Bradford local area SEND Inspection Update

21 Oct 2022,

Dear parent/carer,

We want to update you on the inspection of the district’s Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) services that was carried out by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in March this year.

Following that inspection, Bradford Council and the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) were asked to produce a written statement of action outlining how it would make improvements to five areas of service where there were significant weaknesses in local practice.

We submitted our statement of action in September. It explained how we plan to improve the following areas:

1. Poor communication between stakeholders across education, health and care.
2. The variable quality of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP), including plans which do not fully describe the provision that children and young people with SEND need.
3. The inconsistent delivery of the 0 to 19 health visiting, school nursing and specialist nursing services.
4. Children and young people wait too long for assessments, treatment and diagnosis.  There is insufficient support for children and young people with SEND who are waiting for provision, services, diagnosis or equipment.
5. Education, health and care services do not work together well.  The arrangements for joint commissioning are underdeveloped.

 

• Final Bradford Written Statement of Action for SEND

Ofsted and the CQC have written to us about how we plan to tackle the five areas of significant weakness identified in the published report

The letter from Ofsted and the CQC says that:

• Our written statement of action is clearly written and well organised.
• We have detailed plans for the five areas of weakness identified by inspectors
• We have local monitoring arrangements for the plan in place.
• We know when different stakeholders will check the progress of your planned improvement work.
• We have clear performance indicators that will show how we are doing.

Next Steps

We will work together with all our partners, including parents/carers, young people, health services, social care and school leaders, to improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND to put the plan into action so that we can deliver the best services we can.

The written statement of action and the letter from Ofsted and the CQC are on this page of the website and we will be updating parents regularly on how we are progressing with our plans.

Joint statement

“As a partnership we are determined to have the best services possible for all children and young people with SEND across the Bradford District. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have recognised that we have clear and detailed plans in place that will help us deliver this. We welcome the scrutiny that they have given to our plans.

“We will be working together with all our partners, including parents/carers, young people, health services, social care and school leaders, to make sure we put these plans into action so that we can improve outcomes for children and young people across our district.”