Liz Mills, newly appointed Director of Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture, is putting together a proposal to take to Surrey CC Cabinet, which will set out the reasons why: budget cuts and savings alone will not stop the spiralling costs of providing SEND services reducing spend across the board will not allow the crucial improvements needed to the quality of SEND services and the resulting poor experience for families an Invest to Save model is necessary to stop childre

The Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, spoke to the Association of Directors of Children's Services conference on Thursday 5 July in Manchester saying, ‘SEND is a huge priority for my department – and we’ll be saying more about all of this in the coming months.’ You can read the full speech at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/education-secretary-makes-inaugural-speech-to-childrens-services-sector He highlighted areas of focus as: Making mainstream schools

By the time we resume our main activities in early September there is about 10 weeks to Council approval date of the ‘Vision for Surrey 2030’, the draft 2019/20 budget and plan, and the new longer look 5+ years plan in November, 3 months earlier than previous years – see support dates below through to final approval in February 2019: Council meeting - February 2019 – final approval Council meeting – 13 Nov (previous meeting 9 Oct) – draft approval Cabinet – 30 Oct (previous

Surrey County Council created and approved at full Council on 22 May a draft - ‘Developing a Vision for Surrey in 2030’. The vision is built around shaping places and serving communities, with partnership working between county council, local councils, clinical commissioning groups and voluntary sector organisations to meet the needs identified by local people, at a local level. Seven transformation themes are identified: Special Educational Needs & Disabilities Early Help, P

Joanna Killian started work as the Surrey County Council (CC) CEO at the start of April but had already been meeting with county council and local council leaders prior to that. She was previously CEO of Essex CC, achieving a remarkable turnaround on the quality and financial viability of services. A new Executive Director for Children, Family and Learning, Dave Hill, has been in place since the end of April. He brings considerable experience and successful change management

Recognising the scale of the financial, organisational and performance challenges, Surrey CC has embarked on a very major transformation programme ranging from changes in governance, to organisation and personnel changes to much deeper and more integrated partnership working. Building on successful initiatives with clinical commissioning groups, police and local councils, much attention is being focused on identifying children, young people and families support needs at a muc

When the 2018/9 budget and plan was passed by SCC in February, with a high headline of efficiency savings of ca £25m on Schools and SEND there was understandable anxiety, frustration and anger felt by many parents who felt that services to their children and others were going to be quickly affected. Four families, supported by hundreds of others through crowd-funding, sought a Judicial Review of the budget decision and were granted leave to do so, with a High Court hearing du

On 6 February full County Council approved by a large majority a 2018/19 and Medium-Term Plan (MTP) for 2018-2021, highlighting significant financial and programme challenges. David Hodges, the Leader said, ‘We are facing the most difficult financial challenge in our history’. The Finance Director stated in her report ‘the combination of the need to deliver, again, a significant in-year savings and service reduction, manage down service demands whilst developing a robust, wid

Progress on Surrey SEND Written Statement of Action In December 2017, the then Minister covering SEND, Robert Goodwill, sent a letter to Surrey CC and health partners about progress made against the Written Statement of Action (WSA) agreed in mid- 2017 after the October 2016 Ofsted/ CQC inspection of SEND services. While commending progress made in some areas, particularly in transferring Statements across to ECH plans, he asked for monitoring to be extended into 2018, with a

Dave Hill, the new Executive Director of Children's Services, shares his plans to improve support for children with additional needs in Surrey in his open letter to Surrey families here: “Hello, I am delighted to be able to say something about the vision for SEND services in Surrey, my name is Dave Hill and I am the recently arrived Executive Director of Children’s Services. There is much to do and we must do better for our children, young people and their families. I plan