2024 has been a big year for Cognus’ SEND Team and the families we support. Our team has written, co-produced and issued 347 new EHCPs, reviewed and maintained 2,540 EHCPs, and processed more than 500 Requests to Assess and 380 Requests to Issue.
Behind these numbers is close collaboration with families, colleagues, schools and other professionals, plus a drive to work together to provide the best possible outcomes for our children and young people with SEND in Sutton.
This year has had a number of highlights in achieving this. In the Spring, we welcomed the parents of children in key stage transfer years to our offices for tea, biscuits and an overview of the key stage transfer process, which differs to mainstream admissions. A presentation from our Head of Service & SEND Team Manager, followed by Q&As with their dedicated EHCP Coordinators, helped our parents to understand a complex process and strengthen their relationship with the service. 77% of our Year 5 parents rated the information delivered at the meeting as good or exceptional and 70% of our Year 5 parents said that the quality of service they received from the SEND Team was good or exceptional. There were also opportunities to meet and gain information from colleagues in Cognus Therapies, Assisted Travel and Sutton’s Independent Travel Training (ITT) provider KCIL. A similar session took place in April with the families of Year 10 children who were also able to meet with colleges invited by the SEND service.
Cognus’ SEND Team continues to collaborate closely with our colleagues in Health, Social Care, schools, colleges, early years settings, and the Virtual School to deliver positive outcomes for some of the most vulnerable children in our borough. We have welcomed colleagues from the NHS Education Wellbeing Service, the Virtual School and Therapies to our weekly team workshops to facilitate closer collaborative working. This has helped professionals to bridge the gap between services and better understand each others’ ways of working, to deliver better outcomes for children and young people with SEND in our borough. Our service worked collaboratively with our partners in Sutton Virtual School throughout the transfer to secondary school process to secure a placement for a young person looked after.
Our team also collaborated closely with Hertfordshire Virtual School to secure education for a young person who had become NEET and had moved into our borough. We worked closely together to re-engage him in education at a tuition centre, building his confidence, peer relationships and built up his motivation to enrol at college. With this collaborative transition support, he is now attending college and engaging fully in his course.
We received the following feedback from our partners at the Hertfordshire Virtual School:
Thank you for your hard work on this. I really appreciate how efficient you have been.
We also collaborated closely with partners and the family to secure a specialist placement for a young person under special guardianship who was at risk of permanent exclusion. This feedback from the school SENDCo highlights the impact of this work:
We all wanted the same thing… the best outcome for X and that was a specialist placement… Everyone was very open and honest – this made a huge difference. We all worked so closely and kept in frequent contact that we all knew who was doing what and when they were aiming to be done by.
Finally, the Tribunal team has supported the SEND panel decisions under appeal and has ensured strong working relationships with families despite their disagreement with the decision under appeal. It continues to be our wish to work closely with all families, even through dispute resolution as we are all essential partners in ensuring we prepare our children and young people for adulthood.
We look forward to continuing our support in 2025 to the children and young people and their families within our service.