To receive the above report.

Kevin McDaniel introduced the report and informed Members that one element of the DSG was the High Needs Block of approximately £18 million to support the needs of children with additional requirements for education. Officers working under the Director of Children’s Services could make a proposal for the budget via consultation with the Schools Forum. There was a need to balance the budget next year, considering:

-       An in-year deficit of £810,000

-       An Ofsted inspection in 2017 and the care quality commission, with temporary funding provided by the local authority and health provider through the Better Care Fund to innovate work around Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) type work. This led to an improvement of the quality of support for young people in schools. The Forum needed to consider whether projects like this should be continued.

-       The Schools Forum and wider groups needed to identify four new resource units over the next two years to support 40 more places for children with needs in the borough. There was a need to reshape the High Needs Block.

The report requested to seek early feedback from Members to enable officers to make a proposal for the 2021/22 budget. Some of the priority areas of expenditure from the High Needs Block were statutory or required by regulation. Feedback from the Members was requested to ensure the order of priority was correct, in order to bring forward a revised budget. Kevin McDaniel requested for the Member’s representative groups to be informed of the change in the spending structure of the High Needs Block from April 2021 due to three pressures.

Michael Wallace, Headteacher of Furze Platt Junior School, requested for details of how cost-effective projects that were funded by the High Needs Block were, and the Members were informed it was possible to share the cost breakdown of the projects. Kevin McDaniel said approximately £5 million was spent on ensuring places and resources unit existed for children. Another £5 million was spent on the top-up funding, and approximately £50,000 - £100,000 was spent on other smaller project items. It was difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the projects as reviewing the projects were based on individual case studies and would be subjective.

Michael Wallace said the non-statutory projects were required to be reviewed. Kevin McDaniel agreed and said statutory and non-statutory projects should not be used as a discriminator, as some non-statutory projects had made a fundamental difference to some children. He said there was a need to review the amount spent on statutory items to ensure the money was being used in the most effective manner. The Chairman said projects like Area SENCO Capacity had a large impact on the borough despite not being statutory duty, and there was a need to take the impacts into consideration when refining the list.

Joolz Scarlett asked if the SEND Local Area Review was taken into consideration when the table was assorted into priority order, as the finances were not necessarily available to support some of the outstanding actions. The Members were informed that this was taken into consideration, and the table was put together by area of spend rather than the budget line of services. Kevin McDaniel said there was a need to improve the quality of signposting families to the range of activities available.

The Chairman asked if there was an opportunity within some statutory duty projects to receive support from healthcare, and the Members were informed that there was a meeting due to discuss the input healthcare could provide in activities.

Kevin McDaniel said several the items on the list that were funded by the High Needs Block also coincided with some of the traded services that were offered by the local authority. There was a possibility to consider a traded option for the schools that valued the service. Whilst this may move the cost from the High Needs Block to the Main Block, this may be a possible solution.

Michael Wallace said this was an option worth reconsidering, though the concern was the staffing costs as there was an uncertainty in guaranteed funding through the Service Level Agreement (SLA) method. As a result, practitioners could be lost, such as in the example of Behaviour Support Teams. The Forum was informed that this was a risk. Sarah Cottle, Headteacher of Cookham Nursery School, said the concern of relying on SLA would be that schools that needed access to a high level of support would result in a strain on their budget.

Kevin McDaniel said the first £6,000 cost of the child with additional needs would be met from the delegated budgets. Under the inclusion agenda, there had been an attempt to bring the disparity of children with and without EHCPs in schools towards the national average of 1.92. There was an understanding that every child and school was different, there was a need for the system to work together, and it may be that there is a need for more paid-for services, or different services to be added. The Chairman said the discussion would be shared with other Headteachers and Kevin McDaniel said he was happy to virtually join any cluster groups in order to receive comments and feedback.

The Chairman introduced Maggie Callaghan to the Forum.

Councillor Stimson, Lead Member - Climate Change, Sustainability, Parks and Countryside, said Clive Haines had shared a questionnaire to all school’s for children to complete regarding the climate consultation. The Chairman said this could be shared in the cluster meetings.

The Chairman thanked Members and officers.