COUNCILLORS have discussed the finances and provision of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services in Oxfordshire.

At a meeting of Oxfordshire County Council’s education scrutiny committee last month, councillors heard the cumulative deficit of services by next March will be £22 million.

At the meeting, a report by Hayley Good, the council’s deputy director for children’s services and education, updated councillors after the committee had requested an update on the analysis of SEND and provision in Oxfordshire.

The report, which assesses the current financial challenges and how they provide an opportunity to ‘rethink and transform’ the way local services are delivered, was discussed by Ms Good.

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She told councillors: “We have increasing demand on our services and increasing financial challenges as do local authorities up and down the country.

“One big area we need to focus on is engaging with parents and carers, and around engagement we are looking to improve our communications.

“There’s a significant amount of work going on in the background and we now have a SEND transformation board which records the successes.

“We need to look at having more locally high-quality provision as we’re paying a lot of money to send children out of county for independent specialist provision – we need to be investing in high-quality provision in the county.

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“Since September, an Accelerated Progress Plan (APP) has been submitted to the Department for Education (DfE), which sets out the actions we are going to take.

“We know that because the demand is continuing to grow, we need to do something quite radical to counter this deficit.”

The report states that the council will ‘focus on developing a more inclusive approach to supporting children and young people with SEND’.

It adds that conversations with children and their families, schools and other stakeholders and partner organisations will enable the council to develop innovative solutions and sustainable change.

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Meanwhile, the DfE will formally monitor the progress of the council’s APP this month.

A local area SEND inspection revisit in October 2019 identified that there was still work to do as a partnership and stated that ‘leaders have an aspirational vision for the work they are doing to improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND in Oxfordshire, however, parents do not yet feel part of this vision and do not fully understand what work is being done to achieve it’.

The council committee noted the report and the developments since September.