a)     

There had been an increase in the number of children and young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP);

b)     

There had been work underway across the partnership to support children within mainstream settings without the need for an EHCP but it would take time to embed and would not replace the need for special educational provision;

c)     

Following data analysis, it was forecast that the city would be short of at least 105 special school places by 2030.  Due to capacity pressures within the special school estate the city has found itself in a position where its had to place children in independent special school (ISP’s);

d)     

There were 376 children and young people that attended 37 registered independent schools and post 16 settings, with a total cost of those placements in 2023/24 being approximately £8.6 million;

e)     

Children who had requested a special school place for point of entry in September 2024 had their place confirmed and the 0-25 service had been working with families to confirm as many places as quickly as possible;

f)      

Plymouth City Council was increasing its special school estate wherever possible to increase the number of places available in September. Many special schools had limited space to expand due to the nature of the sites but the Council would expand at the following sites:

·         Cann Bridge – eight additional places

·         Longcause – six additional places 

·         Millford expansion within a temporary satellite provision of an additional 20 to 30 places

g)     

The Local Authority had been receiving funding via the high needs provisional capital allocations grant (HNPCA). The grant should be used to increase the number of SEND places in Plymouth. Plymouth received £15 million via the grant over a seven year period with £13 million remaining to fund expansion. All future expansion needed to be funded by the grant as there would be no additional funding available;

h)     

Increase in resource provision would provide an additional 50 to 75 places across the city;

i)      

Following surveys to Milford’s school which was in poor condition, it was hoped that remodelling of the building could offer an additional 30 places;

j)      

The Council was progressing an option to buy a building near to Longcause school which could provide an additional 100 places to Plymouth, subject to internal remodelling and refurbishment;

k)     

The final option would be to build a new school, however the current HNCPA grant would not be able to cover the cost which was estimated at £26 – 35 million dependant on size and design. 

l)      

There was a rising need in relation to SEM and complex special educational needs nationally which was creating a pressure within the system and mainstream settings, but also in terms of those complex needs that required specialist provision;

m)   

Plymouth had a high level of requests for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 55.

a)     

The number of young people not in education employment or training continued to decrease;

b)     

The council actively engaged young people to seek education, employment or training (SEET) and secured £1.3 million of funding through the SEND Innovation grant;

c)     

Programmes were delivering the impact required with 88.1% of SEND young people in education, employment or training. The next academic year would see an aspirational target of 92%;

d)     

The service continually applied for and sought funding due to being fully grant funded and the SEET programme was in the process of becoming built-in within the adult education budget;

e)     

The SEET programme was an investment to young people and was backed by a number of key council priorities for Plymouth;

a)     

There were nine children/young people in unregistered or unregulated placements and were placed in those provisions after exhausting all other options available to the council;

b)     

A number of placements registered with CQC and the council was working with them to dual register with Ofsted;

c)     

Unregistered placements were monitored regularly with weekly reports to Ofsted;

d)     

The Early Help strategy would reduce the number of referrals for children’s services. Practice had improved since 2022/23;

e)     

The council ran an extensive partnership programme in October 2023 with 800 professionals in the city on the threshold document and Plymouth was beginning to see the benefits.

f)      

The plan for 24/25 academic year would be to provide outcomes data, broken down into cohorts and then made consistent throughout key stage groups;

g)     

Most absences in the city were due to sickness, but it was acknowledged some absences may have been due to parents/carers taking children on holiday;

h)     

Child Protections Plans were decreasing due to the Plans progressing and stepping down to Child in Need following good work;

i)      

Plymouth tracked data to project required school capacity into the future;

j)      

Higher numbers of sexual abuse child protection plans were due to increased training for the workforce;

k)     

Increases in repeat child protection plans were due to the greater complexities of families the service was working with. Increased training was taking place across services to ensure plans were appropriate in order to prevent multiple interventions;

l)      

The item scheduled for 10 October on suspensions and exclusions would provide more granular data on the patterns of suspensions and exclusions in Plymouth schools.

a)     

Since the Improvement Notice issued to the Council, Plymouth had worked hard to rectify and improve practice, which culminated in a requires improvement grading from Ofsted in January 2024;

b)     

The report set out a vision from the council which would ensure children and families in Plymouth received the help they required, when they needed it with a timely and high quality assessment;

c)     

The Plan would hold officers and cabinet members to account in achieving excellence for Children’s services;

d)     

There were ten strategic priorities underpinning improvement work for the service.

e)     

Plymouth’s data on young people not in education, employment or training continued to get better which had seen the service able to respond appropriately to that cohort and was evidenced through tracked data;

f)      

Since the Ofsted Monitoring visit in 2022, Plymouth set up a Improvement Board which met every six weeks to review the improvement work with the support of Dorset County Council as Sector Led Improvement Partners (SLIP);

g)     

The largest risk in the delivery of the plan was workforce and Plymouth had a challenge in attracting children’s social workers. A new recruitment and retention strategy was in place with further reviews into how Plymouth recruited in order to ensure Plymouth was an attractive place to live and work;

h)     

There was a stable senior leadership team but a quarter of social workers were agency social workers;

i)      

The council was expecting a monitoring visit from Ofsted in relation to Local Area SEND. There was also an improvement Board for this area with SLIP in place;

a)     

Plymouth had implemented a contextual safeguarding approach through the Adolescent Safety Framework (ASF) which had been worked on to simplify to ensure practitioners across the City recognised behaviours and indicators to ensure a response at the earliest opportunity;

b)     

A recent Ofsted inspection highlighted how the council was doing everything possible to support children;

c)     

Ofsted noted the following in their report from January 2024: ‘The response to children who go missing and children at risk of extra-familial harm is coordinated effectively across the whole service and is helping to reduce harm. Persistent interventions from the specialist team for children who go missing, youth workers and the edge of care team are providing a strong and consistent response for children. Most children who go missing benefit from timely return home interviews that capture their experiences well. Information about wider harm relating to exploitation, gangs and substance misuse is well considered and updated through strong ‘safer me’ assessments. If children are missing for more than 24 hours, multi-agency child protection strategy meetings take place to ensure a joint response to help to find children and reduce risks for them. Plymouth received recognition for its daily intelligence briefings and had other Local Authorities come and observe them’;

d)     

The Be Safe team were working with children and young people earlier, to develop relationships which would then see a reduction in the numbers of young people going missing in the city;

e)     

Daily intelligence briefings were attended by the Police, MASH, Health, NSPCC, Barnardo’s;

f)      

Every child/young person heard at the daily intelligence briefings would have a plan in place;

g)     

Devon and Cornwall Child Exploitation group met monthly to discuss themes in the region. The theme present was more girls going missing in the region and the group was working together in order to address;

h)     

The team expanded from three to nine. Four youth workers were employed to work and build relationships with those children and young people that went missing regularly;

i)      

The Be Safe team had been brought into the Youth Justice team who had access to CAMHS and a psychologist outside of the normal pathways;

j)      

There was a significant drop in the number of repeat missing episodes;

k)     

The Frederick Street Youth Centre was kept open on Thursday evenings and young people were made aware of its availability if they required help;

l)      

There was a spike in May of children and young people going missing due to warm weather and it was a common theme;