Essex County Council Local Offer Parent Engagement Event 2013

1. The Local Offer
Parent Engagement Event

2. Introduction
• Annemarie Blackshaw - Head of SEN/AEN
Provider Services
Our speakers today:
• Annemarie Blackshaw
• Tim Coulson
• Tracey Scriven
• Brian Lamb
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4. Aim of the Day
To involve parents in a discussion about
the shape and content of the Essex Local
Offer.

5. The Local Offer
When the Children and Families Bill becomes
enacted in 2014 local authorities will be required
to publish and keep under review information
about services they expect to be available for
children and young people with special
educational needs aged 0-25. This is the local
offer.
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6. Agenda for the day
• Registration and refreshments
• Welcome
• Introduction with a view from the Director and a parent‟s view
• Brian Lamb – Local Offer Presentation – What works for parents
in communication and information
• Workshop 1 – To find out what information parents require to
help provide for their child
• Local Offer Presentation– What works for children with Special
Educational Needs or Disabilities
Lunch
• Workshop 2 – To feedback your thoughts on what would most
improve outcomes for your child
• Workshop 3 – To gather ideas on how the local offer should be
presented and what we should call it
• Examples of some approaches
• Summary of the day
• Next Steps6

7. A Message from our Director of
Education and Learning
Tim Coulson

8. A Message from FACE
(Families Acting for Change in Essex)
Tracey Scriven
A parent’s view

9. Local Offer Consultation-what works for
parents in communication and information
Brian Lamb OBE

10. WHAT IS THE LOCAL OFFER
FOR?
Improving Accountability and Confidence in provision?

11. TREATING PARENTS AS “PARTNERS WITH
EXPERTISE IN THEIR CHILDREN’S NEEDS
IS CRUCIAL TO ESTABLISHING AND
SUSTAINING CONFIDENCE. WHERE
THINGS GO WRONG, THE ROOT CAUSES
CAN OFTEN BE TRACED TO POOR
COMMUNICATION BETWEEN SCHOOL,
LOCAL AUTHORITY AND PARENT.”
Lamb Inquiry

12. Indicative Code of Practice
“Schools and colleges need to ensure that they fully engage parents
and young people with SEN when drawing up policies that affect
them. …
Schools and colleges should also take steps to ensure that parents
and young people are actively supported in contributing to
assessment, planning and review processes.”

13. Parents Improve Outcomes
“The knowledge and understanding that parents have about their
child is key information that can help teachers and others to meet
their child‟s needs. Enabling parents to share their knowledge and
engage in positive discussion instils confidence that their
contribution is valued and acknowledged.”
Indicative Code of Practice

14. What do parents want?
Research shows that parents often look for;
• Appropriate and timely recognition of a child‟s needs by professionals;
• Knowledge and understanding of staff about a child‟s difficulties and needs
the willingness of the service/school to listen to their views and respond
flexibly;
• Parental beliefs and views are recognised in a professional‟s approach to
concerns about a child. (Harrington et al 2006);
• Access to specialist services and someone who understands “my child”
crucial;
• Decisions are transparent and information about entitlements and what is
available is crucial to making informed decision and “choice”;
• Information should be given face to face as much as possible.

15. School Information
1. Information about the school's policies for the identification, assessment
and provision for pupils with special educational needs, whether or not
pupils have EHC Plans, including how the school evaluates the
effectiveness of its provision for such pupils.
2.The school‟s arrangements for assessing the progress of pupils with
special educational needs
3.The name and contact details of the SEN co-ordinator.
4.Information about the expertise and training of staff in relation to children
and young people with special educational needs and about how specialist
expertise will be secured.
5.Information about how equipment and facilities to support children and
young people with special educational needs will be secured.
6.The role played by the parents of pupils with special educational needs.
7.Any arrangements made by the governing body or the proprietor relating
to the treatment of complaints from parents of pupils with special
educational needs concerning the provision made at the school.

16. Parental Engagement
Parents also have to be involved in;
• The Local Offer and local commissioning,
• The production and review of the new Education, Health and Care Plan,
• Interventions through the new Single Category of SEN where;
– schools must ensure that parents of children are fully
engaged, consulted and informed and agreement is reached on how the
child‟s needs will be met;
– ensure that the child or young person is fully engaged, consulted and
informed and agreement is reached on how their needs will be met;
– there should be a plan that focuses on what outcomes are expected
and the support that the school, college and any relevant agencies will
provided.

17. Achievement for all-Structured
conversations with parents
 3 hour long meetings per year
 Worked together with teachers
on a plan for their child
 Used positive experience of
parents who had attended to
try and engage parents who
had not attended
 Picked parents up
 School staff made home visit
 Held meetings at most
convenient time for parents
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18. Charter for parent and children's voice
Rotherham Charter for Parent and Children's Voice
• Consultation and focus groups with Parents and Children
• Charter and principles of transparency in decision making derived
directly from parents and children's experiences
• Developed collaboratively between the local authority and the
parents with support from parent partnership
Impact-Schools working towards the Charter award, parents
confidence increased through process of consultation and
implementation

19. Better Information that fits with what's on Offer
Durham–Confident Schools Confident Parents
• Resource Pack developed with parents
• Distributed to all schools
• Clarity about what's provided and statutory framework
• Professional development linked to what parents felt their children
most needed
Impact-increased parental confidence through clarity of expectations-
improved professional practice

20. Good Parental Involvement?
• Planning-Parental engagement must be planned for and
embedded in a whole school or service strategy.
• Leadership-Effective leadership of parental engagement is
essential to the success of programmes and strategies.
• Collaboration and engagement-Parental engagement requires
active collaboration with parents and should be pro-active rather
than reactive. It should be sensitive to the circumstances of all
families, recognise the contributions parents can make, and aim to
empower parents.
• Sustained improvement-A parental engagement strategy should
be the subject of on-going support, monitoring and development.
Goodhall, J. and Vorhaus. J. (2010) Review of Best Practice in Parental
Engagement. London. DfE.

21. WORKSHOPS

22. Questions for Workshop 1.
• What would improve your confidence in the services provided?‟
• What information would you like at each stage of your child or
young person‟s life? Discuss these and put your ideas on the
post it notes for the relevant age range or stage

24. Contact Details
Brian Lamb brian.publicaffairs@gmail.com

25. What works for children with
special educational needs or
disabilities?
presentation prepared by
Jean Gross CBE, 2013

27. It‟s a maze out there !
Local offer should say
what parents/carers
can expect schools to
do
What schools do
should be what works
But how do we know
what works?

28. • Real partnership with parents/carers
• „Intervention‟ programmes (some )…
• Peer support – children helping children
• Use of technology
The evidence on what works

29. • Alternative ways of communicating
• Social skills training
• Circle of friends and other forms of child to child support
• Social stories, Comic strip conversations
Example : Autism

30. • Circle of friends
• Small group work , for example on friendship skills or managing
angry feelings
• Parent groups like FAST (Families and Schools Together), The
Incredible Years, The Strengthening Families Programme for
Parents, Group teen Triple P
• Some mentoring schemes
• School-based counselling
Example : social, emotional or
behavioural needs

31. • Catch Up Numeracy
• Family Numeracy
• Numbers Count
• firstclass@number
• Numicon Closing the Gap and Numicon Intervention Programme
• Peer tutoring
Example : maths difficulties

32. • What works for dyslexia
www.interventionsforliteracy.org.uk
• What works for children with
speech, language and communication
difficulties
www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/wh
atworks
Useful websites

33. “We know that the educational achievement for
children with SEN is to low and the gap with
their peers to wide. This is a hangover of a
system, and a society, which did not place
enough value on achieving good outcomes for
disabled children and children with SEN”
Lamb Inquiry.

34. “THE CULTURE OF SCHOOLS IS STILL TO
FOCUS THE BEST TEACHERS ON THE
THOSE CHILDREN WITH HIGHEST
ABILITIES… HOWEVER WE ALSO NEED
THE BEST TEACHERS AND BETTER
TARGETED RESOURCES TO THOSE MOST
IN NEED”
Lamb Inquiry
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35. True or not true?
• The more face to face
therapy a child has, the
more progress they will
make
• The more 1-1 support a
child has from a teaching
assistant, the more
progress they will make

36. True or not true?
• The more face to face
therapy a child has, the
more progress they will
make
• The more 1-1 support a
child has from a teaching
assistant, the more
progress they will make
• Not always true

37. True or not true?
• The more face to face
therapy a child has, the
more progress they will
make
• The more 1-1 support a
child has from a teaching
assistant, the more
progress they will make
• Not always true
• Not always true

38. • 2003-8 period
• Examined effect of Teaching Assistant (TA)support on academic
progress of 8,200 pupils
• Observations of 70 pupils and over 100 TAs
• Data from 17,800 questionnaire responses and interviews with
nearly 600 school staff and pupils
DISS (Deployment and Impact of Support
Staff) research

39. • Pupils categorised by amount of TA support
• The more support they had, the less progress
they made
• No positive effects for TA support in any subject
(English/Maths/Science ) or any year
• Applied to children with and without SEN
• Not because those supported by TAs had SEN or were low
achievers to start with
What they found

40. Looked at effect on children‟s approach
to learning –confidence, motivation,
relationships with other children,
completing work, following instructions,
not distracted, not disruptive
Only found an effect in Year 9
What they found

41. How did teachers and TAs spend their time?
Children with SEN interact more with TA , less
with teacher
Interaction by type of
SEN
Teacher TA
No SEN 55% 27%
School Action 24% 32%
School Action Plus or
Statement
21% 41%

42. Other research
• When a TA is nearby,
children were more likely
to seek help and less
likely to work
independently
• Other children less likely
to interact with a child
when TA providing
support

43. „I’m in the bottom table group and
we can’t do anything by ourselves
so we always have to have an
adult working with us. ‘

44.  Pupils with statements had half as many interactions with their
classmates compared with other pupils
 Child‟s teacher rarely had as high a level of involvement in
planning and teaching statemented pupils as TAs
 TAs had the main responsibility for explaining and modifying
tasks set for the class by the teacher, even though they often
had little or no opportunity before lessons to meet or prepare
with the teacher.
„Making a Statement‟ research

45. • Statements should set out concrete teaching strategies
designed to meet carefully defined outcomes. "The specification
on the statement of a number of hours of TA support seemed to
get in the way of thinking through appropriate approaches for
pupils with pronounced learning difficulties in mainstream
primary schools".
„Making a Statement‟ research

46. Classroom and subject teaching
that is adapted to meet different
children‟s needs
Good advice for teachers from
SENCO and from specialist
teachers
What works – good strategies used in the
classroom

47. What works - helping children be
independent

48. What works- „An intervention, not a
lifestyle‟

49. • What‟s your
reaction?
• Pop it on a
post-it
• We‟ll come
back to this
after lunch

50. Lunch
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51. What was your reaction to the
information on „what works‟? Drawing
on that information and your
knowledge of your own situation,
what do you think has or will most
improve outcomes for your
child/children?
Workshop 2 - Task- think/pair/share

52. Two or three points from each table –
what works
This will help shape what should go
in the Local Offer
Feedback

53. Workshop 3 - Table top discussion
• How should the Local Offer be
presented? ( website, leaflet)
• What should we call the Local Offer?
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54. EXAMPLES OF SOME
APPROACHES

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59. Next Steps
• Complete a wide range of engagement with
other stakeholders
• REALLY engage partners
• Support schools and governors to develop
school level response
• Formal consultation online
• Upgrade website to portal status to make
Local Offer easily accessible
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