Inspections and evaluations

The Department for Education carried out a deep dive into the timeliness and quality of Education, Health and Care plans. This was a planned piece of work as laid out within the Improvement Notice. The deep dive letter can be read below.

Officers from the Department for Education worked with our practitioners to understand what was working well and what needed additional improvement. We will continue to work through the recommendations made.

Priority Action Plan following the Area SEND Inspection

An Inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) of the Suffolk Local Area Partnership arrangements, (covering the council and health services), for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) took place in November 2023.

The Local Area Partnership has produced a Priority Action Plan to address the 2 Priority Actions and 3 Areas for Improvement identified. This Plan has been approved by Ofsted and CQC.  

Read the Priority Action Plan here.

Suffolk SEND Strategy 2024-28

The Suffolk Local Area Partnership is currently developing a new SEND Strategy 2024-28. You can read more about this here. The action plan that will accompany this Strategy will fully incorporate the actions from the Priority Action Plan as well as the wider work needed to improve SEND Services in Suffolk. We anticipate the new SEND Strategy will be published by June 2024.

Next Steps

The Local Area Partnership is establishing a SEND Improvement Board that will be Independently Chaired. This Board will oversee the delivery of the SEND Strategy, including the Priority Action Plan.

This Board will meet bi-monthly for the first six months until September 2024, then quarterly. The agenda and minutes of the Board meetings will be published on the Suffolk Local Offer website.

A monitoring inspection of our progress against the Priority Action Plan will be carried out by Ofsted and CQC in approximately 18 months (circa summer 2025). A full reinspection of the Local Area Partnership will be within approximately three years.

30 January 2024

Ofsted / CQC have today published their report following their inspection of SEND Services in Suffolk, which took place in November 2023. The inspection report can be read here.

The results of the report

The inspection report identifies "widespread and / or systemic failings" across the local area partnership led by Suffolk County Council, NHS Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care Board and Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board. It is the lowest rating possible.

This means that the inspection identified failings that have "significant negative impact on the experiences and outcomes of children and young people".

The Department for Education are considering what intervention is needed to ensure improvements and are likely to issue an improvement notice or statutory direction to us. This is standard practice in these circumstances and the priority action plan and new improvement plan we are developing will ensure we meet the requirements the Department for Education set us.

Our response

We want to say sorry to you, our children, young people and families.

We accept the findings of the report. We understand the scale of the issues, and know that too many children and young people with SEND and their families have not had the service and outcomes they need and deserve.

We have already put in place strong improvement plans and are updating them to make sure all the issues in the inspection report are addressed. We are determined to build on our plans to go further and faster to deliver the improvements needed.

What happens next?

1. We have to submit a priority action plan to Ofsted/ CQC for their approval by 7 March 2024. This plan will set out how and when we will address the priority actions and areas for improvement in the inspection report. We will publish our plan on this website.
2. We have to update our strategic plans by 7 March 2024. We have already been co-producing and consulting on a new SEND strategy for 2024-2026. We now need to finish our SEND Strategy more quickly than we told you, including speeding up the co-production and consultation work. We will publish our SEND Strategy on this website.
3. The Department for Education will formally tell us to improve. They are considering whether to issue an improvement notice or statutory direction to us. This is standard practice in these circumstances.
4. Leaders, teams and staff will work hard to deliver the priority action and improvement plan. It will take time for improvements to be experienced by our children, young people and families and we want to see a positive impact over the next year. We will update you on our progress against the plan here on the website.
5. Ofsted and the CQC will visit us for a monitoring inspection in about 18 months.
6. Our next full reinspection will be in about 3 years.

Further reading: News | 30 January 2024 | Suffolk County Council

In 2023, Suffolk County Council commissioned Anthony Douglas CBE to further strengthen our work to reform SEND Services by meeting with families, practitioners and leaders to focus how services are impacting on the everyday experience of families of children and young people with SEND.

The Council have now received his advisory note, which you can read below.

This is a summary for parents, carers, young people and practitioners across education, health and social care services about the impact of our local area partnership arrangements on the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND).​

Our official co-production partners Suffolk Parent Carer Forum (SPCF) carried out their annual survey earlier in 2023. We are grateful both to them for sharing it with us, and to the parent carers who took part.

Read the 2023 SPCF survey on the SPCF website

The document below is our response to them, to show what we have done so far in response to each area raised, how well we think we've done it so far, and what we intend to do next.

In May 2023, Senior Officers from Suffolk County Council and the Integrated Care Board met with officials from the Department for Education (DfE) to review the progress we have made against our Accelerated Progress Plan. They wrote to us in June 2023 with a summary of our progress, which you can read in the letter below.

In July 2022, Senior Officers from Suffolk County Council and the Integrated Care Board met with officials from the Department for Education (DfE) to review the progress we have made against our Accelerated Progress Plan.

We were pleased that the DfE noted that "the evidence provided by the local area demonstrated the leadership’s commitment to improvement in a wide range of areas", describing our overall progress as "reassuring".

In June 2021, Suffolk County Council commissioned an Independent Review to focus on the processes, communication protocols and family-facing elements of SEND services. This was carried out by a team from Lincolnshire, including Lincolnshire County Council and the Lincolnshire SEND parent carer network. 

The final report was published in September 2021.

In October 2020, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) published a report looking into the support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suffolk was visited by Ofsted and the CQC in October as one of eighteen local authorities taking part in the study. The purpose of the visits were for Ofsted and the CQC to gather evidence to inform future national improvements for children and young people with SEND across Education, Health and Care. This was not an inspection of Suffolk County Council or Health Services.

The overall aim of these visits was to:

• Support the local area to understand the impact of the pandemic on children and young people with SEND and their families.
• Find out what has worked well for children and young people during this time, what the challenges have been and what lessons have been learned.
• Work with the local area to identify opportunities for improvement that address the challenges faced by children and young people with SEND.
• Highlight best practice case studies and share insights nationally to promote whole system learning.

The voices of children, young people and families were gathered through case studies and via a survey. Ofsted and the CQC also spoke to the education health and care professionals who work with young people with SEND.

Mary Evans Cabinet Member for Children’s Services Education and Skills said:

“The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about challenges for everyone but for children and young people with SEND it has been a particularly difficult time.

“SCC’s SEND team and colleagues from across the system including Suffolk Parent Carer Network have worked tirelessly to support families during this uncertain time and I would like to thank them for their hard work.

“We were pleased to take part in the visit and share what we have learnt over this time. The findings of the report will help us to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and young people with SEND across the UK and identify opportunities for improvement.”

Suffolk Parent Carer Network said:

“We were pleased to be able to share the experiences of families during the Ofsted and CQC visit which included the results of our recent survey on lockdown and the return to school. Whilst this was not an inspection and focused mainly on the individual case studies, the team still welcomed our feedback. The themes from the contacts we have had with over 2,500 children, young people and families during the pandemic have enabled additional support services to be commissioned by the Clinical Commissioning Groups as well as providing challenge to services to take additional actions to ensure families are able to contact services, are kept informed and can access support across education, health and care during the pandemic.”

Suffolk was part of the first six visits which took place in October 2020. Read the overall report from the first six areas visited here.

Following an inspection by the DfE and NHS England in 2019; Suffolk developed an action plan to improve SEND Services. You can read about this using the resources below.