Management Information Sheet

The Children & Families Act comes into force on 1 September 2014 and we are letting you know about our plans for:

• Norfolk's Local Offer
• arrangements for the conversion of existing Statements of SEN to the new Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans, and
• the new assessment process for EHC Plans.

Thank you to all those who came to our recent round of events about the reforms and the work we are doing in Norfolk - you can find all the papers from the events here.

School SEN Information Reports and the Local Offer

We are making good progress with writing, designing and testing Norfolk's Local Offer, which will set out in one place information about services for children and young people with SEN and disabilities in Norfolk. The web pages will go live in August. You will want to include a link to Norfolk's Local Offer (www.norfolk.gov.uk/SEND) in your school's SEN Information Report. An example SEN Information Report is available here.

At the same time, we need to include a link from Norfolk's Local Offer to every School Information Report. Please can you send a link to your school's SEN Information Report to: CS SEND changes.

Conversion of Statements of SEN to Education, Health and Care Plans

We need to prioritise our EHC Plan Co-ordinators' time during the first year of the new system (academic year 2014/15) to focus on children and young people who are being assessed for the first time for an EHC Plan but also for children and young people with current Statements and that need to be reviewed and converted to an EHC Plan.

EHCP Co-ordinators will focus their time as below:

A. Academic Year 2014 /15 - Focus by Year Group and Placement
The table below shows current numbers of Statements Norfolk by Year Group and also cross references these numbers to children and young people who are also in receipt of services via our Children with Disability and our Children in Need social care teams.

NCYG Current academic year	Statements	CWD with Stat	CIN with Stat
-4	0	0	0
-3	0	0	0
-2	5	1	2
-1	36	2	4
R	122	4	10
1	158	11	19
3	228	19	43
4	269	18	39
5	323	29	60
6	389	23	59
7	420	30	73
8	490	35	81
10	596	37	103
11	535	39	93
12	120	37	46
13	82	13	16
14	38	0	1
Total	4532	350	767

The table below shows the current number of Statements in terms of placement type, and cross referenced with Children with Disability and our Children in Need social care teams.

Placement	Statements	CWD with Stat	CIN with Stat
Academy	1125	8	95
Independent	315	16	97
Mainstream	1811	19	159
Other	104	8	24
PRU	53	0	21
Special	1124	299	371
Total	4532	350	767

During the academic year 2014/15 our EHC Plan Co-ordinators will focus on three groups:

1. EHC Plan assessment pathway for all first referrals for statutory assessment
2. EHC Plan annual review/conversion process for all current Statements of SEN for children and young people in the following year groups:

Year Group 2014/15 Academic Year
Year -1	5
Year 2	158
Year 5	269
Year 11	596
Year 14	82
Total	1110

This will target approximately 25% of current Statements for conversion assessment for an EHC Plan in the first academic year. In September we will be in contact with schools individually regarding their children, with specific advice on these target year groups.

3. EHCP annual review/conversion process for all current Statements of SEN for children and young people in the following placement type:

Independent	315
Other	104
PRU	53
Special	1124
Total	1596

This will target approximately 35% of current Statements for conversion assessment for an EHC Plan in the first academic year.

The current annual review process will be used for Statements in other year groups and other placements. Again, we will provide specific guidance for this in September.

B. Academic Year 2015/16
During the 2015/16 year our EHCP Co-ordinators will focus on:

1. The new EHC Plan assessment pathway for all first referrals for statutory assessment
2. EHC Plan annual review/conversion process to be used for all remaining Statements of SEN

The new assessment process for EHC Plans

We will have a web-based paperless assessment pathway for EHC Plans. This will mean that, whilst we will co-ordinate the assessment, we are designing a system that will enable parents/carers and professionals to submit online requests for assessments and to submit information and reports via a new web-based case management system.

We will also be removing the current Panel process for decision-making.

More information about the changes to SEN and Disability can be found here.