A journey to a journey – transformation of Home to School Travel
A journey to a journey – transformation of Home to School
Widening the lens through which our clients begin to tackle the challenge.
Guest blogpost from Pauline Melvin-Anderson OBE, Director of Learning, Inclusion and Skills, Derby City Council
Last week I was pleased to be asked to share Derby’s journey in relation to Early Intervention in SEND, at an IMPOWER Shared Learning Event. Over the last few years, Derby has been working to establish a new vision for our children with SEND: ‘Living my best life’. Like many local areas, we’re facing rising demand and budget pressures, and it’s a priority for us to make sure we – ‘the system’ – are seeing and supporting need as early as possible to avoid escalation.
Through the work we’re doing with IMPOWER we have made strides in the development of our early intervention offer, including setting up the Derby SEND Advice Line – ‘Derby SAL’.
Our diagnostic activity showed really clearly that we could do more to support our settings, bringing people together to make sense of the system – from improving the graduated approach, Local Offer and education, health and care plans (EHCPs). We are a year into our journey and, with just two members of staff, Derby Sal has:
Here are some of the key themes that I pulled out from our learning and discussion at the event:
Our discussion showed that early intervention in SEND can take many simple or innovative forms. One of my questions is: how do we support the early intervention and the graduated approach without creating new dependencies, expectations or demand in the system? I believe incorporating these three themes will support us to avoid dependencies and allow us to continue re-investing in the system to improve outcomes for our children and young people with SEND.