Preparation for adulthood

What's the picture of local areas and how well they are working to prepare children and young people with special educational needs for adulthood? What support are they offering to allow young people to reach their full potential? Preparation for adulthood arrangements in local areas: a thematic review - GOV.UK

 

Briony Balsom  0:07  
Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted talks. I'm Briony Balsam, and this time we're focusing on preparing for adulthood. In December 24 Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission jointly published a report considering how well children with special needs and or disabilities or send are being supported in their preparation for adulthood. We considered survey responses from more than 2000 children, young people, parents and practitioners, and visited six local area partnerships to explore how children and young people with SEND are being prepared for adulthood. Later, I'm going to be chatting to Jess Taylor Byrne from the CQC, who jointly produced the report with us. But today, firstly, I'm delighted to be joined by guests from Newcastle College. We spoke to practitioners and leaders at Newcastle as part of our visit, and we found some really positive practice in this area. So joining us, we have Rachel Gibson, who's the Assistant Director at Newcastle College. We have Maxine Johnson, who is the SEND manager, Sabarina Logan, who's currently studying for a level three National Diploma in Business at Newcastle college. And also we have Adams Sproston, who is Ofsted senior HMI for SEND. Hello everybody!  To kick us off, I'd really love to hear from you, Adam, about what innovative ideas we came across that are really working at this really key juncture of a young person's life? 

Adam Sproston  1:29  
Thanks, Briony.  We found lots of positives across the six areas that we visited, typically, professionals in education, health and social care, working in very challenging contexts to meet the needs of children and young people, and they shared with us challenges in the economy, but also after COVID 19 and the impact that that's having on some young people. In particular, we found that providers that give high quality careers, information, education, advice and guidance are able to prepare young people better for adult life. May that be courses that they move to, careers that they want to be interested and and thrive in, or in other aspects. So for some young people with SEND that might be improving their independence or supported living as they become an adult. So that was really important to see where professionals know children and young people really well. They can be best placed to meet their needs and tailor their approaches to work for the child's aspirations.

Briony Balsom  2:36  
Wonderful. So let's come across to Newcastle and hear a little more about exactly what it is that you're you're doing so well. 

Maxine Johnson  2:42  
So within our support offer within Newcastle college for our learners with with high needs, so we have a dedicated team of SEND advisors who support our learners with HCPs, transition into college and transitioning with the school, the provider that they're currently with, liaison with any external providers to ensure that we can obviously meet their learners needs and support that kind of smooth transition in a college before they've even started, whether that's coming in on transition visits and doing tastes within the curriculum, or seeing the learners and doing observations in the classroom to see how their learning works and how this how they supported to again, make that transition as smooth as possible. We also do as part of our transition, we have a summer school within our life skills hub, which again, just cements and kind of builds those foundations for our students to be able to know the campus, become familiar with certain spaces that they may access when they're here, which again supports that transition into into college. So we have a dedicated team that specifically work with our learners. With HCPs, in terms of the wider offer. We do have an access hub as well, so that is again, supporting our more complex learners. For us, it's about making our curriculum as inclusive as possible. We have an incredible Assistive Technology Team, and I hope you kind of get from the way that we talk about this, the offer. It's about promoting independence, giving students the tools, strategies to be able to take that to the next level, whether that's the next program of study for us as well, we're lucky. We have a higher education provision here, which a lot of our students aspire to progress on to. We've got, obviously, apprenticeships, supported internships or employment. So it's about how we support the students to be able towards that independence. It's about those independent skills being able to be once you've let College, be able to access and be a well rounded citizen.

So much to unpack all day, which is fabulous, and you're clearly so passionate about it. Listen, I'm itching to come to Sabarina and talk, because this is potentially a really exciting time, a time of big decisions as you work out next steps, whether you want to work go into further study. How does that feel?

Sabarina Logan  4:55  
Feels amazing, but also like quite nerve wracking. And obviously, I'm in my final year of college, and this September, I'm going to be coming back to the uni here, just because I'm so familiar with the support that I get, and I just feel quite comfortable. So I know what's where I can get help, and I know my way around. So yeah, it's, it's going to be a big step. I'm going to do business and a degree, which will be three years. So I'm looking forward to it. 

Rachel Gibson  5:29  
You know, we don't just focus on the qualification and the life skills club in particular, do a lot of work around independent living skills on a on a social level, as well as a sort of teacher, student or staff student level as well. And all of those sorts of opportunities are really important. And they might seem like really small things to other people, but actually at an individual level, all of those small things, a small thing to me, might be a huge thing for another, for a student, and from having two or three conversations with Sabarina about a couple of other things and more about Sabarina just from having that conversation with us. So what we'll get, what the students get from each other as well, through the through the sort of dedicated hub approach that we have.

Briony Balsom  6:11  
Adam,  can I come across to you and just see whether that is the kind of thing that we've seen replicated in other places, or is that something that Newcastle college have that's fairly unique?

Adam Sproston  6:20  
We did. We did see that approach in in many settings that we visited the differences about knowing the children, seems obvious saying it doesn't it, but when you know your children well, you're more able to flex resources and also to meet their needs in a more bespoke way. Something else that we found commonly was, of course, when those relationships are built, it also supports a sense of belonging, and actually that students may stay longer and sustain educational outcomes, or those life skills outcomes that you discuss there, I wanted to pick up also something that we did find at Newcastle, the links to families as well as to the students.

Maxine Johnson  7:02  
We are trying to incorporate even things like independent travel training with that as well, which I know for a local authorities, is a huge kind of thing with with send transport. So we're using those individual life goals and life skills. Is of being able to access public transport is absolutely huge. So even in incorporating things like that into the work that we're doing with our special school is so important. Already, the students came in last week for the very first time, and it was an absolute pleasure to have them on site, and a lot of them did incredibly well. And we were all asking how it went, and a lot of them were saying, can't wait to go home and tell parents. And for us, that's the main thing that they're going home and telling their families they feel safe. And they really enjoyed the experience, so that they will continue to kind of come in again, become familiar with the setting, become familiar with how we are as a as a college to again, support the students, if, hopefully one day, if we can meet the needs that they they may end up coming and studying here, which is, which would be an absolute pleasure.

Rachel Gibson  7:57  
I think, as well at a wider level. So we also have a lot of young people with with additional needs who don't have an HCP. So our teams are present at every open event. We're present throughout the whole of enrollment. We have a dedicated support hub in our main library, so it's very accessible, and we know a lot of parents will come along with their students at the on the enrollment and open events and where we will talk to parents at those events and talking about the support we can offer if a student wants to come and meet us, but wants the parent there, or the parent feels they need to be there to ensure that we get all of the information, then we're quite happy to do all of that. Those relationships with parents are absolutely key in terms of ensuring a really strong and positive experience for our students.

Briony Balsom  8:38  
That's wonderful to hear. I mean, I was going to ask about potential barriers, or perceived barriers. Adam, is there anything you'd want to add to that, in terms of barriers that we've seen, we saw elsewhere in the in the work?

Adam Sproston  8:50  
you've explained it so clearly, Newcastle, there's a open, open events, where you can show off what you what you offer, and we found those in some other areas. But actually, sometimes parents don't know what's around the corner. You use the word college straight away, they're thinking several buildings, 1000s of students and and how will, how will their child fit into that setting? So we did find stronger impact in areas that do bring all providers together so that it's in an open way, shown to parents and carers what is on offer you touch there on transport as well, and in some areas that we visited, that is a significant challenge, be it the distance some young people are expected to travel, or that the travel may not be suitable, Or again, that parents feel it could be unsafe, for example. So great to see all of that work that's going on to take parents on the journey with you as well.

Briony Balsom  9:49  
So obviously, we've heard about like a veritable buffet of support that's on offer at Newcastle College. For you personally, what's been the most helpful and useful support? That you've received in sort of working out what what you're doing next. Just

Sabarina Logan  10:04  
Basically would, I would have like reviews with my SEND advisor, and we'll just have a little catch up with how lessons have been going. What are my future plans? And also, I would have a one to one session with my main business tutor, so they'll have it all up to date on their system, which we call E tracker, where they have what my goals are, what I've achieved, what I personally think I've achieved, or what I want to improve next. We have in business, I must say we do write a lot in lessons today, around three to four pages, and I can't lie, my  hands do ache when we have to write loads of notes because there's a lot of content to absorb and take notes down. Sometimes I can't keep up, so I'll have my one to one with me, and what she will do is they will write the missing notes and basically like a revision tool for me to use if have any upcoming exams. Now, I did have an exam last Friday, which was Principles of Management. It was three and three and a half hour exam, I must say, was very stressful, so I just gave my best shot, because that's all you can do. Absolutely. 

Rachel, it must be really satisfying as leader to see that direct line of sight between your aspirations?

Rachel Gibson  11:26  
We're part of a college group, so it's, you know, we've been graded as good again. I think what Maxine and I share as sort of central support managers is that we're always looking for ways to improve, but I think it at a senior level. I think it's really important that there is a senior level buy in. And we're really lucky here that we've got our previous principal and our current principal are really absolutely 100% behind what we do, and have a very, very focused on young people. So I've been part of our center executive group with the Newcastle City Council for a number of years now, and represent the post 16 voice, which is often missing, I think it at that level. And and the local authority have really embraced that and involved us. So we, you know, we sit on various partnerships, you know, our assistant principals on the children and families board. We, you know, we're part of getting, getting it right together, work stream and the PREPARING FOR ADULTHOOD work streams. But I think internally as well, around three years ago, I became part of the senior leadership team at the college, which I think has made a massive improvement in terms of the visibility of some of the issues that you know, and in our report on on our work weekly now to all of the senior leadership team, so there's real transparency. And when, when Sabarina talks about support, I think it's for me, it's not just about it. I mean, the support practitioners learn, support practitioners who support Sabrina are incredibly important as but it's also about what the teachers do and and the work experience coaches, and it's about how I'm the life skills hub, and it's about how all of those people work together. And I think you need to have the buy in at the top level to get things moving. And we're always looking for improvement. And on a slightly different note, but one of my team is is a governor on the board of the virtual school at Newcastle, and as a result of that, and and the really, really sort of focused work we've done over the last five or six years around care experienced students has led to it them investing in a two year post with us, and specifically around transition of looked after children, you know, so for us to see, say, the confidence that The local authority have in us as an institution, and the reputation that we have, and the fact that our numbers are increasing, our high needs numbers have increased another 2020, this year. You know, we're sort of going up and up and up, I think, demonstrates the reputation that the college has now and the confidence that the local authority and have have us have in us as a post 16 provider. 

Adam Sproston  14:02  
And I would agree with your point where what we heard in the other areas that we visited is actually post 16 for quite a while has come a bit later down the line, and it's now that areas are thinking, we really need sufficient numbers of high quality placements. And in some areas there's, there's a dearth of those. There's not, not enough places to go around. So brilliant to hear about that growth there. I chipped in actually at the point where you mentioned children and young people with SEND who were in care or a care experienced. And that was a real positive across the areas that those children, they have additional oversight, and that, typically there are, there are deals done to ensure that those children get high quality support from education placements. But it's brilliant to hear about that buy in, and that isn't the case everywhere, and I think that places are having to think increasingly outside the box in terms of what they're going to be able to put in place for growing numbers of children and young people that may need very, very different support packages or might just need a little bit of extra help to access a mainstream college curriculum. 

Briony Balsom  15:19  
We set out in the report that strategic leadership and that link to local authorities is really important to avoid a sort of cliff edge at 18. Can you just say a little about why, why we said that, and why we think that? 

Adam Sproston  15:32  
 It's really important that local area partners, when we talk about partners, we're talking about education, health and social care. Colleagues are well sighted on the children that they are responsible for, and we can see today here that we have excellent careers guidance. Children can have their eyes on the prize as to what they want to work towards. But too often, we did find that the discussions for moving towards further education. There's not really a set date when that happens. Colleagues are nodding today here, some schools will start things at different dates. In some of the stronger areas that we visited, there was a buy in in that partnership, so all of the schools would start it on a certain date. Now we wouldn't have a preferred date because, of course, some children, you may need to think about their needs earlier than others, but we we did find that it was a bit hit and miss as to whether or not children would receive a robust package of support that planned out next steps, where that worked better. There was a strategy that children, focusing on those with education, health care plans, and those who were in care or a care experienced, that there would be their plans of action would be put into place earlier than than others, and that they would work towards identifying where might be suitable placements and engaging with those further education providers to see if everybody agreed that the package of support that goes in to supporting that young person would likely benefit them or not. We did find actually that in more rural areas that there isn't that connectivity around services because of the distance between possibly providers of further education or specialist support, those areas did tend to have more challenges, or reported more challenges to us, and that links to a point that colleagues raised earlier transport. Children might have been educated at their local secondary school, and they may want a specific course now, it might not be on offer at the local college, and so they need to go a little bit further away to meet their aspirations some areas that we visited, for example, cities. So we're talking to Newcastle that actually there was almost a perception that those areas it was much easier to meet children's needs as they move towards adulthood. Now actually, that's a bit of a double sided problem that we have, and that's because while there might be more things available. We did hear from college leaders and professionals at the partnership that the turnover of staff and actually recruiting the right staff can be more of a difficulty because you're in that city, locality, there's more opportunities for people to further their career. 

We started running some open events for prospective staff to who wanted to work in support. So not just SEND support, but who might want be interested in library jobs, admin jobs. And as a result, we recruited about seven or eight staff from that, didn't we? So we ran it again and again. Got so every time we run it, we get it. So our our vacancy numbers are smaller now than there have been. And the other thing we've we've done, which, we're really proud of, is we sort of partnered with with another local authority and their apprenticeship provision to recruit teaching assistant level three teaching assistant apprenticeships. So we've currently got four who are about three or about two to do their end point assessment, who hopefully will all then go into permanent pools. For those, that's what we would hope. And we're going through another recruitment phase, because it's for us to be able to get level three apprenticeships in and almost sort of grow your own approach, really. But we also think we can we always look for progression. You know, for you know, we are talent managing our our new staff, from almost on the minute the walk in a lot of our wider leadership team and within central support services started off as support staff, so they've got a real understanding. And as a result of that, we, we as a service, have got really positive scores from our. Up around and well being work life balance, and also how supportive line managers are, which is a massive part of of retaining good staff.

Briony Balsom  20:09  
Thanks, Rachel. It's really interesting to hear how something that Adam spotted at a national level is sort of is manifesting in your in your in your particular college. Um, Adam, I know you want to leap back to health. Let's loop back to health. I think

Adam Sproston  20:20  
It's, I think one of the main challenges is that there are different times that the rules say different things should happen at and so if you're a young person who has health input, we did find that certain things stop when you become an adult, because you're 18, even though you're being supported by the college, and actually, parents don't understand this, not hasn't been explained to them because they've fought and won an EHC plan, which on the front of many of them say things like this, will carry on until you're 25 so, so that's a bit of a missed messaging that we did find in many areas, some areas, they just don't have a like for like adult service. So you may need some sort of speech and language advice as a young person, you might be working on social communication skills, but then that service ends when you turn 18, and there isn't a like for like adult service and other services as well. So that was a difficulty that we identified. And the same applies for young people who might need support from cams to support their mental health and emotional well being that they may be on waiting lists for a very long time, and while they're on that waiting list because they turn 17, 1819, wherever the cutoff is for that area that they then may need to rejoin another waiting list as as they become an adult. So that's something that we found that was a common difficulty. The report makes recommendations to the sector, Department for Education, Department of Health and Social Care, for example, one of them is around supported internships. The difficulty with them is, and this, again, is, is the rules that apply. You need to have an education, health care plan to start on a supported internship. But actually, your plan will likely come to an end if you're successful on that so again, chiming with colleagues at Newcastle college, it's parents that often need to have that explained to them that the output might be a job for that young person. Other ones are around making sure that there's consistency to preparation for adulthood in children's education, health and care plans. At the moment, each local authority is responsible for their education health care plan template, and that can look very differently. And you know, young people like Sabarina, what? What do you want? Is that in the plan? Is it clear? And does everybody know about it? And I actually know that colleagues in the room know you really well. So in quite a lot of the time, we found that staff that support children, one to one are actually working against paperwork that's sometimes outdated or doesn't match what they know children and young people want. And also, another one of the recommendations was was around increasing the amount of high quality and specialist residential and supported living accommodation for those young people who who need that. .

Briony Balsom  23:33  
It's been really fascinating to have a chat with you all today. Really heartening to hear about some wonderful practice. And I think all that remains is for me to say a massive thank you to Rachel, Maxine, Sabarina and Adam for joining us today.

 I'm now joined by Jess Taylor-Beirne, who is Children's Services operations manager at the Care Quality Commission, or the CQC, with whom Ofsted worked jointly on the reports just to set the scene. Jess, why was it that we worked together on this report?

Jess Taylor-Beirne  24:07  
Area SEND inspections are done jointly with CQC and Ofsted. So CQC look at the health side of things, and Ofsted looking at education and care as well. We're really fortunate that CQC and Ofsted have worked on many inspection programs together, and so we have those established links. The area SEND programs, joint targeted area inspections, and these thematic SENDs as well. So we know how important it is to approach these with a variety of lenses and see the child's experience from many angles. So CQC, we look at the health side of things, but with an awareness of how that impacts on education and care. And Ofsted do the same from from their side. And we're fortunate all of our inspectors get to bring their own expertise different frames of reference to create that shared understanding. And so we then therefore have the shared aims for children and young people alongside our Ofsted colleagues, and we know that the outcomes for children and people with SEND are far better when health services, education and care are all linked up and contributing. So it's really important for us as different inspectorates to reflect that as well and create that joined up working, which I think we do well.

Briony Balsom  25:10  
Specifically when it comes to health services, what is the role of those services when it comes to this period of transition into adulthood? 

Jess Taylor-Beirne  28:19  
Sometimes it's easier to think of what it shouldn't be. But I think what we've seen from these inspections is that regardless of need, it needs to be individualized for that child or young person, and their health outcomes need to be considered alongside educational goals and their care or support needs. These conversations around that young person's ambition, their family's ambitions for them and their plans, it needs to happen earlier. Families need to know what to expect, and children, young people, need to be able to express their views on it as well. Enabling independence from a young age is so important, it starts with those life skills to whatever level depending on that child's need. But that ambition and planning needs to be there from really from really young, what does the future look like for this child, and how are we supporting that and and that's where universal services such as health visiting, school nurses can be so important at that early stage, even if adulthood feels a long way off.  I also think it's important to note that certain diagnoses for children as they transition is really important. We know that there are long waits, especially at that transition point, because often you go into adult services and then have to go to the bottom of the waiting list, as much as we have a more of a needs led approach within children's services that they can access everything they need to, in adults, often things do still rely on a diagnosis, for example, a diagnosis of learning disability or autism. So ensuring that those diagnoses are there as that young person transitions is really key, and was one of our recommendations. The other thing I'd just like to add is about equity across services. We can't have services dropping off at 16 with no adult equivalent, but sometimes until the age of 18. So there's often a couple of years which which parents describe as a cliff edge of not having that that care their child needs. So improving this and ensuring that health services are linked, are really key at that transition, and when that happens, results in far better health provision for those children and young people.

Briony Balsom  30:49  
Listen it's been really heartening to listen to you all today and to hear about some wonderful practise. All that remains is for me to say a massive thankyou.