Policy title

The SEND Plan 2021-2025 was approved by the SEND Partnership Board in June 2021. Thank you to everyone who contributed to and shared views on the plan.

The SEND Plan is the strategic document that provides high level priorities, the benefits we expect to achieve, and the ways in which we will work together.

The SEND Plan was produced using information and feedback provided by over 160 people through 'Think SEND' events held in April and May 2021. People engaged with the process and gave meaningful and useful information that helped us develop the plan as we continue to improve SEND services across the partnership.

In June 2021 the draft of the plan was shared with the SEND Partnership, and more than 100 people attended a range of 10 consultation events, or responded using an online survey or via email, providing feedback and suggestions for further improvement of the document.

The SEND Programme Management Team is working with partners to identify how to deliver the plan, initially for the next 12-18 months.

As local leaders, we are delighted to introduce the Lancashire Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) Plan for 2021-2025 on behalf of the Lancashire SEND Partnership.

Our refreshed plan has grown from the collective voices of our SEND partnership and SEND community. It provides direction and challenge to enable positive outcomes for children and young people so that they can prepare for life as an adult. The Plan will be delivered through a number of actions that will be reviewed annually alongside feedback we receive on the impact of changes and improvements and on our performance. As a result we may change and adapt those actions.

Since the initial inspection of our SEND services across education, health and care in November 2017 we are better at using data and feedback to understand our SEND population and their lived experience. This means we are better able to improve existing services and to jointly commission the right services. We continue to improve the way that we work, the services we deliver, and the support we provide across our SEND community. Despite the changes we have made over the last few years, we recognise that there is more work to do so that we achieve our vision.

Although working through the pandemic has seen unprecedented times, the SEND Partnership was able to maintain services, and learned new things, whilst also strengthening the ways we together.

The Lancashire SEND Plan 2021-25 supports our continuing growth as a partnership, with children and young people and their families at the centre of all that we do. It sets out our vision, priorities and ways of working, ensuring that the voices of children and young people and their families are heard as we reshape services to meet local needs.

Our partnership across education, health and care, and with the Children and Young People’s SEND Board and Lancashire Parent Carer Forum, has strengthened over recent years, and we continue to improve the ways we work together, recognising that we cannot achieve our vision in isolation.

The Lancashire SEND Plan 2021-25 describes what we need to do so that every child or young person with SEND experiences a good SEND offer (see page 5 for a definition of SEND, and page 6 for a description of a good SEND offer).

In November 2017 the Lancashire County Council area was inspected by two inspection agencies – Ofsted which carries out education inspections, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which carries out health inspections. The purpose of the inspection was to test the Lancashire SEND Partnership in the delivery of our statutory duties for children and young people with SEND (see list of partners on page 4).

The result of the inspection was that there were areas of significant concern which needed to be addressed, and these were subsequently worked on. An inspection revisit in March 2020 reviewed the areas to be addressed, and the improvement work on most of the areas of concern was considered to have progressed well. However 5 areas still needed more work which was monitored by the Department for Education and NHS England through an accelerated progress plan.

We know that we have more work to do so that all children and young people with SEND know that we are doing the best we can for them. The Lancashire SEND Plan for 2021-25 describes our ongoing improvement activity, including how we will work.

Along with our new vision, the SEND Plan makes sure we deliver on our promises to continually improve the Lancashire SEND offer in education, health and care from 2021-2025.