Children with special educational and complex needs - Guidance for Health and Wellbeing Boards

The Children and Families Act (CFA) 2014 introduces a new statutory requirement for local services to work together when providing care and support for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities. From September 2014 local authorities, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and education services will be expected to collaborate when assessing, commissioning and implementing care plans for children with SEN and disabilities.

Health and wellbeing boards (HWBs) are responsible for overseeing the implementation of the new requirement, ensuring that local services are fulfilling their role and that children are getting the care they need. In brief, the new SEN regime requires CCGs and local authorities to have arrangements in place to consider and agree the education, health and care provision reasonably required by these children and who is to provide the provision.

The Department of Health has published this document which provides guidance and advice for HWBs on how best to oversee the implementation of changes made by the Act.

Laxmi Patel, Education solicitor at Boyes Turner comments:

“CCGs already have an existing duty to provide health services under section 3 of the NHS Act 2006  which states that CCGs are to commission services to meet the needs of the population for which they are responsible, to a reasonable extent. The CFA 2014 drives the need even further. There is now a duty for CCGs to work together with education and social care to plan and anticipate provision required in their area.Each CCG will need to establish a clear and robust assurance process to ensure that the needs of children are being met.  CCGs also need to put in place arrangements to secure the provision of the health services agreed in the health element of the new Education, Health and Care plans. Where there is disagreement about what services should be included in the EHC plan,  CCGs and the local authority must have clear dispute resolution procedure. The problem with the CFA 2014 is that the dispute resolution procedure is limited for the health and social care element of their child’s Education, Health and Care plan. It is only the education part of the plan that can be appealed at the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal. Parents often tell us that there is no point in requesting more therapies for their child because they are told that there are simply not enough therapists in their area. The Guidance for Health and Wellbeing Boards points them to information and resources to improve their planning of provision. Theoretically, therefore, there should no longer be a problem about a lack of therapists…unless of course the real reason behind the lack of therapists is the lack of funding. We will need to allow the requirements of the CFA 2014 to sink in before we can judge whether or not the changes go far enough.”