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The Director of Children, Families and Young People presented a report which provided an update on the improvement programme for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) for the Local Area in Wirral. The report covered the period from mid-January 2025.

The January 2025 Local Area SEND Partnership Board (LASPB) meeting was primarily focussed on updates in relation to the recovery plans in place for Improving the Quality and Timeliness of Education Health and Care Plans and Annual Reviews; Reducing waiting times for access to Speech and Language Therapy Services and improvements in the Neurodevelopmental Pathway. The report primarily focused on the areas that were the Local Authority’s statutory duties.

The report also provided an overview of the LASPB’s Self Evaluation from January 2025

It noted that it had been agreed with Department for Education and NHS England through the revised Terms of Reference for the Local Area SEND Partnership Board that the Health and Wellbeing Board was the appropriate forum to provide oversight of SEND improvement activity in Wirral, ensuring that the Written Statement of Action (WSoA) was fully delivered by October 2025. This report was presented to the Children, Young People and Education Committee to provide assurance of improvement and enable alignment with the business of the committee.

Members thanked the Director for the report and stated that they were happy that the service was moving in the right direction. They asked if the majority of Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) needs requests received were coming from parents or referred from schools.

The Director of Children, Families and Young People reported that there was a mix but that recently, more had been coming from parents than schools. She noted that the service looked at all requests and where they were coming from each month to greater understand the needs and pressures on the service. She noted that the service would always recommend that parents speak to their child’s school and their Special Educational Needs Coordinator before making an EHCP request for their child.

Members asked about the possibility for parents and children going through the EHCP process to be assigned a single point of contact to make the process easier for them.

The Director of Children, Families and Young People responded that the design of the new SEND team was done to better integrate the team into other areas of Children’s Services, which would reduce hand-offs to different teams. She also noted that there would be one case worker that stays with that child up to age 16. She noted that work was underway with Adult Services for an integrated model to ensure that individuals needs were not lost in transition from one service to the other.

Cllr Paul Jobson raised that he sat on the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Scrutiny Committee and that while this was not a decision making committee, he felt that he should declare this interest for transparency purposes.

Resolved – That the progress of the Local Area SEND Partnership Board in progressing system improvement as required by the Improvement Notice be noted.