Agenda item

Report of the Director of Community and Children’s Services.

Members received a report of the Director of Community and Children’s Services relative to the progress of the Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND) work in the City.

Given a key issue is progressing coproduction opportunities with children and young people, can you confirm how this is progressing and what the impact of the work with Council for Disabled Children and KIDS has been? (*Subsequent to the meeting, the following response was provided):

The work with children and young people is being progressed on three levels – at an individual level, service level and strategic level. 

At an individual and service level, children and young people are involved in planning and in making decisions which directly impact on their lives. An example of this is that they are fully involved in developing their Education Health and Care plans - letting us know their aspiration, what works well and not so well so that we can set meaningful outcomes together to enable them to achieve their aspirations. The inspection found that “the views of children and young people are fully collated and considered.”

The challenge for us is in engaging children and young people at a strategic level - our numbers are small and not everyone will want to become involved at this level. KIDS have supported partners across education, health, social care, commissioning and the community through a workshop to consider ways of engaging and involving children and young people in developing services which affect them. While it is too early to report on the impact of this work, we are actively encouraging children and young people with SEND to take part in the consultation events around the Draft City Plan 2036 and to join the City Youth Forum.  We are also about to engage an external facilitator to support our coproduction work with the parent carer forum and will want to include children and young people in this. We will report on the impact of the work with KIDS to a future Committee.

RESOLVED – That the report be noted.