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The Assistant Director Early Help and Prevention introduced the report of the Director of Children, Family and Education. The report explained that the Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) Dashboard was prepared quarterly and contained the latest performance information from the Local Authority and Health organisations. The SEND Dashboard could be found in Appendix A and related to Quarter 4 2022/23 (period ending March 23).

Members noted that some of the statistics were confusing that national and internal benchmarks were not clear. Officers accepted this, noting that internal benchmarks were usually set to mirror national averages where Wirral were underperforming but that some internal benchmarks could be more aspirational than national averages.

Members queried the wait times for speech and language therapy and whether the needs of children being educated from home were being picked up. Officers explained that there was a high demand for speech and language therapists and while a lot of the support did not need to be provided by a speech and language therapist, it was frequently requested by parents that their child be supported by one. It was noted that there was a mixed picture for children being home educated being put through the EHCP process and it depended on when the child’s needs were picked up. If the child had not been registered in the school system and parents did not seek support then the service could not offer support.

Members asked about missing information within the dashboard and were informed that a system had been upgraded and there had been a corruption of data in the migration to the new system. The service was currently waiting on the verification of the data before it was published.

Resolved – That the content of the SEND Dashboard attached in Appendix A. be noted.