SEND & AP Change Programme

Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) have provided an update around the SEND & Alternative Provision Change Programme, and the different workstreams within it, which you can see here.

The SEND & AP Change Programme is part of a wider initiative taking place across the South East Partnership with Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) working to strengthen support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and those accessing Alternative Provision (AP).

PaCC has been involved in this work from the beginning, helping to ensure that the voices of parent carers are heard, valued, and used to shape local strategy and service delivery. Below is a summary of how PaCC is contributing across the key strands of the programme.

SEND & AP Partnership Board

PaCC’s Involvement:

Contributing to the agenda setting for each SEND & AP Partnership Board meeting
PaCC Co-Chairs attend each meeting.
Have a 20-minute-long agenda item at every meeting.

PaCC use the agenda item to share updates, parent carer themes and to raise concerns to the Partnership Board, such as around areas of the Neurodevelopmental work and a lack of post 16 educational provision for young people from the T21 community.

Ordinarily Available Provision (OAP)

PaCC’s Involvement:

Attended the launch event
Met with Dr. Hildi Mitchell. These 1:1 meetings will continue during the OAP work.
Supporting to facilitate parent carer focus groups.
Contributing to the draft OAP and offering feedback on the final draft.
Reviewing and evaluating the OAP final draft guidance during the year long trial.

PaCC have highlighted the need for the OAP guidance to be trauma informed, neuroaffirmative and the importance of including lived experience when creating the guidance. We have raised concerns around using the four areas of SEND (Cognition and Learning, Social and Communication, Social, Emotional and Mental Health and Sensory/Physical Needs) as SEND profiles rarely fit into the one box, particularly if someone is neurodivergent. We have also raised the importance of their being appendices that outline different presentations of neurodivergence and other SEND, to promote early identification and intervention. PaCC are pleased that the OAP Guidance and the Principles of Belonging will align with each other.

Review of BHCC’s Behaviour and Attendance Panel (BAP)

PaCC’s Involvement:

Met with Amanda Meier (Change Programme Lead), Kate Barker (AP Development officer) to discuss this area of work.
Will be meeting with local authority leads to discuss themes and data that come from the panel.
Being part of the Wellbeing, SEND & AP workstream which will oversee this work.

PaCC have said that it’s important for the local authority to track data around managed moves and whether the number is consistently higher for particular schools. It is also important to track a pupil’s transition when they move to a different school and how they are doing once they are attending a new school.

Development of One Term Intervention model for the PRU – Tier 2 Alternative Provision

PaCC’s Involvement:

Meeting regularly with Amanda Meier (Change Programme Lead), Kate Barker (AP Development Officer), Yvonne Ely (SEND sufficiency lead) and Georgina Clarke-Green (Director of Education and Learning) to discuss and contribute to these areas of work, as well as to receive updates.
Organising for Kate Barker to attend Amaze coffee morning to hear feedback from parent carers about Alternative Provision
Creating and sharing an Alternative Provision survey for parent carers
Meeting termly with the secondary school headteachers, alongside Amaze, hearing updates around the AP work, in particular, the ALPs (Alternative Learning Provision).
The roll out of BHCC’s Principles of Belonging work and helping to create the guidance.
Looking at the ALPS evaluation and the impact of the Alternative Provision Specialist Taskforce (APST) and contributing to it

PaCC has said that it’s important to gather feedback from parent carers who have no experience of AP for their child as well as those who do, so information available for parent carers is relevant and accessible for wherever they are in their child’s AP journey.

Transitions – Early Years and into Post-16

PaCC’s involvement:

Starting to meet regularly with Jon Hughes (BHISS Senior specialist teacher for Early Years) now this work is progressing.
Contributing to the development of a Transition Toolkit for Children and Young People transitioning from Alternative Provision into Post-16 education.

PaCC has said that there needs to be a focus on year 6 to year 7 transitions and this should have been a focus of the Change Programme. PaCC know from parent carer experience that school placements can easily break down in year 7 if transition plans were not robust and specific enough for pupils. Year 6 to year 7 transition is a focus in the BHCC Education Strategy.

PaCC will continue to work in co-production with local services as a critical friend – contributing strategically, representing the lived experiences of parent carers, and challenging when necessary. Our aim is always to ensure that improvements are rooted in what families are telling us. We’ll keep you updated as the next stage of the SEND & AP Change Programme develops, and we remain committed to making sure parent carer voices shape the journey every step of the way.

SEND & AP Change Programme