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SEND Inspection Action Plans

The Milton Keynes Local Area SEND Inspection: 

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) visited Milton Keynes earlier this year to conduct an Area SEND Inspection.  

What is a SEND inspection? 

Five inspectors with specialisms in education, health and social care spent three weeks considering the experiences of children and young people who use SEND services delivered by Milton Keynes City Council (MKCC), the Bedfordshire Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board (BLMK ICB), schools and other education settings in the area, and health services provided by Central and North West London NHS Trust (CNWL). Thank you to all parents who responded to their surveys. 

The outcome of the inspection

In May, the inspection team released a report which outlined their findings. You can see the full report on the Ofsted website.  

They identified a number of areas of strength in SEND practice in Milton Keynes including: 

  • Ambitious leaders who know the area well and lead with a strong moral imperative 
  • A local commitment to early identification and intervention 
  • Active engagement with families and effective examples of co-production 
  • A broad and deep commitment to inclusion in our local schools, well supported by the local authority 
  • Suitable support for children unable to attend school and moving into the area 
  • Timely assessments and intervention from occupational therapy and physiotherapy, and effective speech and language therapy services for the early years 
  • Helpful support from mental health services through the ‘Single Point of Access’ . 

The overall outcome of the inspection was identified as ‘The local area partnership’s arrangements lead to inconsistent experiences and outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND)’. 

Alongside the areas of strength, the report identified 5 areas for improvement. These are: 

Strategic use of data 

The local area partnership needs to strengthen its strategic evaluation and oversight for children and young people with SEND. This includes the strategic use of data to understand children and young people’s needs and how this will inform the partnership’s work in the future. 

Multi-agency working to support identification, assessment & meeting need

The local area partnership should strengthen multi-agency working between education, health and social care. This is to ensure that children and young people’s needs are identified, assessed and met in a more efficient and timely manner. 

Gaps and delays in some health services

Health leaders should further address gaps and delays in some health services to improve early identification and support for children and young people with SEND. This includes the Healthy Child Programme, mental health and speech and language therapy (SALT). 

Quality and value of EHC plans

The local area partnership should improve the quality of EHC plans so that they are fully valued by all agencies to better drive the provision offered by practitioners across education, health and care. 

Coproduction and voice of children, young people and families

The local area partnership should ensure that the voice of children and young people and families is central to the EHC planning process, through improved co production to more widely influence the work of the partnership. 

Inspection Action Plan – MK Area SEND Partnership

The Milton Keynes Ofsted and CQC inspection of the local area partnership took place in Spring 2024. After an inspection report is published, Ofsted and the CQC require that the local area partnership updates their strategic plan based on the recommendations set out in the report.

We recently had our '6 month review' of our action plan with the Department for Education and NHS England, and we have updated our action plan.

The updated action plan reflects the progress so far, and outlines the remaining work that our partnership will do over the coming years to respond to the 5 areas for improvement. Please also keep up to date on the you said we did pages. Progress updates will be shared on the local offer twice a year, and the next will be expected during the summer holidays.

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