You said: It’s not easy to understand the different types of transport that families can access, and who they are for; and the pick up/drop off expectations when transport is agreed is confusing.

We did: We worked with PACA MK and SENDIAS to write a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document that clearly explains transport types, who can access them and information about pick up/drop off. This was published in the holidays.

You said: PACA MK have raised concerns about communication between the transport team and families about transport processes, payments and other relevant information.

We did: We’ve organised a ‘task and finish group’ with PACA to discuss current barriers and suggest how we can improve communication between families and the transport team / providers. The first meeting was held in June 2024 and a follow up meeting will take place in September 2024. Regular information and updates have been included in the Local Offer Newsletter in 2023 – 2024 academic year.

You said: You told Inspectors via the survey about your experiences of SEND in Milton Keynes. 

We did: We are making plans to improve services in line with your feedback. 

You said: You told us it is difficult to understand all the services available to support neurodiverse children and young people. 

We did: PACA MK were commissioned to develop a guidebook written for parents by parents, which is available online or a paper copy can be requested. 

You said: Transition pathways for children with SEND moving into adult services are not clear. 

We are: We are coproducing a guide that explains the key steps and contacts.

You said: You wanted more activities for children and young people with EHCPs in the school holidays.

We did: We have arranged free activities over the summer holidays for children and young people with EHCPs

You said: Information on the SEND Strategy action plans 

We did: Public versions of the SEND strategy action plan were made available and shared on the Local Offer 

You said: Additional school places for children with ASC and more complex needs 

We did: These are being progressed and are currently projected to be delivered for September 2024.

You said: Parents said they wanted more support for emotional wellbeing including children and young people with autism.

We did: We have summarised the support available in Milton Keynes so that children and young people can access emotional wellbeing support appropriate to their needs. How you feel matters in Milton Keynes | Milton Keynes City Council (mksendlocaloffer.co.uk)

You said: You told us there is an inconsistent offer for children and young people with SEND in Milton Keynes. 

We are: Coproducing a document that outlines Ordinarily Available Provision, which will support schools and settings to identify and meet needs. This tool will be available in the autumn term. 

 

 

Below is a summary of all the actions which have been delivered in the 2023 – 2024 academic year, from across the SEND Strategy workstreams.

Specialist provision for complex needs

• We have created the School Place Planning Strategy Group who work together to monitor and review the need for additional specialist school places, recommend options for creating additional places, and oversee progress. This helps us to ensure that we can place children who need specialist provision local to home wherever possible. This group will continue to meet regularly to deliver new spaces in line with need.
• We have opened 72 additional specialist SEND school places for children with needs related to autistic spectrum condition in September 2024. We’ve done this by expanding some specialist provisions that were already open, and creating some new ones including within mainstream schools.
• We have reviewed the educational options available for children and young people with SEND who are post 16, and updated the information on the local offer to show what is available and to whom. This review has given us confidence that we have good options available for post-16 but we will continue to review this over time. 
• We have re-commissioned the Short Breaks activities, which has included going live with a new online voucher scheme. We’ve had some feedback that the roll-out had some bumps, and we’re currently looking at the uptake of the vouchers, the range of activities available, and a range of feedback from families to consider next steps. 
• We have developed an approach to monitoring packages of support delivered via Education Other Than At School (EOTAS) agreements so that we can be confident that provision we put in place has all of the necessary checks and is delivering good quality. 

Autism and co-occurring differences

• We have reviewed the support that is on offer for parents in the area from our specialist teaching team and via local parent programmes, and the outcomes have informed the specialist teacher training programme for 2024 – 2025 and the offer that we implement through the Partners in Inclusion for Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme. More details can be found on the PACA website - Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) - PACA MK
• We have reviewed the information we have available on our Local Offer website for autism, and worked with other local authorities who are part of the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes health umbrella to enable some ‘peer support’. We’ve identified the need to update some of our links and content which will happen throughout the Autumn term. 
• PACA MK have produced and published a resource for families to support with the diagnostic pathways and support for neurodiversity called “Supporting Your Neurodiverse Child”.

Emotional wellbeing and mental health

• Our children's centres are delivering the Five to Thrive programme and Brilliant Babies programme to promote positive interaction and attachment, emotional wellbeing and resilience in the early years. Five to Thrive also supports management of behaviour and emotions and understanding the impact of trauma.
• Support and guidance for Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA) has been produced and published, and training has been made delivered in schools. Schools have fed back that the training and guidance will help the to support children who are unable to attend school for emotional health reasons. We’ll be monitoring the impacts on attendance and emotional resilience over the next year. 
• Parents reported concerns that local mental health services were not meeting the needs of those with anxiety and autism. In response to this feedback, we have made some changes to an intervention called “Chill Kids” so that it better supports this group of young people, and the feedback from those families who have accessed this has been very positive. 
• We have commissioned services from Service Six and Relate to offer emotional wellbeing support in the community.
• Parents shared concerns that there was a gap in support for LGBTQ+ in school and with peers. In response to this, Q-Alliance Hub has been established to provide support for this group of young people. 
• We have commissioned the MIND Crisis sanctuary to run 7 days a week, to provide responsive support at the right time. Over 120 young people accessed the Sanctuary in its first 3 months, and 1 in 5 of these reported that they would have gone to A&E if this service had been unavailable. Most of the children and young people who have accessed the service have had their needs met in the Sanctuary support without needing onward referrals.
• We’ve reviewed the guidelines for placement at Bridge West (alternative provision for children unable to attend school for medical reasons) to ensure that it’s up to date and meets the needs of our area. 

Preparing for adulthood and transitions

• We have introduced the Planning Live programme, aimed at young people who are likely to need additional support from social care into adulthood. This programme is offered by the council in partnership with Talkback, a learning disability and autism charity and with schools such as Slated Row and MK College.
• Young people with complex health needs are now supported through transition by a dedicated Transition Nurse who links with the Preparing for Adulthood social care panel and complex needs pathway nurse lead at Milton Keynes University Hospital. This ensures that the health needs of children and young people with complex health needs are identified and planned for.
• New monthly joint meetings between adults, childrens, education and health called the ‘transition panel’ takes place every month, ensuring that there is a multi-agency commitment to assist children in a timely manner in receiving the correct support when transitioning between from children’s services to adults.  On average 10 young peoples plans are discussed at each forum and next steps are agreed. 
• We’ve looked at the quality of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) focusing specifically on how well they prepare young people for adulthood. We were really pleased to see that young people's voices were strongly present in plans, but we also noted that annual health checks were not mentioned when we would expect them to be, and actions / outcomes relating to PfA could be more specific. As a result we will develop preparing for adulthood training for EHCPs specifically which will be delivered in the 2024 – 2025 academic year. A further PfA audit will take place in the summer of 2025. 
• We have improved the referral process from children’s to adult’s social care teams, ensuring that assessments are completed before their 18th birthday so that smooth transitions and continuous care are in place. Our preparing for adulthood team can also work with people until 25 years of age to support ongoing transitions.
• We have coproduced a Preparing for Adulthood Strategy and action plan, which we will be publishing shortly. 

Inclusion (Identifying needs):

• We have coproduced a new document to support identification of special educational needs, and approaches to meeting need at a range of ages and for the four areas of need.  We are calling this the Ordinarily Available Provision Toolkit. This is a significant piece of work and provides a Milton Keynes toolkit for all schools to support consistent identification of need and consistent approaches to meeting need at SEND support and for those with an EHCP. This will help to ensure that all schools in our area are working to a shared understanding of the Graduated Response. This will be shared on the Local Offer website this term.
• The SEND Team held planning meetings during the summer term with primary/infant schools who had a number of children with complex needs moving into school from their early years setting in September 2024, to ensure that they were able to transition to full time reception successfully.
• Guidance on the identification of literacy needs including dyslexia has been written and will be launched in September, alongside the Ordinarily Available Provision document. 

Inclusion (Meeting needs):

• We have created a new Practitioner post within the SEND team who supports the placement and planning processes for children who move into the area from outside of Milton Keynes. We’ve also updated the ‘new to area’ process and through this work we’re ensuring that children receive the education they are entitled to when they move in, that they’re in appropriate schools, and that their transition is well considered. 
• Information to support key stage transitions has been updated on the SEND Local Offer Website Starting or changing school and transition support | Milton Keynes City Council (mksendlocaloffer.co.uk)
• The centralised training offer for schools in the 2024 – 2025 academic year includes specific training for secondary schools across the four areas of need, in line with feedback from the local area and insight from data about childrens progress and achievements in school. 

October 2023

You said:

You wanted additional specialist school places for SEMH, Communication, and complex autism needs from September 2023

We did:

Additional places have been created from September 2023 at Romans Field School (SEMH), Stephenson Academy (SEMH), St Pauls Catholic School (Communication), The Walnuts School (Complex Autism). 

You said:

In the BeeWell emotional well being survey, young people wanted support for LGBTQ+ issues and a place to meet.

We did:

MKCC has funded YIS Q Hub drop-in support

You said:

Parents asked for information on the ADHD assessment and medication pathway.

We did:

We have added information to the SEND Local Offer.

You said:

Parents of children and young people with SEND report that clarity around the assessment and review process for EHCPs needs to made clearer. 

We did:

New guidelines have been co-produced and are available online for all to access on the SEND Local Offer.

You said:

Clarity regarding commissioning of Education Other Than At School (EOTAS). 

We did: 

We have published a policy that is available on the SEND Local Offer. 

You Said: 

Parents of young people with complex medical needs wanted someone to coordinate care and medical provision when their young person left special school provision.

We did:

A transitions Nurse post was created in the Complex Needs Nursing Team to provide this support

You said:

It’s difficult to find information on services and support as it’s not all in one place

We did:

An Autism directory of services has been co-produced to bring information together and makes for easy reference

 

Feedback from parents and carers:

You said

Parents asked for a calendar of SEND specific events that are happening in Milton Keynes, so that all the information is in a central place.

We did

When we built our microsite for the SEND Local Offer, we included a calendar of events at the bottom of our homepage. Parents have shared that they have found this a supportive tool.

You said

More LGBTQ+ support for young people

We did

We have commissioned YIS to work in collaboration with Q: alliance to provide weekly drop-ins during term time only and this was posted on the LO and is in the Mental Health Hub of the LO

You said

Better communication from CAMHS re waiting times.

We did

Information went out to families who are on the waiting list over the summer period and this information has also been put in the Mental Health Hub on the Local Offer.

You said: "The Local Offer is very difficult to navigate. I cannot find anything suitable for my child, who is 14 years old and severe end of autism."

We did: We discussed the navigation of the Local Offer in our Local Offer working groups. A new website went live went Milton Keynes Council migrated to a new website. This gave the team the opportunity to restructure the site and ensure that the majority of information could be found within three clicks. We have since moved to a Local Offer hub site where new headings where agreed in the Local Offer working group following feedback. We hope this makes the site easier to navigate. We have added a new 'autism' page and a 'leisure and things to do' page.

You said: "I was not able to find anything for sports and leisure activities, listed on SEND Local Offer."

We did: We now have a 'leisure and things to do' page, as well as a 'your free time' page for young people on our Local Offer. We are also sharing sports and leisure activities on our Facebook page regularly. 

You said: More information about post 16 options for young people

We did: We have updated all of our post 16 information on the Local Offer. We also hosted a Post 16 provision workshop at the 2023 SEND Information Day.

 

Feedback from young people:

You said: "Mental health having it’s own heading"

We did: The Local Offer team have created a mental health and wellbeing page and have been working closely with health professionals to have relevant and useful information available. The Local Offer team got feedback from young people at a focus group to find out what sort of mental health and wellbeing information they would feel is useful.

You said: "Images alongside the headings would make the pages better"

We did: Ensured all pages were created as 'tiles' in order to have images alongside each heading. Previously there were only images on the home page.

 

Feedback from professionals:

You said: "The Local Offer is much easier to use and navigate now that its had its revamp. There is lots of good stuff on there and its easier to find."

Feedback from parents and carers

You said: You wanted to learn more about the sensory needs your child or young person may have.

We did: We coproduced a range of information, videos and resources to help you with this, which can be found here.

You said: "We do not know about local offer."

We did: The SEND Local Offer team have created and shared promotional material for the Local Offer website which has been sent to local schools and libraries. The Local Offer team have been attending events such as the SEND information day and SEND parent and carer drop ins to try and share the Local Offer, what it is and the support available. We are sharing updates about the Local Offer both in our SEND Newsletter and our Facebook.

You said: Parents of children experiencing EBSA felt alone in their situation and didn’t know where to go for support.

We did: We have developed two EBSA guidance documents for schools, which may be of use to parents whilst the parent guidance is currently being developed. We know how an EBSA webpage on the Educational Pyschologist pages, and offer EBSA parent/carer workshops throughout the year

.

Feedback from young people

You said: We don't use Facebook, another social media platform would be better for us to use

We did: We spoke to a focus group of young people with SEND who provided valuable feedback, from there an Instagram page was created for Milton Keynes Local Offer. The plan for the Instagram page will be to coproduce this with young people and continue gathering their thoughts and feedback.

 

Feedback from professionals

You said: It would be useful to have information about the process of transitioning between children to adults social care.

We did: We worked with social care colleagues to produce information about the transition process between children to adults social care.

You said: Teachers and SENCos have little involvement with Educational Psychologyst s.

We did: We created our Psychological Consultation Service, which is a conversation between a psychologist and teacher/SENCo who both bring their expertise equally.  It involves joint exploration of a question, concern or issue using psychological frameworks, to open up the possibilities and options for change.