Solihull Council: A collaborative approach to early years SEND provision

The area special educational needs coordinators (Area SENCOs) at Solihull Council provide support and advice to settings who work with children, including nurseries, schools, childminders, private, voluntary, and independent providers, and more.  

The Area SENCOs support staff in settings to write effective education, health, and care plan (EHCP) applications. They support implementation of a graduated approach. This may include support to assess whether an EHCP application is needed or if a different level of support is more appropriate for a child, how to provide effective supporting evidence through high quality SEND support plans with clear smart targets, and how to write high quality applications. Resulting in the correct children being accepted for assessment.  

As well as training on EHCPs, the SENCOs also provide staff in settings wider training through online briefings and in-person meetings. More recently their development of in-setting ‘Area SENCO Shorts’, which are short sessions focused on a range of topics, including: 

The early years SEND team works across multiple different settings and collaborate with a range of different specialists, including educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, and more. The team believe that joining up with partners and working together is the most effective approach to early years SEND support. They engage in various forms of collaboration and multi-agency working, including:  

One of the key areas the early years team at Solihull focus on is the transition periods from settings, such as the move from nursery into primary school. They focus on ensuring that any EHCP plans or strategies that were in place in one setting are carried over to the next setting to ensure the child receives consistent and high-quality care. This remains the responsibility of the settings but the team help facilitate this. 

They run summer transitions events for staff from different settings to come together to discuss children who will be moving from one setting to another. Connecting these staff members allows them to build relationships and work together to understand a child’s needs and history. The early years team have started to run these events annually to promote collaboration and improve transition periods for children with SEND needs. Other agencies also attend to support these North/ South network events. 

The council made a conscious decision to not have a waiting list for referrals to prevent children from aging out of services by the time they get to the top. Rather than trying to see as many children as possible, they tightened the criteria to ensure those that the children with the most significant needs are seen. Children with developmental delays in three or more areas are prioritised. Support is prioritised according to need and dependent upon the numbers of children and settings needing support. 

When a child is referred and a strategy is put in place, they try to ensure that the child receives a monitoring visit [or call] once a term to monitor their progress and evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. They work closely with the setting to understand what’s going well, what could be improved, and try to unpack the underlying reasons for why the strategy has or has not been effective.  

They make sure to proactively keep track of each child on their case load, and they can successfully track children who have had an EHCP back to their early years setting to monitor their progress. If a child is referred for an EHCP needs assessment, the team investigate whether early years or Solihull Specialist Inclusion Support Service (SISS) has been involved to see if there are gaps in the Solihull approach.  

Early Years Inclusion Support Practitioner – 100 per cent of respondents said they found the support extremely useful  

“the team's support is invaluable to us as practitioners supporting children with SEND and us a setting with referral and processes” 

“Area SENCO is very supportive and makes herself available for advice and support” 

“massively appreciate the help, support and guidance. An open and honest service that provides reflection and ideas to support staff and children in each setting. Fantastic rapport with professionals”  

The sessions have been amazing and have given us as a family a way to communicate with our daughter the progress she has made throughout the 8 sessions is amazing. It’s gave us confidence as parents to be able to support A in developing her communication and speech through Makaton and waiting for eye contact. B was amazing with A, A can at times take a while to come round to strangers but from the first visit A was engaged and enjoyed her time spent with B. ….the sessions make such a positive impact in the home for both the child and parents. 

Further impact