Management Information Sheet

Reminder of Your Local Offers

As you will be aware the Children & Families Act came into force on 1 September 2014. We wanted to update you on a number of issues:

• progress to date - see Norfolk's Local Offer at Norfolk's Local Offer. A Local Offer Development Officer, Claire Jones, has been recruited to work with families and providers to continue to develop to the Local Offer. We have created a leaflet to explain what the Local Offer is and how people can access it if they don't have internet access. A PDF version of the leaflet is attached on the link above. If you would like a stock of leaflets please email Claire Jones
• how to initiate a new statutory assessment – find out more and download the form by clicking here
• process for Phase Transfers and conversion of Statements to Education, Health & Care (EHC) Plans – see below
• reminder about your school's Local Offer – see below

Phase Transfer / Conversion of Statements of SEN to EHC Plans

Following publication of new guidance on transitions by the Government on 29 August, we need to update you on our revised plans for Phase Transfer and conversion of Statements to EHC Plans.

We want to ensure that we can prioritise our new EHCP Co-ordinator time for new assessments and to prioritise conversion for those children and young people who will be transferring from Early Years settings into Schools and from Schools into Post 16 provision. We will also prioritise some other key transition points and those Statements which require significant amendment following annual review.

EHCP Co-ordinators will focus on the following Phase Transfer/conversions during this academic year (2014/15):

Phase Transfer - Year 2 and Year 6

Because of the 15 February phase transfer deadline it is not possible to convert Statements into Plans for current Year 2 and Year 6 children, in a person-centred way. Therefore we will use a pragmatic approach, through amendment notice letters, to change Part 4 to ensure that these children and their families have confirmation of their new school for the February phase transfer deadline. However, because we want to ensure that children transferring to high school, in particular, can have their transition supported through up to date information, we plan to convert their Statements to EHC Plans from February half term and prior to the start of the new academic year.

Spreadsheets have been sent out to schools to advise which children and young people will be prioritised for Phase Transfer. If you have not received this information please contact your EHCP Co-ordinator.

Letters will be sent to families from w/c 22 September. Parents are asked to identify a preference for a transfer school for September 2015 and are asked to let us know their preferences by 13 October 2014.

Our next step will be to prepare a Proposed Amendment Notice. We will send this to parents/carers at the end of November 2014 and they will have 15 days to let us know if they want to talk to us or tell us about any changes they would like made.

Schools will have 15 working days to respond. School responses must be made by 19 December 2014.

The LA has a statutory duty to name the parents' preferred choice of school in the Statement/Plan unless:

• the school cannot provide for the needs of the child
• the child's attendance at the school would be incompatible with the efficient education of other children in the school
• the placement is an inefficient use of the LA's resources

Conversions to EHC Plans

We will also focus on current Year -1 and Year 5 children for conversion to EHC Plans during the 2014/15 academic year to ensure that they do have a person-centred approach to their EHCP conversion in advance of their phase transfer the following year.

In addition, if transferring to Post-16 education we will convert the other identified year groups as in the above table, ie Years 11, 12, 13 and 14.

School SEN Information Reports and the Local Offer

As requested in MI Sheet 151/14 we need to include a link from Norfolk's Local Offer to every School Information Report. If you haven't already, can you please send a link to your school's SEN Information Report to: CSSENDchanges@norfolk.gov.uk. An example SEN Information Report is available here.

You will want to include a link to Norfolk's Local Offer in your school's SEN Information Report – here is the link that will take you to the homepage: www.norfolk.gov.uk/SEND.