The Cabinet has decided to approve ongoing investment of £4.9m to improve services for children with additional needs and disabilities.

URL: https://mycouncil.surreycc.gov.uk/ieDecisionDetails.aspx?ID=6018

Decision Maker:

Outcome:

Is Key Decision?: No

Is Callable In?: Yes

Purpose:

Content: RESOLVED:   That Cabinet notes the contents of the report that will lead to improved outcomes for children and young people and their families.   That Cabinet approves, as part of the budget setting process for 2026/27, for the ongoing investment of £4.9m to continue to improve services for children with additional needs and disabilities.   Reasons for Decisions:   Implementing Statutory SEND Transformation (End-to-End Review)   The implementation phase of our statutory SEND transformation project is now live, building on the outcomes of the End-to-End review of statutory SEND which identified a range of opportunities to transform ways of working in order to improve outcomes for children and young people and their families.   What the service needs moving forwards     As part of the wider Additional Needs and Disabilities transformation programme, the End-to-End review of the statutory SEND service included a review of the staffing and structure required to maintain the improvements made to statutory assessment timeliness and improve the lived experience of schools and families.  Teams need to be right-sized to be able to meet the needs of service users.  Lower caseloads will create capacity for staff to work more closely, and more responsively with children and young people, families, schools and settings.    The review has recommended a new structure, with casework held across 5 rather than 4 teams, with a single management structure.    One team would exclusively work on the 20-week needs assessments for issuing new Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), countywide, but removing the current hand-offs in the system that are impacting the experience of families.  This would include 30 assessment officers working directly with families.   The 4 other case holding teams would hold all open EHCPs, ensuring that annual review actions are completed in a timely way, managing the annual statutory Key Stage Transfer process and being able to spend more time in schools and being more available to communicate with families when needed.  This will increase the number of permanent case officers from 81 to 111.      An operational team will oversee staffing, staff development and training, efficiencies, and cost containment, systems developments, and the SEND helpdesk. Another team will focus on tribunals, mediations and dispute resolution, complaints, and quality assurance. This would include the continuation of the Mediation and Dispute Resolution Officers (MADROs), who have been part of a successful pilot which reduced the number of families proceeding to tribunal hearings by over 50% for the cases they were allocated.    After all changes are implemented, there will be 231 staff in the statutory SEND service.   These changes, recommended as a result of the End-to-End review, will ensure the SEND service is fit for the future, sustaining staffing capacity that has been tested through the 3-year £15m investment. This investment will be made alongside wider transformation so that the service is future proofed for growth. For example, we anticipate greater efficiencies through the use of artificial intelligence tools and broader technological developments, and through implementing new ways of working that focus on consistently high quality work alongside children, young people and families.   Projected EHCP numbers (based on upper confidence levels) show the projected size of the EHCP cohort is due to increase to 23,017 by January 2034. That is an increase of 6,517 (39%) against the numbers in May 2025. In order to continue to maintain high standards of timeliness and drive high quality, relational work with children, young people and families and an improved relationship with all schools; as activity increases, the team requires ongoing investment to right-size the staff team as the temporary additional funding concludes in March 2026.   (The decisions on this item can be called-in by the Children, Families, Lifelong Learning & Culture Select Committee)    

Date of Decision: July 22, 2025