Representatives Needed for the Complex Needs School Capacity and Future Need Project

We are embarking on a short-term project looking at capacity in our complex needs schools and need two school representatives to join the project, one from the primary phase and one from the secondary phase. It is anticipated that just two 2-hour meetings will be necessary: one in mid November to allocate tasks to Project Members and one in January to collate outputs.

The Project will be led by Michael Bateman, Strategic Manager for SEN and can be summarised as follows:

Rationale:
Currently our special schools are not located according to the needs of children and young people in relation to where they live. This results in some children travelling significant distances daily in order to access provision.

On 11 August 2008 Norfolk County Council Cabinet agreed an implementation phase for the Strategy for Special Educational Needs programme of projects. This will involve changes for all of Norfolk's special schools as we move forward to a position where there will be 13 complex needs schools.

At the same time that these medium/long term changes are being planned there is a need to consider the needs of the children and young people who are currently within Norfolk schools and who may need access to special/complex needs schools in the short/medium term. This project will assess the current capacity of the special schools to accommodate the number of children and young people who require placements and to inform decision-making regarding future capacity.

Short Term Outcomes (March 2009):
At the end of this project, we as an organisation will have provided a report to County Councillors via the March meeting of the Children's Services Review Panel which will cover the following elements:

Level of requests for current special school placements

Level of out of county placements due to current special school capacity

Multi-disciplinary/agency view regarding incidence level of complex special educational needs within the total Norfolk pupil population

Benchmarking of statistical neighbour local authorities regarding incidence level of complex special educational needs and associated provision mapping

How earlier identification and meeting of need may affect this group of children

Analysis of current NEET cohort (young people not in education, employment or training) regarding key placement decisions taken during the preceding 6-year period.

If you would like to be involved in this project or would like further information please contact Marianne Knights, SEN Strategy Project Officer:

Email: marianne.knights@norfolk.gov.uk
Tel: 01603 638054