Improving SEND support in Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a great place to live and learn. Offering children and young people the best start in life, and the chance to achieve their full potential, is a real priority.  

Our vision is that “all children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are given the opportunity to achieve everything that they can. They engage with the right support at the right time from their parents and carers, the community and the professionals that work with them to make this happen.”

The SEND landscape in Staffordshire

Over the past few years, from 2018 until 2024, the number of children and young people requiring SEND support in Staffordshire has increased by almost 30%. 

In total, Staffordshire currently maintains 8,300 Education Health and Care Plans for children and young people aged between 0-25 years old. 

For most children, their special educational needs can be met in their local mainstream school.  For a smaller number of children who have very complex needs, they may require provision that only a special school can provide.  

In Staffordshire, we currently see fewer children with an EHCP attend mainstream schools than elsewhere in the country,  Currently 31% in Staffordshire and 40.5% nationally.  

We are concerned that children with special educational needs and disabilities do not achieve as well as other children in Staffordshire. We are aware that parents and schools tell us that whilst there is some great practice in SEND support, they are frustrated with the lack of consistency of this support across the county.  

This has made us question what we can do with the resources we’ve got, to improve the way children with SEND are supported to learn and achieve in their local schools, have friends and live and grow in their home communities. 

Achieving this goal is a big challenge; children have a wide range of different needs, Staffordshire is a large county and different areas face different challenges, the way schools and education works is changing and there is continuing pressure for all public sector partners around funding. 

When it comes to supporting children with special educational needs or disabilities to learn and achieve, there are many examples of excellent practice across the county, and we intend to learn from and build on these. 

How we are improving support 

We have collaboratively developed and implemented an innovative approach to enhance SEND services to deliver pre-statutory support. 

Before a local authority commits to statutory support a school needs to go through pre-statutory support. This would begin with the ‘Graduated Approach’ incorporating ‘Assess, Plan, Do, Review.’

If further support is required a school can request 'Enhanced Assessed Plan Do Review' (EAPDR). This enhancement could take the form of a variety of support or provision. One source of support could be ‘Staffordshire Enhanced District Inclusion Support’ (SEDIS) model.  

 If the support provided through the EAPDR process is still not meeting needs, then consideration will be given to whether statutory support is appropriate through an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCHP).