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The Sutton Education Partnership welcomes you to the first of our newsletters to parents covering the work we are doing to improve services to young people with SEND in the borough!
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The Sutton Education Partnership (SEP) is a partnership between the London Borough of Sutton, schools, early years and college settings and Cognus (our schools services provider). We are all working together to improve services for our children and young people in Sutton.
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Sutton has excellent schools, nurseries and college provision but we are ambitious! We want to make our schools and services even better and to let you know what we are working on. We hope you find this useful and if you want to find out more, contact details are below.
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What is ‘SEND’?
Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are where a child has difficulties at school, such as with:
- communication and social skills
- understanding things that are taught in school
- reading and writing
- concentration and attention
- physical skills
Children with SEND receive additional support in schools through support plans developed by the school, or, if their needs are particularly complex through ‘education, health and care (EHC) plans’
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Key facts about SEND in Sutton
- There are about 40,000 pupils across Sutton’s schools
- 3.3% of these have an Education, Health and Care Plan - the national average is lower than this
- 9.2% of these pupils have additional needs and are supported at SEN Support level - the national average is higher than this
- The vast majority of pupils with SEND are supported in mainstream schools (with or without an Education, Health and Care plan).
- Some pupils need specialist support - we have 7 special schools and 13 resource bases in the Borough - find out more here
- In 2014 we supported 1087 pupils with EHC plans (then called ‘Statements of SEN’) and now we support 1968 pupils - an increase of 81%! The school population has only grown by 12% over the same period.
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Ambitious for SEND - What have we done so far? We have...
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Strengthened the support we provide to families of young people with SEND
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Supporting young people with SEND earlier through services such as ‘Paving the Way’
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Improved how we communicate across education, health and social care services
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Improved our processes - 100% of EHC plans are now completed on time
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Improved and refreshed our Local Offer website providing more up to date information for parents and young people with SEND
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We are supporting 8000 more children and young people across Sutton with mental health needs.
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We know the progress we are making is good and so does Ofsted as they said after their visit to us in March 2020 but there is always more work to be done - and we are doing it!
What is next?
People from the Council, Cognus, teachers, special education needs coordinators (SENCOs), school governors, parents and other organisations have worked together to develop three key priorities in Sutton :
- Strengthening the support that young people with SEND receive in our mainstream schools,
- Looking at what specialist provision we need for the future for those pupils with the most complex needs and
- Strengthening how we prepare young people with SEND for adulthood - whether than be further education, finding a job or learning to live independently.
What are we doing now? We are...
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... providing mainstream schools with more money (£500k in 2020/21) to develop stronger support for children with SEND
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... working with our new 'SENCO clusters' - teams of SENCOs across schools that work together to share best practice, support to develop effective strategies for support pupils with SEND
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… working with the Sutton Parent Carer Forum to start to develop a ‘Local Area SEND Charter’ to share the values and behaviours we know are important and to build trust with parents and young people
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... reviewing how we can best provide speech and language and occupational therapies to pupils with SEND
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... developing a post 16 route planner to support more young people with SEND into further education, employment, supported internships and apprenticeships
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COVID:19 AND SUPPORT FOR FAMILIES
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Do you need support over winter?
Covid-19 presents all sorts of challenges to families whether they be related to education, health and mental health, childcare, finances or anything else. The London Borough of Sutton works closely with a number of charities across education, health and social care who have provided an updated pack of information for families on services that can support them over the winter.
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We want all parents and young people to know that support is here for you in Sutton - click here to find out more about the support that is available.
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Could you benefit from Food vouchers over Winter?
 We are working on a scheme with schools to issue free school meal vouchers to families eligible for free school meals over the christmas holidays. We are working on the details of the scheme with schools now and expect to be able to issue vouchers to families later on in December. Vouchers will be worth £3 a day for each day of the christmas holidays. If you are a parent for a child that is currently eligible for free schools meals you do not need to do anything - you will receive the voucher automatically from your school. If you think your child might be eligible for free school meals but you have not signed up to this entitlement please visit our website here.
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Other News
Useful Links
Contact Us
If you have any questions of would like to find out more about anything in this newsletter please contact education.sendfeedback@sutton.gov.uk
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