in Halesowen has been awarded the Asthma Friendly School accreditation in recognition for its work in helping children with asthma stay well.
The initiative, led by the NHS Black Country Integrated Care Board’s Asthma team, encourages all schools to welcome children with asthma and put simple strategies in place to ensure they can fully participate in school life.
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Annual Review Survey
If your child has an education health care plan (EHCP) and has recently had their annual review, the SEND Team want to hear from you on your experience of the process and how they can improve by completing an online survey:
WeLoveCarers : Carers Awards Nominations are now open
Do you know an unpaid carer or a supporting professional who is worth of recognition?
Local charity Welovecarers is seeking nominations for consideration at their annual awards ceremony being hold in June.
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Family Hubs Stay and Play
Families with babies and preschool children can enjoy FREE fun activity sessions at local family hubs across Dudley borough. The sessions are a great opportunity for parents to get together, as well as for babies and children to have some fun.
Dudley People Panel 9 March
The Dudley People Panel, organised by the Healthier Futures - Black Country Integrated Care System, is holding an event for people to come together have a cuppa and have their say on what matter most to them.
This event offers a unique opportunity for people to voice their thoughts on growing up and living in Dudley while contributing to the enhancement of the health and care system.
The theme focuses on continuing conversations with children and young people, building on insights shared at the last People Panel in November.
Participants will explore collaborations with the Dudley Youth Health Champions and leverage the forthcoming "Growing up in Dudley" report, aligning with Dudley Health and Care Partnership's priority workstream.
The panel also aims to provide a platform for the community to discuss what matters most and celebrate positive aspects of living in Halesowen, emphasizing the importance of growing up and living well in Dudley.
Prospective attendees are encouraged to answer the question: 'What does it look like to grow up and live well in Dudley?'
Participation is crucial in shaping the future of health and care services in Dudley.
Date is 9 March, 1 - 4pm at Brett Young Carers Hub, Halesowen B63 3TB.
Sleep and mealtime workshops to parents to help their children
Dudley Parenting Team is hosting a series of workshops for help parents with developing good bedtime routines and hassle-free mealtimes for their children and wards.
If your child struggles with sleeping on their own bed, or have trouble eating well, then plan to attend this workshop. Find details of event schedules, venues, and session booking below
SENDIASS
Dudley SENDIASS will be hosting a range of workshops and event this coming Spring term for parents of children with SEND and Young People with SEND (Special Educational Needs and/or Disability).
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These workshops cover a range of topics and aim to provide information to enable you as a parent/carer or Young Person to be involved in.
For more: https://dudleyci.co.uk/workshops-and-events
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Whole School SEND:
Free Resource & Training for Settings
Dudley SEND Local Area is pleased to introduce the Whole School SEND (WSS) Programme to settings in the borough.
WSS also presented at the Settings Workshops held at Himley Hall on Monday 15 January.
Whole School SEND (WSS) is a consortium of organisations committed to sharing knowledge and building capacity across the school system for SEND who offer FREE resources, training, professional development, and 3 SEND networks (the SENDCO Forum is also open to parents, carers and young people.
Hosted by nasen they believe that good practice exists within the system, and they should seek and create opportunities to share.
They have created a suite of SEND review guides to support school to school support and self-reflection.
In partnership with the Education and Training Foundation and the Autism Education Trust, they are delivering the Department for Education (DfE) Universal SEND Services programme.
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Haybridge Teaching School Hubs SEND CPD (Continuous Professional Development) for staff
As part of Haybridge Teaching School Hub's continued commitment to professional development, we are delighted to announce the launch of our FREE SEND CPD programme for the Spring 2024 term. This term, we are working with the following provisions across Sandwell and Dudley:
• Sandwell Inclusion Support
• The Orchard School
• Albright Education Centre
• Sycamore Short Stay School
• Autistic Girls Network
• Cherry Tree Learning Centre
Once again, we are offering a combination of both virtual and face-to-face events. We invite colleagues to sign up as soon as possible to avoid disappointment as this is a great opportunity being offered by the highly experienced teams across these provisions:
SEND virtual events:
This programme consists of a series of one-off SEND twilight sessions for participants to choose from. Please feel free to sign up for as many as you feel would benefit your individual professional learning. All sessions are free and virtual joining links will be sent out prior to each event, to all those who have booked a place. They will be delivered via Microsoft Teams from 4-5pm.
SEND day events:
We are offering one face-to-face training day as detailed in the Eventbrite link below. For this, pre-registration is essential via Eventbrite as we are only able to offer limited spaces (we will offer waiting list spaces if either event is over-subscribed). In this regard, whilst the courses are free of charge to all participants, we can only accept one delegate per school and there will be a cover charge of £50 for non-attendance. Finally, cancellation must be 48-hours prior to the day (business days only).
Light refreshments will be provided free of charge.
Please sign up to any events via the Eventbrite Collection link below:
https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/htsh-spring-2024-send-cpd-2904309
All participating delegates will be provided with a certificate of attendance for their CPD file.
Please find attached our flyer which gives an overview of the programme; along with appropriate dissemination, we would encourage that it is printed and displayed for staff as it also contains our QR code for easy access and booking courses on Eventbrite.
Email:shadley@the4stones.co.uk
Telephone: 01562881114 Ext: 235
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