Discussion with officers from London Borough of Havering, Learning & Achievement.
Minutes:
Officers would provide a paper on this issue to accompany the minutes. The new legislation framework in Social Care which commenced on 1st September, and combined early years, social care, schools and colleges was working closely to put in place Children’s and Young People’s provision from 0 – 25 years for children with Special Educational Needs and disabilities.
There were four strands:
1. Education: Education health plans put parents and young people at the heart of the decision making process. Parents and young people needed to be able to see that advice, guidance and decision making methods that met their needs were all in place.
It was important that everyone was aware of what was available within the ‘local offer’ of support to children, families, young people and carers, which included NELFT, leisure services and other available information. Officers would work to improve the accessibility of and information on the local offer that was available on the Havering website.
Any corporate body or organisation was subject to ‘open text response’ and needed to be aware that anyone could now review their services using this new method for review and information sharing.
The Council was keen to quality assure everything on the local offer, including the health offer. NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Institute), OFSTED and other partners were working with the Council on this.
Specialist services were not provided locally in Havering, but there were substantial links with pan-London specialist services.
2. Education Health & Care Plans: The Local Offer was being built into new care plans. It would take approximately two years to convert all of the current Statements over to Education Health and Care plans. The thresholds remained the same, but new processes including health, social care and education were also in the directory.
The conversion timetable was on-going, with a parallel system in place to accommodate all of the older formats and newer formats. At a rate of 100 conversions per month, the timescale was on course to be met. All 2, 3 and 4 year olds would get the new formats first. Those 16 and over may not receive new formats, as they would not be prioritised, as they will reach the upper age-limit at the deadline.
Joint commissioning was also being worked on. As there was one plan, there needed to be one process and one pulled budget for services for adults and children.
3. Personal Budgets: Parents and young people could receive the equivalent budget rather than the service that would be provided automatically by the borough (budget holding), or receive a nominal budget (to receive budgetary information only).
Officers were keen to find a way to get as many of these people back into the standard system as possible, as this would keep costs down with more people using the services, and provide a more inclusive service if all users trusted the service provided.
Personal budgets were too much work too many parents, who tend to avoid them as they required employing staff to fulfil the caring roles that would be provided as part of normal council and associated bodies’ duties.
4. Streamlined Services: This included the children’s disability team, and would now be known as the ‘Children and Adults with Disabilities Service’. Havering would be only the second Council nationally to combine services in this way.
A co-opted member pointed out health representatives occasionally failed to attend Statement meetings. Officers advised that although there were no particular issues, there were still limited resources. If however a number of parents sought to take up personal budgets, it would put the service under further resource pressure.
Offices felt that, whilst no one would be forced to take either option, personal budgets were not something that parents generally wanted.
There were different thresholds for Children’s and Adults personal budgets. One of the reasons for streamlining the services was not to change the statutory thresholds, but to transition between the two age groups in a much clearer and more transparent way.
Each personal budget case was awarded on its own merit, and the personal budget equated to the actual cost of what the authority would have spent on that individual for the specific care that they required.
The Chairmen of the Children & Learning and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees would meet to discuss future work plans in relation to children’s health.