Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 16 September 2025, 7:30pm

Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 16th September 2025 at 7:30pm

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1 Declarations of Interest

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2 Minutes, 25th June 2025

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3 Drivers of EHCPs and the experiences of young people and professionals throughout the process (Paper No. 25-301)

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4 Back to School 2025 Programme (Paper No. 25-302)

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5 Work Programme Report (Paper No. 25-318)

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4 Back to School 2025 Programme (Paper No. 25-302)

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5 Work Programme Report (Paper No. 25-318)

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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Welcome to this overview and scrutiny committee, children's overview and scrutiny committee

this evening.

My name is Councillor Sheila Boswell and I am the chair of the children's overview and

scrutiny committee.

I'm going to call everybody's names and if you can just say that you are present and

here.

starting with Councillor Annan who we have apologies from this evening

Councillor Burchill good evening thank you

Councillor Crivelli Councillor Davies good evening

Councillor Dobras good evening Councillor Jeffery good evening

Councillor Osbourne.

Yes, hi everybody, I'm here.

Councillor Owens.

Good evening.

Councillor Sweet.

Hello.

Thank you very much, committee.

On this committee we also have a number of co -opted members,

so I would also like to welcome Ms Nabila Haroon and Mr Anthony Langdon,

who are our parent governor representatives.

And we also have with us this evening Mrs. Irene Wolfson -Helm

from the Southwark Diocese Board of Education, Church of England.

Good evening.

Sam Gower, who represents the Catholic Diocese,

is unable to join us this evening.

We have apologies from her.

We have a number of offices present, but they'll introduce themselves

as we go along and when they address the committee.

So before we get started, we have with us

our cabinet member for children, Judy Gasser,

and Judy would just like to briefly address the committee.

Yes, thank you very much, good evening,

thank you very much, Chair.

I just want to take a moment just to talk about

the devastating impact of the fire at Fox House,

and I think probably everybody here knows about it,

in case you don't, there was an awful fire

in one of our blocks in Battersea.

Thankfully, thank God, everybody got out safely.

So that's one piece of good news,

but still the result is devastating

because we think probably they've lost everything.

They can't go back in the moment to cheque,

but it's really not looking good.

It looks like they've got nothing more

than the clothes they stand up in,

which is a terrible situation.

We had 109 people who had to leave their homes,

and that included 39 children and young people,

age between naught and 18. You know, we feel for them in this awful time and

we're doing everything we can to support them.

And it's difficult to even start to think about how you navigate these

circumstances. But I have to say I'm really proud of the response of the

community of our school leaders, of the emergency services and our council

officers to really step up and do what was needed to keep the family safe and

to help them start to rebuild after such an awful and life -changing incident.

I particularly want to thank Anna Popovici, who led the executive directors and a team

of officers from across the council, and our own children's services officers who spent

many, many hours in York Gardens Library offering support, two of my council colleagues as well

were there overnight offering food and empathy.

You know, we've got so many people to be proud of.

But I just wanted to have, say, amidst all this devastation, there were actually some

really moving moments that people shared with me. And it's amazing what people do. You

know, there's a teacher from a local school who lived in the block, and she went around

knocking on every door, you know, putting her own safety risks to get other people out.

I think that's so brave. You know, there was a young child who first spotted the fire

from a nearby building and alerted their parents and they alerted the fire brigade. You know,

thank God for that young child.

You know, our incredible firefighters,

you know, we don't always think about the toll on them,

but two of them were injured.

And also some of them were seen quietly crying

by their vehicle.

I mean, the toll on our firefighters is huge,

like physically and emotionally,

and I really want to thank them as well.

And just some amazing acts of kindness.

There was some residents, you know, everybody's homeless.

We've had to rehouse everybody in temporary accommodation,

but some residents were saying,

don't worry about me so much at the moment,

You've got to focus on the families, and that's an amazing thing to say.

And also like the generosity of the Wandsworth residents.

You know, so many people have offered money, and we have a way of offering of people donating

through our mayor of Wandsworth charity, and that's the best and most efficient way

of the money reaching those families.

And thank you very much to everybody that's thought about that and has donated.

It's wonderful.

So just thank you to everybody that's been helping and to those families and residents.

We're going to do everything we can to get you re -homed as soon as humanly possible.

That's it, thank you.

Thank you, Judy, for that.

And I'm sure that whole committee joins Judy in those words and

thanking our officers and the whole community for what they've done.

So welcome everyone to the Children's Overview Inscrution Committee this evening.

I just got a few remarks.

So to begin by something really happier,

which is celebrating the achievements of our young people in Wandsworth on results day,

GCSE A levels.

It was really a remarkable success and showcases the hard work and dedication

of all our students, teachers and families.

And the pupils, they've really excelled in their exams,

achieving top grades and setting new records.

And this is really a testament to their resilience

and determination because obviously they're the children

who still would have gone through COVID

and had their education disrupted.

And I'm sure the committee joins with me

in being proud in each and every one of them.

And as we do our work here this evening and other committees going forward,

that we support and encourage all our young achievers as they go on their journey.

I also want to acknowledge that this is the first time at the Children's Crucifixion Committee

we have an agenda item that is the result of a cross -party task and finish group.

This is following the Democracy Review, and it's a different way of doing scrutiny,

and this particular Task and Finish group is already underway.

Since our last committee, a range of topics were put forward by the minority party

and the majority party of what we might like to take a deep dive into and look at closer.

And it was agreed that the first paper that we've got this evening,

that that would be the education, health and care plans and the incredible rise in them nationally and in Wandsworth as well.

And that will be something that we would have a task and finish group on, so that has begun.

And the other task and finish group we'll have will be on violence against women and girls.

and that will be reporting at the November OSC.

This week actually is National Inclusion Week,

and that celebrates inclusion and diversity,

so I think it's probably very relevant

after the events over the weekend in central London

and generally what's happening.

So this borough definitely, definitely strives

to be inclusive.

The June committee focused heavily on budgets and finances and if you remember we particularly

looked at the dedicated schools grant.

And actually the task and finishes groups work has a clear link to those prior conversations

and if you remember at the end of that committee I did say we will be returning to this very

very important topic so that we can assure children and young people in Wandsworth get

the support they need, but we also need to manage our budget sustainably, which is very,

very important.

We'll also be discussing the Back to School 25 programme.

We have a paper on that.

And then lastly, we have a paper dedicated to Scrutiny at Wandsworth, and it's just setting

out the work programme and how that will be going forward.

We will have that paper every OSC for a while until we all get used to the new form of scrutiny.

Gender item one, declarations of interest.

Any declarations of interest?

1 Declarations of Interest

No.

Thank you.

Minutes.

2 Minutes, 25th June 2025

Are the minutes agreed?

Yes.

Thank you.

3 Drivers of EHCPs and the experiences of young people and professionals throughout the process (Paper No. 25-301)

So I'm pleased to introduce the next item, which focuses on the critical work of our

first Task and Finish group, exploring the drivers between education, health and care

plans, and the lived experiences of young people and professionals.

And this is such an immensely important issue.

And I'm very pleased that we're now going to be able to spend a good period of time

in this discussion.

You'll notice we've only got three agenda items here at committee, which is far fewer

than we've had previously.

So I am going to hand over to Councillor Rex Osborn, who is the chair of the Task and Finish

group on AHCPs.

Thank you, Chair.

And let me start by saying thank you to those who have participated so far in the activity

of this task and finish group, namely Ms. Haroon and Mrs. Wolfenholm, and in no special

order, Councillor Burchill, Councillor Sweet, Councillor Jaffray, and Councillor Boswell

herself in a number of very interesting, very important discussions that have taken place so far.

And I think the first thing to say is to talk about the objectives of the task and finish group and

its purpose of identifying the challenges faced by the council

in the provision and the policy and the funding for

for education, health, and care plans, the EHCPs,

and for special educational needs and disabilities, SEND.

Because as we are forced to note, the system is under great strain at the moment.

There is rising demand.

there is increasing complexity in the needs of the children concerned and mounting financial pressure.

There are escalating costs and legal pressures around the placements and provision in this work.

But it also has to be noted that at the very heart of our examination of this subject is,

first of all, the lived experience of the children we care for.

Plus the concerns and priorities of the families around those children and their need for clarity

and transparency in what we do, among many other requirements.

Plus, the expert views of the professionals who have to navigate the education, health

and care needs assessments, and so many other elements of this process, in what is sometimes

a fragmented system.

We are looking for solutions though, and we shall make recommendations when we come to

the finish part of this process.

At the moment we have made a start, eight parents only so far, for example.

And it would be premature to propose anything categorical just yet.

So far what we have is broad outline pathways for a way forward.

It's clear that we need to think about early intervention in the diagnostic and in the

diagnostic process.

We need to think about maybe contact groups for parents and others.

Coffee mornings and drop in sessions, for example.

We need to look at the transition support that we're providing, for example, from primary to secondary schooling.

And the training of school staff.

We need to look at the integration and coordination,

including areas like education, health, social care,

communications, and bringing in the voluntary sector as much as we possibly can.

And very, very important indeed, we need to look at inclusivity in our schools,

support in our schools for children who face problems with anxiety and trauma and would

best be engaged with at an early stage in the schools that we're running.

So really having just made a start, we need to think about next steps.

And the next steps therefore must include more engagement and discussion with the schools.

We're recognising the important work that they're already doing.

But we need to see what more can be done in our schools and

And what we can be doing to make sure our schools and

teachers are more equipped and more skilled in dealing with the children concerned.

We need to explore more of the needs and areas of the parents.

And we need to be talking to the children and young people.

So, winding up my remarks, let me just note one piece of recent data that we are faced

with at the moment.

There has been a 69 percent increase nationally in EHCPs for under fives in the period 2019

to 2023.

And everybody knows that the system is not fit for purpose to deal with that.

Radical change is much needed and radical change is indeed on the horizon.

We know that the government is looking at it at the moment.

We probably need policy reform, funding adjustments.

We probably need to be addressing parental concerns in a more in -depth way.

There are a number of areas that we are looking for decisions from the government and that

we want to look at.

But I think the final thing to say on all this is we will always do what we can here

in Wandsworth with the focus on and deploy funds and so on with the focus on the children

who are vulnerable in our borough.

And we will always take steps.

But we also have to face the fact that this is a national problem.

We are facing the impact in Wandsworth.

But there is not a Wandsworth solution.

We will do everything we can in Wandsworth, but the only solution is a national solution.

Now we could sit back as a bar out and wring our hands and say dear, oh dear, oh dear,

it's a national problem, nothing we could do.

That's not what we're going to do.

We have, that is not the way Wandsworth works.

We have one of the most expert and ahead of the game children's directorates in the business.

And we are going to use the expertise that we have locally in Wandsworth to be an exemplar borough in this process.

to be cutting edge in this process,

in tandem with whatever it is the government comes up with,

so that we can make the absolute best,

most significant contribution we can

to whatever the final solution is going to be

as a Wandsworth borough.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Thank you, Rex.

So now we can move to questions.

And we have officers in the room as well

who will be able to answer technical questions.

And Rex will take questions on the task of finish group.

Councillor Sweet.

Thank you, Chairman.

And Chairman, as this is my first time

on the committee with you, I just wanted to clarify.

Are you taking questions and comments at the same time?

Yes.

Sorry, maybe I should have made this clearer.

So this is a first for us.

This is task of finish group.

This is, you know, we want this to be an open discussion.

We want to draw everything out that we can.

So it's not so formal in that you ask a question

and then I choose who to direct it to.

It's, the purpose of it is more of discussion.

I don't know if it's going to work,

but we're going to try.

Okay.

Fire away.

Good, well let's absolutely try that.

I think the first thing to say is,

I thought Councillor Osborn's comments were very sensible and wise and I think there's

a lot that we would agree with about the process and the next steps.

And perhaps in the discussion we can just try to finesse that a bit.

I entirely agree particularly with what Councillor Osborn has said about the importance of distinguishing

between national trends versus what's going on here in Wandsworth.

And on the conservative side, we would like to focus primarily on the process that families

and young people go through in Wandsworth, where although there may be national trends,

really I think we can make an impact on what happens locally.

I know colleagues will have lots of comments, but I wanted to actually start us on page

page 25, which is the complaints page. And complaints about the process are surely a

very important part of producing a practical and helpful task and finish outcome. And I

do think that we need a lot more information about complaints in the next stage of this

process.

I did say in the first of the two task and finish meetings

that I thought this page was not really

adequate for us to scrutinise.

And if you compare it with the complements page, where

there is a lot of information, I felt it was,

I'm sure this was not the intended impact,

but it seems a bit like complaints

are being hidden from us.

There's a summary of the complaints,

whereas on the complements, there's

of verbatim comments from parents and people going through the process.

So I would really like to see in the next stage of the process more information about

the formal complaints that have been made, but just as important as that are people that

have not had a satisfactory experience but have not actually made a formal complaint.

And that's where I think Councillor Osborne's point about having only heard from eight people

involved in the process is really important.

So I'd love to hear from officers how we can get more detail.

Perhaps we could view some of these complaints as a committee, not in public, but because

I'm sure they're very sensitive, so that we can get much closer to the negative experiences

that some people are having.

To move on to what we do have on the complaints page, there is some information here where

I think that there's not really explanation

of what really happened.

So on the annual review process,

it says over the past six months,

the service has reviewed and refined

all processes and procedures.

I'd love to know, perhaps we could hear this tonight,

what is that review, what processes and procedures

have been refined?

Should I stop there?

Yeah, thank you very much, Councillor Sweet.

Councillor Osborn, do you want to answer that initially

And then to officers on the direct detail question.

Yes, I mean it strikes me as valid to try and beef up what we've got in the way of complaints.

I do have some caveats on that.

I note what you say about the need for a confidential session and looking at some of this.

We do have to be careful with some of the complaints in case individuals are named or highlighted or something like that.

And we do need to keep that handled in the correct sort of way.

But otherwise, if what you're saying is perhaps an adjustment on the balance between the emphasis,

compliments and complaints, assuming we do have at least some confidential discussion,

then perhaps some redressment of the balance is what you're looking for.

Is that fair?

Thank you for the response.

I think that's a great response.

It's not so much about the balance for me.

It's that, as it stands, we haven't seen complaints.

All we have is a one -page summary, which

has been written by officers.

So I think it is fair, except those caveats,

that we should actually see some of the unfortunate experiences.

and I recognise it's a minority, that if we're to improve the process, we need to know what's

not going well as well as what's going well.

Yes, I think we would all second that.

That's really important.

Did you want to come back, Rex?

I think Lisa would like to come in.

As long as my caveats are understood, I think, yes, a little bit more on the complaints.

I think that's okay, yeah.

Ms Wommerly.

Thank you.

And I think obviously we've taken some of this information from what will be coming in,

I think, a November committee report actually fully on the corporate complaints that have been lodged.

And there's more detail in there, but we're not at liberty to share that yet, but that will be coming.

I think for me the main thing is, this is not about hiding anything,

Because actually, and I'm sure Deb will come in, we take all of the learning from every single complaint that comes in.

So whoever actually writes the complaint response, and I think there's got to be that balance between

a parent will make a complaint, but there are two sides to that which has to be acknowledged.

And I think it's really important to look at potentially when the report comes out,

the number that are upheld, partially upheld, not upheld, etc., and I think that's important.

The one thing I would say that we have seen over time is that previously we had complaints from parents that did cite the quality of engagement,

the communication of the service, timeliness of responses.

Those aren't the types of complaints we get anymore.

The complaints that come in, and some of them actually, and we've done some training with the complaints team about what should be accepted as a complaint.

Because some of them have a different route of redress.

So for example, they should be going through the appeals process because it's around not agreeing with an outcome or

a decision as opposed to the quality of support or communication with the service.

We also recognise that a lot of those complaints are around lack of

specialist provision being put in place and that is around therapies.

And we know again that that is a national issue that we are seeing.

So those, as I said, the sort of shift of the types of complaints that are coming in

are very, very different now compared to what they were maybe three or four years ago.

But there will be more detail once that corporate complaints report is available in November.

So you will have that detail then.

Deb, so I don't know if there's anything more you want to.

No, Deborah Johnson, Assistant Director, SEND and Inclusion.

Just to address the point around annual reviews, the key element around annual reviews is they're

very tight statutory time scales that are linked to those.

So once an annual review meeting has taken place,

the school will have two weeks in which to get the paperwork

to the local authority.

The local authority then have two weeks

in which to make a decision.

One of the things that we've tightened up on,

and we've done that through purchasing a new IT system,

is actually recording when we don't receive the paperwork

on time from the schools, which then impacts

on our time scales.

So we're starting to address that now very closely

with the schools that are not getting the paperwork in to us on time.

Sometimes that can only be a couple of weeks, but as soon as it goes over that time scale,

then that means that we're in breach of the time scale and the local authority are held

accountable to that.

So we don't get complaints per se in relation to the annual review per se, but around the

time scales.

So we've started to monitor those very carefully.

But also by introducing the new IT system that we have, we're now starting to record

very carefully where there are good or positive or poor outcomes for children.

So we're starting to pick that up with schools where the annual review is indicating the child isn't making the required progress.

So we're doing a lot of work in that area to reduce any complaints in relation to annual reviews.

Thank you very much.

I think we've got Councillor Owens and then Councillor Davies with questions.

Thank you.

Just picking up on what Councillor Sweet was talking about, and that has been very clear.

I suppose me and my ward, I have seven schools, four of which are state, three are private,

and obviously there are quite a few children on EHCPs.

And I know of several cases, because I've fed them through to officers, where perhaps

they don't come under the complaint as such, because they're not necessarily about the

or they're not necessarily about agreeing with decisions or communications.

But they are certainly problems that are with the schools, and I think that's the piece that we are missing here.

That if I actually know personally, and personally know about half a dozen children on EHCPs and

the issues that they have with the individual schools because the plan was initially for say tutoring, for catch up for this and that.

And then it becomes about the money going into the general pot for smaller class sizes,

which they happen to be in because they happen to be in those smaller class sizes.

But that wasn't necessarily what it was set up for.

I think that would give us a bit more of a flavour of where the problems lie.

Because obviously the problem tends to be more with the school than it does with the

fact that the process has taken as long as it has.

But thank you.

I do have a couple of other questions.

But one of them was related to the clusters.

I couldn't understand why, for example, John Archer is in the Roehampton cluster, when

it's actually a Battersea school.

And one of the things that I would think would be fascinating for us, unfortunately I've

not been able to partake so far, is that when you look at the schools with the problems

with their reserves and you look at the schools with obviously the numbers, the percentages

and number on the roll that they're requesting in the HCP, what would be interesting to see

is where they all feed and where they all end up.

Because there's obviously a bunch of schools that feed into other schools that seem to have problems, and they both seem to have problems on their reserves.

So that sort of thing would be quite useful.

And final point is just half of the children on special educational needs of which there are apparently over 6 ,000 in the borough are on EHCPs, if that's right.

I'd love to see the breakdown of the special educational needs of the 6 ,100.

Because what are they?

I know you're talking about speech and language.

But I would be really curious just to see what that breakdown is.

Thank you.

Ms. Mirelli, do you want to come back to answer that or?

I think, I mean in terms of the point about, I'm assuming you're talking about from primary school to secondary school and feeders.

The reality is shifting from primary to secondary school depends on parental preference.

So there is no, it's not like how it works in primary schools where a primary school feeds a secondary school.

The parents will decide where they want their child with an EHCP to go.

So you wouldn't necessarily have that correlation between a primary school and a secondary school.

It doesn't work in the same way as the feeder schools do from primary to secondary for a child without an EHCP.

But they do tend to sort of, I mean they do tend to sort of feed to the, I know obviously

lots of them go to schools that are very specific for special education needs, but about half

stay within the system.

And they do often tend to go to the school that their friends are going to.

I mean, certainly the ones in my ward, the ones that are at the local secondary, we're

at the local primary.

Ms. Johnson, you want to?

Yeah, it actually doesn't work like that at the moment.

The biggest shift we see in children moving from schools that are outside of their local

area is in the primary to secondary shift.

So when they move at year six to year seven, there is a huge number of

parents with an EHCP that prefer to go to a different school than the one that's local to them.

And there can be a number of reasons for that.

If obviously they're going to a resource base in one of our secondary schools, then obviously they do need to go further afield.

But we also see a high number of children as well at the secondary transfer that go to the secondary schools outside of our borough

Counsellors born did you want to come in and then I'll go to the questions from Davies

No, I I think counsellor Owens has had her questions covered

I mean there are one or two things like the breakdown stuff, which presumably you'd you'd want at some

future date or something in

In an update on this but otherwise you're it's covered, isn't it? Okay

Councillor Davies and then councillor Burchard

Thank you chair

thinking about the key stakeholders

In a way, we think about the children and the young people as the sort of the primary audience and then you know

The families and all the professionals that support them and so, you know

we want to capture the voice and the experience of the children and young people.

So I'm interested to know, because we want the schools to be inclusive for them.

And we also want them to be able to sort of access all the support that they need in their local environment, their local community.

But what ways are there for capturing the voices,

particularly very young children because there's quite a need here for very early intervention, isn't there?

And so I've been just interested to hear if people have got ideas about how that could be fleshed out.

Ms. Johnson.

All of the practitioners that work with either our early years cohort or our children and young people,

all of their reporting has the voice of the child and the view of the parents at the absolute centre.

It's a key point of the statutory responsibility that we have.

And obviously it's a key issue for us because we can design services and we can deliver services, but it may not be those that the children and the parents want.

So the voice of the child and the voice of the parents is a key element for

any practitioner that works with any child, regardless of their age range.

I can just follow up on that.

So I'm familiar with pen portraits in schools and things like that, but I just wondered

for the task of Finnish group, what's their way of capturing the experience?

Would it be by sharing the documents like that or is there a possibility of going into

schools and having a talk with those who work most closely with them.

Or experiencing something or

see how people's moods are being reported, that kind of thing.

Yeah, we've got a number of parent champions and also through our parent carer forum and

through some of our practitioners we hold young people's focus groups or children's focus groups.

So we can certainly do that for this process if you let us know what you need.

Thank you. I've got Councillor Burchill next, then Councillor Sweet, then Councillor Crivelli.

Thank you very much, Chair. One thing that came up when we were talking in our groups

was the need for transparency. And I think actually Ms Johnson was citing where the problem

with transparency can often be if the parents don't think they're getting what they should

be getting, they're much more likely to be dissatisfied.

And so it must be the requirement to make it clear what is on offer, what we can offer,

and make it very, yeah, transparent.

And then following on from that, I don't understand all of the information we got at the beginning.

That's a good question.

Okay. I thought we had got 3 ,000 children on EHCPs plus 6 ,000 children on SEND.

or do we have a total of 6139 children who are sent on EHCP?

No, 3000 on EHCP, 6000 on school action support.

So that's 9000 in total.

Thank you.

Did you?

Thank you, Councillor Batchill.

I've got Councillor Sweet next and then Councillor…

Just as a reference, what is the school population in Monsworth?

So 27 ,000 plus minus, it's a bit more.

All right, thank you.

I have a few points.

My first is actually was raised earlier,

but I think just to turn it into an action

for the TARS -CoV -3, we would benefit from some more data

on timeliness and to tease out some of those dynamics

you were describing between delays in referrals or documentation coming from schools, I didn't

quite follow which, delays in, if there are any delays in what we're doing as a council.

And that's a question on timeliness as well.

On page 9, it says 100 % of plans issued within 20 weeks.

Can someone just tell me what the target is?

The government set target is 100%.

So the only target is a 20 week timeframe.

Okay, that's great.

Yeah, so would it be possible to have some more data

on how long it's taking at each stage?

Great, thanks.

My next question was about page 18,

which is, there's a lot of data on page 18 and page 19,

and I think it's quite difficult to tease out

what it all means, but great that it's here.

I'd like to dive a bit deeper on the send appeals

on page 18, so bottom left.

So if I read this page correctly,

I'm very happy to be told I've misunderstood,

but it looks like the refusals to assess

have been roughly stable over the last year,

year and a half, but appeals have risen 50%.

So I suppose two questions here.

Have I understood that correctly?

And if so, what is the reason for the increase in appeals?

Ms. Johnson?

Yes, you have read those correctly.

That is accurate.

The reason for appeals, we're fundamentally now seeing the right type of appeal coming through,

which is when parents are actually asking us to look at all elements of the EHCP.

So we don't tend to see as many refusals to assess or refuse to issue.

So most of the appeals that we see coming through we think are the correct ones when parents are looking at provision for education, health and care rather than just education on its own.

So we actually think the right appeals are coming through.

That's great to hear, but what is the reason for the 50 % increase?

Fundamentally it's when parents are actually asking for provision that we think is more than the child actually requires following a statutory assessment.

I think the thing I'm struggling to understand,

you've given great answers,

and this is for the next stage of task and finish,

is if the refusals to assess have stayed roughly the same,

and it is true that EHCPs have increased

every single month for years, I'm sure,

but that's quite a big increase in appeal.

I mean, it is a very big increase, 50 % increase in a year.

So I'd like to understand,

and maybe we go into more depth on that in the next stage.

Councillor Osborne, come in.

Just quickly to come in, yes of course,

that is at the heart of one of the things we need to look at.

Has something happened, and if so, what is it?

There are theories as to what has happened,

but nobody is absolutely categorically certain

as to what the cause is, and we do need to look at that.

Yeah, well spotted, yeah, good.

Councillor Crivelli, you were next.

Ms. Van Riele, did you want to?

I think just to clarify, every parent has the right to appeal at the end of a statutory

assessment and every parent on an annual basis following an annual review has the right to

appeal.

So, the 90 appeals that we've got are out of over 3 ,500 cases per year.

So our appeal rate is still fairly low.

Councillor Crivelli.

I think you may well have asked some of the points that I was gonna raise.

I mean the 96 appeals that you've got, which ones are parents complaining that the support isn't enough for their children?

and which ones are the ones that are a straight refusal

for an EHCP.

And I think you maybe answered the last question

I was gonna ask about.

I read somewhere that 90 % of parents

who legally appeal a local authority refusal for an EHCP,

they actually win the appeal.

Am I correct in saying you're saying

that we're much, much lower than that rate?

Is that correct?

I think you're correct in stating

that currently the statutory requirement

an EHCP is incredibly low.

So in order to argue a refusal to assess, you have to have really, really strong evidence.

Because the current two stage law process basically says the child may have educational needs,

not that the child does have educational needs.

The only way that you can ascertain whether that's the case is by carrying out statutory assessment.

So we tend to assess a child and then decide whether to go to appeal at that point.

Because it's easier to defend an appeal once you've assessed a child, rather than actually trying to defend whether they may or

may not have special educational needs, because you wouldn't be able to determine that.

But at the moment, we have very low rates at that point because of that reason,

because we tend to assess the children and find out whether they do or don't have special educational needs.

So most of our appeals tend to be for where parents are asking for provision that we don't think is either in the EHCP or

that the child requires to meet their educational needs.

Back on that, I'll make an assumption here

in terms of I've got the process wrong.

We've been talking a lot about enhancing the universal offer

through universal and targeted SEND support services.

I mean, if a parent appeals, does

Wandsworth engage with that parent and say, well, listen,

you don't need to appeal this because this

This is what we can offer you, Charles.

Is that, or is it post appeal, or how does it work?

No, absolutely, we try to negotiate with parents from the very beginning.

We also offer mediation, we also offer co -production meetings, and

we also offer a meeting with the parent if they're not successful in their request for a statutory assessment.

So our team are very, very good at meeting with parents to give them the reasons why we've said no, or why.

We're not offering the provision that they think they need.

The government is bringing forward a white paper in the autumn.

It is probably going to address that point you have made about the statutory minimum.

Yes, I think I can probably answer that or whether Councillor Osborne wants to.

I think the whole point here is that we have this task in the Finnish group and we are seeking solutions.

I completely understand the importance of appeals going into complaints.

your line of questioning from the minority party.

I totally understand that, and that is valid,

but we're looking to solutions.

We're all agreed that this system is broken.

And this is a task of Finnish group.

We could go into political reasons why that is so.

That's not what we're trying to do here.

The system is broken, and that's why the new government

is bringing forward a white paper

to address this in a different way.

And from early, I have no idea what's in the white paper,

but the Children's Commissioner did a report just this week.

And it very much looks like it's all about prevention much, much earlier, much earlier.

I think we've heard a statistic that it's gone up enormously, the number of EHCPs for nursery age children.

We need to reach those children way before the parents are reaching for an EHCP.

So I think there'll be some sort of emphasis on that.

And also in inclusion, because all these children who we don't have in mainstream schools have a right to be in a mainstream school with SEND.

And we need to include them in those schools and talk about inclusion and integration.

And then we start working towards a solution.

Councillor Osborn, did you want to come back?

Who's coming back?

Just to say that, I mean, actually, I think Councillor Crivelli is in the right territory.

There is almost certainly going to be some sort of shift in the white paper,

in the area that you're pointing at.

We can't predict, and we don't know for certain, but that would be a reasonable guess, I think.

I'm Councillor Davies.

I'm so sorry, I got out of order.

And Councillor Jeffrey.

Yeah, so my point, you know, I'm just thinking about parental anxiety about this, because

obviously it is ever so important, and they're fierce advocates for their children, and I

commend them for that.

But my point actually is, I'm looking at page 13 and I'm seeing a peak here of children

starting nursery and there's a big number of requests for EHCPs at that point.

Now I notice also they're the children that were being born during COVID.

So you know, because we, well, yeah, so COVID, but I hope COVID had an impact, didn't it,

So that might be the year after it, I'm not wearing my glasses.

The point I want to make though is that these very young children, they are getting to the age four, five.

And then they go to a school setting and their needs is identified.

But actually, because we know that how well prevention works,

how we want early intervention to give them the very best chances for

for them to be catered for,

to have that inclusive mainstream education.

I think what can be done in those first three years,

actually, to put in preventions there?

I'm wondering if there's room to do a project

to support also our colleagues in the health vistas,

because I'm sure they're very hard -stretched as well.

And then whether, I don't know whether that is then going

to have a knock on effect to get them the better provision

at an early stage to make a difference,

maybe a long lasting difference,

and also have the impact of reducing the EHCPs.

Thank you, Ms. Johnson.

Yeah, we've invested very heavily

in our early years provision.

We've increased our speech and language therapy offer.

We also have the NIPA project which has resulted in, because we've been tracking that for a number of years now,

we've expanded that because that's demonstrated that children's needs are being met and they're not requiring any HCP.

We've also invested in a transition project for

children that are transferring from nursery to primary school to make sure they're school ready.

And we've put in specialist provision to help them do that in the transition year.

We've also invested heavily in our specialist provision,

Little Hillbrook and the Hillbrook School

to support children in early years.

And obviously with the support of Lisa and Anna,

we've expanded our support and intervention at early years

so that we have a full inclusion team now

that just focuses on our early years children

to prevent them from requiring an EHCP.

I mean, you know, well done.

That's very commensable.

But, you know, I suppose, you know, I'm wondering whether the task and finish group would see

that as a line of inquiry to see are there any extra opportunities there, you know, or

can we bring in extra colleagues, not just, yeah, the council employed or school employed.

Councillor Osborn, you want to come back on that?

And just to say yes, I think that is a valid line of inquiry and I think should be minuted

as an area that we should be looking at as a task and finish group.

And I think I'd like to add as well that seeing as COVID has been mentioned in the discussion,

it has been raised so far in the few meetings that we've had as a factor in what's going

on in our request for provision and so on.

I don't think it's fully understood just yet.

I think we may understand most of it, but perhaps not all of it.

And it's interesting to note that the COVID -19 inquiry itself, the public inquiry, has just

asked one of its officers, Kate Eisenstein, to do a particular project looking at the

impact of COVID -19 on children and young people.

And that indeed may be some interesting background information for the task and finish group.

So there are several factors there that I think are worth noting as a committee.

Councillor Jeffery.

Thank you, Chair.

Firstly, I would like to commend all the children services officers for all the great work that

they've produced.

I mean in terms of I've been looking at page 14 and 15.

And I just want to talk about the bubbles on the page.

So obviously the bigger bubbles we have, we want to get them reduced in terms of sizes.

So how can we do this better and how are we going to fix this?

And I think that's a good thing.

Thank you.

So like all data, context is key.

So it's not necessary.

Big bubble is bad.

But on the whole that will show a higher level of referrals at

that school.

There is, all studies show there's correlation between

deprivation and levels of send.

So you are seeing that those bubbles that are on the left

would probably be bigger than the ones on the right

because the left are the schools

in the higher deprivation areas.

So naturally, they should have more send in those schools.

So I think that's what the chart's trying to say.

So there's allowance.

But then on the right side,

you have schools in lower deprivation areas,

but they're often parental preference schools,

and therefore they have higher levels

of EACPs in the schools.

And then it comes back to the funding model,

which doesn't support those schools in those high,

in the low deprivation areas, where the formula does

actually support schools considerably

in the high deprivation.

So high deprivation attracts a lot of funding.

Can be hundreds of thousands extra in a full class.

Problem is, those schools are the ones

losing the most children.

So it's quite a complex scenario.

On the other side, you've got mostly full classes,

but the per pupil funding is a lot lower for deprivation

and send, notional send or whatever we want to call it,

the money they get for send is lower,

but they attract parental preference

and therefore have quite a lot of children with EACBs,

which they would argue they don't have money to support.

So if in the next stage we look at schools,

it's definitely worth exploring that.

This just gives you lines of inquiry.

So if the bubble is big, possibly it's a school

to go talk to and find out what is going on there,

but doesn't necessarily say too much about

that is the right or wrong thing here.

Thank you.

I've got Councillor Sweetenecks, then Councillor Owens,

then Councillor Davey.

Thank you.

I think Mr. Halleck has just said some really important

things about the school experience

and the school contribution to the HCNAs and EHCPs.

So for the next stage of the task and finish group,

perhaps it's a question for Councillor Osborne,

how are we going to get close to what's going on

in some of these schools?

And I'm particularly interested in those schools

that ostensibly have very similar demographics

but have dramatically different EACP numbers and percentages.

And then I have one other question

that perhaps Councillor Osborne could come back to first.

Well, obviously, we have to start with the schools themselves.

I think we've got to have a programme as soon as possible now that everyone's back at school,

which addresses some of these matters in the schools forum, for example, and any other

of the processes that we can use to engage with the people who run the schools and the

Yeah.

That sounds great.

Thank you.

I look forward to that process.

And just my last comment or question was actually for Councillor Gasser, which is I think the

Task and Finish Group is hopefully going to come up with some great recommendations in

due course, but there are clearly ongoing challenges for young people that have a need

for support in Wandsworth.

So I'd like to know from Councillor Gasser what she's doing to address these challenges in Wandsworth.

Well, we're working with young people all the time and with schools all the time.

I attend schools for a month, I don't know if you used to.

I hear from the schools the challenges.

We listen to the families, we listen to the children.

And the challenge really is about money, I'm afraid.

And we saw that at the last meeting, didn't we?

The designated schools grant and the high needs block.

It's a real problem.

But we are listening and we're hoping that this task and finish group will come up with some

not too costly interventions that we can do to really support them even more.

I have got Councillor Owens next.

Thank you.

Just a couple of questions.

Obviously, it's very interesting to see the comparisons for Wandsworth versus London versus

National, and obviously in 2023, 24, obviously we went up and London went down, but of course

it's the average growth is obviously we are below London and between 2020 and 2024 in

the average growth.

I suppose one of the things I'm confused about, and I would love to see a comparison on, is

when you say that we are 27 ,000 children in the borough, which is what I think you said.

I checked out that the two is 26, so I just don't know.

26, okay, thank you.

When you add together the 6 ,139 children on SEND support

and the 3 ,175 who are active resident EHCPs,

that's about a third of our pupils.

So what I'd like to know, and again,

I was looking at this wonderful chart showing, for example,

we're ranked 22nd on education, employment,

or training after key stage four EHCP.

I'm assuming that's out of London,

but I'm not entirely sure.

What I'd like to try and understand is,

how does that compare to other boroughs?

Ms. Johnson.

I work very closely both with the London councils

and with a lot of my colleagues and with the DFE

around the statistics around SEND.

And one of the key factors at the moment

is that diagnoses have obviously risen quite considerably.

That can be for a number of reasons,

whether it's a better understanding,

but the number of diagnoses have gone incredibly high.

So there are a number of reasons

why there are a number of children coming through.

I think one of the things that came out

of both the Children's Commissioner's Report

and the Institute of Fiscal Studies

that was issued yesterday,

both of them are indicating that the key reason for this

has got a lot to do with socioeconomic reasons,

and also the fact that EHDPs and SEN

now appears to be, which I do agree with and so do my colleagues,

a catchall for every other service that is actually not providing provision.

So we're picking up mental health, we're picking up children with very, very complex needs.

Ms. Veneroli said earlier around the sheer increase in therapy costs that we're currently picking up.

It's the same with occupational therapy, physiotherapy.

all of these things now are being encompassed into the SEND arena where they actually should be shared between partners.

And at the moment, SEND is now becoming a wider catch -all.

And I think that was in both of those reports, and I do agree with both.

Thank you, but my question was about the other boroughs.

I mean, essentially we have a third of our children in the borough with special educational needs,

of which half of which, sorry, a third of which have education, health, and care plans.

I mean, to me that seems extremely high.

But I understand what you're saying.

So it would be useful to see where we sit and perhaps with other counties as well.

It does strike me as well that in the past, I know with education, health, and care plans

that they weren't done at nursery level, for example, because I chaired one of the ones

with nurseries for a decade.

And I remember when the EHCP came in for the children to do around 2017, and that was sort

of considered something that was kind of a new thing at the time.

And I recognise, of course, that everybody's trying to get to the children the younger

they are.

But at the same time, for example, speech and language, those sorts of areas of concern

are often being picked up by the health system at that point in time.

So I know clearly it doesn't always feed through, but I would have thought with COVID now, the

children coming through are not going to be the same children that were coming through

in 2022, 23, that sort of thing, and we would see a drop off.

Thank you.

Sorry, I didn't address the point you raised.

I have got the data from my colleagues, so I can share that.

We've just had some data come through from the London councils, and actually we don't

come in across that at all.

So at the moment, the council that's seen the highest number of EHCPs is Croydon, followed

by Barnet, and some of the other local authorities.

We're not in the top ten there at all at the moment, so I can share all of the data from

my colleagues.

But I think that the fact that we've got a third of our children we absolutely accept

But we are in line with all other other local authorities. They're all in you know facing the same issues. We are

Councillor Davies

If it's okay I've got I've got two sort of separate points

So I'll put the both across and then you can sort of let me know what to do. So yeah, just thinking about you know

at the school setting and teachers

and the teaching assistants.

I'm just sort of curious what their view is,

what their view is on driving,

why are they requesting EHCPs,

but then also what would it look like

if they weren't having EHCPs?

What would they be doing?

And also whether the schools feel supported

in having the right interventions

or having the right training to be able to meet

these very complex needs.

You know, whether there's some schools that offer more

maybe in -house training than the others.

So that might become a line of inquiry.

And the other point is just thinking about

this socioeconomic point.

It'd be quite interesting to look at the number

of this 30%, the number who have EHCPs

or an emerging needs pathway,

who are either living in temporary accommodation

or very overcrowded accommodation,

because, anecdotally, I've seen that there can be

an impact there on child development

or opportunities for speech and play and things like that.

So I don't know whether that's,

you've got a comment there or, yeah.

Yeah, we've had a number of freedom of information requests

around children that are in temporary accommodation or that have been moved out of the borough

on a temporary basis.

So I can pull that data together for you and provide it.

But yes, it is having an impact because obviously they're moved away from their schools, their

schooling could be broken for a period of time, but that's not just in relation to children

with SEND, that's in relation to children per se.

And then looking at the school picture, what's happening with Arden, who wants to?

Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of that, we've got a number of forums to engage with the

school communities.

You've got Senko forums where you can, again, have those conversations to understand what

are the needs of teachers.

And I think you need to look at it across the piece because Senkos are the experienced

member of staff in the schools, but actually every single teacher is a teacher of a child

with special educational needs.

They go through everybody's classroom and it's making sure that every member of staff

within a school feels confident, feels empowered, and feels that they

understand what they're seeing in their classroom because a lot of it, you know, a

lot of the time we hear that teachers are responding to the behaviour as

opposed to really understanding the underlying need and it's how do you get

underneath that and get to the bottom of that. So we have a number of ways of

engaging, I think we have quite a comprehensive training programme for our

schools, but I think the next piece will be for yourselves when you go into the

school settings to be having those conversations with school staff about where are the gaps for them.

I think it's very easy for us to make those assumptions about, and you can have the conversation with parents.

And parents will say, this is what we think is the case.

But actually that's something to be explored then with the teachers themselves about what is it that they need.

Are there any tools, any learning, any skills that they require to better meet the needs of children with SEND within their classrooms?

Thank you. I've got Councillor Jaffray next, then Councillor Osborne wanted to come in, and Councillor Burchall.

I'm so sorry, I didn't see you. Would you like to ask your question, Ms. Wilson -Hall?

So it's just a couple of questions of facts that I was wondering about when reading this.

So first of all on page nine, we appear to have 55 % of EHCP pupils attend mainstream,

which included provision, which is presumably the basis.

We have 23 % attending special schools, which as far as I can tell, adds up to only 78.

So it's sort of wondering what else, what am I missing?

My other question was about on page 12, just talking about this deprivation and we appear

to be having quite a lot more fiscal meal eligibility.

But I was just wondering, looking particularly at the next item on the agenda as well,

whether in fact the eligibility for fiscal meals have changed.

So, are we comparing apples with apple and pears or whatever?

So, there's my two questions.

Yes, Mr. Hippel.

Gary Hippel, Assistant Director, Children's Support Services.

We are comparing apples with apples.

Eligibility hasn't changed yet.

It will do next year.

Right, okay.

So, Councillor Jaffray, would you like to ask your question or...?

Yeah, the missing number in that is the children that are out of Barren Independent School.

Those are presumably the most expensive.

Thank you, Chair.

So actually being part of the task and finish group, I had the privilege of meeting the

SNAS service manager.

Let me just tell you about SNAS, special needs assessment service.

And then after that I got to go to the coffee morning itself, where I got to meet a couple of parent champions

who do actually amazing, fantastic work in the borough. And they just don't just work by themselves, they train other people.

And I think we've got, correct me if I'm wrong, I think we've got over 50 parent champions in the borough.

Yeah, around 50.

And it's amazing the work that they actually do and how they help other parents as well.

So I was just wondering how can we utilise these parent champions, the governors, the Senco.

How can we utilise these people better for the children of Wandsworth?

And I've got another question as well.

Shall I just say it now?

Okay, so in terms of exploration, in terms of we're talking about minorities and the

statistics mentioned black children and then children with, of colour basically, of minorities

and then we see the second language households and the deprived children. How can we focus on

them a little bit better as well.

What kind of provisions can we offer to these children?

And just exploration, basically.

Yeah, we are very aware that our children, our black and brown and ethnic children are

actually sort of not achieving the way that we would like them to.

And we're working very closely with our support services and our schools and also our hard

to reach parent groups to find out how we can actually work with the children better and actually engage them into education.

You know, and we're doing the same through the youth offending teams, et cetera.

You know, how can we actually engage with these children better and make sure that they're not lost in the system?

I also think there's something around working with our voluntary sector better, which I know is something that was heard from by the group.

I think we need to recognise that there is expertise within our voluntary sector,

our faith leaders as well, who can engage with some of the communities that maybe we find harder to engage with.

That's not to say that we don't, but actually I think there's opportunities for us to explore that more,

and for yourselves to explore that more, in terms of how we actually give up that power

to some of our voluntary sector groups that may be better off or

better placed to support our families.

And I think this is about this collective effort.

We recognise this is a very complex system, and

I do want to acknowledge the hard work of services because actually given

the challenges we face, we do deliver very, very well for our children and families.

There is always more we can do.

But the only way that we're going to do that is if we come together and there's a collective response to this.

And to focus on the positives, the things that are there.

And I think there's opportunities through this task and finish group to maybe look as well at good practise.

So when you go into the schools, looking at the schools where actually they have a little bubble.

They might be in a deprived area and maybe don't have that much budget.

But they may be being very, very creative about the way that they work with children with special educational needs in their school communities.

What can we learn from them?

What can we take away that we can then share with others

so that we're sharing that expertise,

that understanding, that knowledge

to better support the wider Wandsworth community?

Sorry, just to add to that,

one of the other things that we've done as well

through our SEND strategy, which was co -produced

with our parent carer forum and all of our practitioners,

is that is an action for us on all of our working groups,

including the working together which is led by our parent carer forum.

Sorry, I forgot to add.

Thank you.

I've got Councillor Osborne next and then Councillor Burchill and I can see Ms. Haroon down there.

So we've been taking this deep dive for about an hour now, so I think we need to start moving towards lines of inquiry.

Lines of inquiry is what will inform next steps and what we look at.

So whether Councillor Osborne, you would like to cover that now or?

No, okay.

So, Councillor Burchill, you had a question.

I just wanted to agree with Councillor Davies that the most important group to get to is this preschool, pre -nursery school.

And seeing so many, well, the other thing is that part of this task is to try and find

out why we are getting more EHCPs.

So I think, you know, we've got to work out how we can engage with those families

and how we can stop some of those families sort of slipping through the network and not

coming to the surface until they get to nursery school.

So I think that's really important.

But I would like to say that I know you officers are working very hard.

The other thing is, is an EHCP really what a three -year -old needs?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's, I will say no more.

Thank you very much.

You've really hit some nails on the head there, Councillor Burchell.

Thank you very much.

I think we're all agreed about the need for early intervention.

And the second part of your question, is an EHC really what a three year old needs?

Ms. Benaroli, would you like to?

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you in terms of early years.

I think, as I said, we've come a long way in the last two or three years in terms of our support at early years.

We have now a dedicated team in both our universal area

and also slightly more targeted

in terms of our inclusion services.

We're using now as well sort of DWP lists

to target those families with vulnerable two year olds.

So we're really targeting our work there.

Working with early help in terms of our family hubs,

health colleagues in terms of that early identification

so that we actually, we are going to find them.

That is the difference.

You know, if we sit back and wait for them to come to us,

it's too late.

So we need to actually do that piece of work

where we are going to find the families

that need our support and put that support in place

before it gets to a point where it's crisis

and they feel that their only option

is to apply for an EHCP.

And we need to move away from that.

And I think that's the work that we've been doing

with our schools, through our schools forum,

And we have been investing money in that early intervention, early support,

and it is starting to show the benefits.

It's not going to be immediate, and that's the thing.

I think we might not see the impact of this for some time, but actually we are seeing those green shoots.

And if we continue to work and continue to invest and work together across the partnership,

then it's going to be to the benefit of our children and families.

And I agree with you, an EHCP is not the answer to everything.

And in some cases, it actually doesn't deliver what it needs.

So for example, children with emotional -based school non -attendance, actually having a plan is not going to get that child into school.

That is not the focus of an EHCP, and there are different ways of supporting those children and those families.

And we've just got to move away from this sense that that document is the thing that's going to give children and families the support.

And I think it's almost that safety net at the moment that they feel they need.

And we've got to make that shift to actually put the support in place when they actually

think actually the support is there, I don't need anything else.

Ms. White, did you want to comment?

Yeah, just to follow up on what Ms. Fenneroni said in terms of that work around early intervention

and actually with the recently published Best Start for Life strategy as well, which gives

a clear focus in terms of supporting children in those early years, naught to five, in terms

of school readiness, but with a significant focus around children with additional needs

and supporting in terms of that parental home learning environment as well in terms of that

relationship between the child and the parent as well, taking into consideration all of

the wider determinants which have been talked about in terms of socioeconomic status, temporary

accommodation, et cetera, and really supporting children.

Thank you very much. Ms Haroon, you had a question, and then perhaps I'll go to Councillor

was born to sort of think about lines of inquiry and wrapping this up.

Ms. Ramut.

Thank you.

It's not about the question, actually.

I'm going to request for further data.

So page number nine, I would like to request the data about what is the percentage of the

Wandsworth people who are attending the schools in other boroughs.

But also I would like to see the data about the independent school.

And on the page number 13, 14, 15, and 16, these data is all about number of ESCP requests.

So I do understand it's relevant, but I would like to see the data about actual ESCP

issues rather than the number of requests, please.

And the third thing is page 25.

So it's about learning from complaints.

So I do understand about the therapy per region,

so I'm more keen to get the understanding

because as a member in a school forum,

I do understand the local authorities

spending a lot of money on this all per region.

And I can see the positive outcome as well.

However, what we are experiencing

as the parent and carer

is the lack of pre -reients from the occupational therapy.

And I think one of the reasons when the parents apply

is the OT pre -reients you can't get without ESCP.

So maybe we can explore this.

Thank you.

Who would like to answer that?

Mr. Halli.

Just quickly, we are doing a full therapies review

and occupational therapies.

But it will be good to go through the process

and talk to schools, hear their version, and work through it.

But we have that and we can probably do a bring that here.

So Councillor Osborne, can I go to you?

I will start thinking about lines of inquiry.

I think to me, schools and working with schools, that's coming through really clearly as one.

Yes, I mean I think the priority for working with schools is this point that's been made

several times about inclusivity, about the need for the schools

to be dealing with some of these children

right through their school career and from an early stage onwards.

And what does that mean?

What does that mean for the school?

Where are the stresses?

What kind of support do they need?

And how do we make that support consistent?

Are there issues with some of these children

about too rigid a behaviour policy in the school?

Do we need to look at that and think about that

because of the way in which their sensory

and emotional needs are being accommodated,

that kind of thing.

What kind of anxiety and trauma are we,

perhaps, is taking place in the schools

that we're not yet identifying and dealing with?

Do the people in the schools, the teachers, the Senkos, and all the rest of it,

do they need a greater training offer from somewhere?

And what's supposed to be happening on that?

And what, in terms of resource and logistics, is there in the local base in the school

that we need to think about and what's available?

So, you know, what kind of special provisions are there that are required?

I think we need to really get to grips with that in a really serious way as part of the second stage,

the next stage of this task and finish group.

I think we need to be looking at what we're doing for the parents, what kind of support are we giving to the parents,

what else can we do? Do the parents and the families and the kids, do they need safe spaces sometimes?

Is there something there that we need to be doing?

These kind of things.

And as I said, I've mentioned some of this stuff already

when I did the introduction,

the transition from primary to secondary school.

What do we need?

Do we need a special passport or something

to help the child make that transition?

Is there some sort of contribution we can make there?

And all these kind of things.

I think we've talked a little bit glibly

about the need for integration and coordination between all the different services,

but we haven't at any stage really got to grips with what that means

and how we would execute it as a borough.

And goodness knows, maybe when the white paper comes,

it might either help us on that and give us a bit of guidance,

or it might go down a completely different path.

We're not sure, but all these kind of things are the things I think that we should be kicking

around as a task and finish group and trying to get more specifics on.

So if there's anything there that anybody thinks that we should have a closer look at,

and if there's anybody that we should be talking to that we're not yet talking to, other than

the teachers, the schools, the schools forum,

those kind of things, the professionals,

the officers who are already advising us

on a lot of this stuff.

If there's anything there that we think as a committee

that we should be pursuing,

then let's try and get that out.

If it doesn't come up tonight,

we can always think of it, I suppose,

at some stage in the future.

But I would value people's contribution tonight

on what kind of things we ought to be having a closer look at.

Thank you, Councillor Osborne. That's really, really helpful. I'm trying to bring this to

wrapping up. I think early intervention as well, isn't it, lines of inquiry around that

would be a heading. And then Councillor Sweet wanted us to look at timeliness. Yes. That's

what I've got jotted down here.

Yeah, I agree with everything so far.

I think the other area that we started with

was around getting closer to the complaints and appeals,

recognising it's a small proportion of the overall numbers,

but if we're to improve the process,

we need to know what's going wrong as well.

I just had a question on the Broadwater school and the paddock and the new school.

I'm assuming it's just opened this month.

And I was curious as to how it was going, how full it was, how much support there had

been and if lots of children had moved across from other schools and what we're seeing and

what the response was like.

Thank you.

I think that's a good thing.

Ms. Penrale?

Yeah, I mean the school is open.

It is fantastic.

If you have not seen it, I would say, you know, contact the head and have a visit because

it is, I mean, I think Ms. Haroon would agree with me.

The provision there, I mean, I think our conversation was the school will fill because any parent

that goes and looks at it, it is state of the art.

It is absolutely fantastic.

So in terms of the transition, obviously we've transitioned the children from the previous setting in.

And in terms of filling, obviously that will happen over time.

It will be group by group as opposed to everything in at once because obviously we've got to consider teaching staff, etc.

To make sure that we've got the support in place.

The last thing we would want to do is have children in there that aren't getting the support they need.

But no, it's for me a fantastic piece of work.

and it has and will benefit many, many children,

not just now but in the years to come.

Thank you very much for that question,

Councillor Owens, because it was such a lovely answer

to be able to give.

Councillor Jeffery, and then I think we have to move

on to the next page.

Just, if we're gonna look at schools,

I suggest we look at nurseries as well.

our biggest requests are at nursery.

It'll also pick up what they're receiving,

and then obviously why are they putting in those requests?

Because they are putting in requests

that then end up in any ACP and reception.

Thank you very much, Mr. Halleck.

So I think that for lines of inquiry then,

for headings, schools, and everything

that Councillor Osborne has outlined,

and that will include nurseries as well,

and then fitting very well with that early intervention,

because obviously that's all about reaching the under fives.

And then timeliness and complaints,

that those would be the three lines of inquiry to pursue.

Have you got all of that?

Timeliness of complaints being dealt with.

We have an outstanding record, I think, on that.

20, 20 weeks.

And have we also got about having a breakdown

by demographics, looking at ethnicity,

housing, socioeconomic indicators?

I think Ms. Popovici would like to come in.

I think there's a wider point about data,

and I took away a number of inquiries,

whether they are linked to the timeliness of the advice that we are receiving in order

to inform the assessment.

That is clearly happening in a timely fashion.

There's an issue about the breakdown of the level of need.

There's timeliness.

So data and timeliness, that's in the wider stage.

We will endeavour to break this down into the minutes of the committee.

So I think there's a wider point about data and how that data will inform the line of

inquiries that have emerged from the discussion today.

I also don't want to lose a point that actually

Councillor Davies has made about the role of health visitors

in the early years diagnosis of need

and how we can utilise them in the future

to make sure that they do the visits on time

and they support the process from the early stages,

as early as nine months.

So I would like us to think about that.

Again, data around appeals, why they have gone up,

what are the 96 appeals telling us.

So we'll take all of that away and all of that will be fed into the TASC and Finnish group.

Just to summarise, Cher, if I may, the work with schools and nurseries,

really understanding the stresses in the system and what we could do better to

understand that experience and the need to request for plans. I think there's a

wider point about parents engagement support listening to more parents and

carers the wider community you know back to the point that we've only spoken to

to aid parents so far I think transition points for children particularly from

into primary, primary into secondaries,

is support available, how can we really understand

what's going on for us in communities,

is there more we could do and recommend to the lead member

to think in the future?

And I think getting closer to parents

also means getting closer to really understanding

the complaints, what are the complaints telling us,

and perhaps in a closed session, explore in depth

some of those issues raised by parents

and learn a bit more about that.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Pappabici, for signing up.

So can we note this report?

We note the report, yes?

Thank you, everybody.

4 Back to School 2025 Programme (Paper No. 25-302)

5 Work Programme Report (Paper No. 25-318)

Now we can move on to the next paper.

4 Back to School 2025 Programme (Paper No. 25-302)

It's item 4 on the agenda,

the Back to School 2025 programme, paper number 25 -302.

We will deal with this as a scrutiny paper

in the normal way.

That was a very excellent task and finish session.

Thank you everyone very much.

So just quickly, this very exciting paper

highlights Back to School programme.

I hope you've all read it.

It's an initiative that supports our schools, pupils, and families as they embark on the new academic year.

And this is really references what we've been talking about,

especially about early years and the needs for early intervention.

So a year ago, actually I think it was probably longer than that, I told officers that we needed to go out and

find the children that need our support, that we needed a totally proactive approach.

And to use all the tools at our disposal in order to reach those children,

because that would pay off in bucket loads, not just for those children.

But also, as Mr. Hipple will be explaining in a moment,

also financially as well.

So we've got some fantastic initiatives.

I'm sure you've all heard about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which is amazing, and

that is a universal offer.

That means every child under five will receive a book every month.

Two books, I think.

And if there's more than one child under five in a family, each of those children will receive

their own book and address to that child.

Very, very special.

We also have the amazing Apple Schools programme and

the expanded free school meal eligibility that we talked about earlier.

So we're really, really trying to ensure that every child in Wandsworth has all the resources and support.

That they need to thrive, because I know whenever I go and speak in schools, I tell children, not only do you live in the best city on Earth.

You also live in a borough with some of the best opportunities and go out there and grab them.

So if we can give these children this early support to thrive, then they're all going to do really, really well.

And I'm very, very proud of the collaborative efforts that have been made with this programme and the impact it's having already.

Mr. Hippel's just going to talk us through the paper.

Thank you, Chair.

Well, you described a lot of the programmes within the paper and already made the link to the previous discussion about inclusion.

And if there's one thing that feeds through all of these programmes is inclusion.

And the bedrock of that inclusion was, you mentioned there, go find them,

that challenge you gave us probably a couple years ago now.

When Wandsworth had just reached 9 ,000 children being eligible for free school meals for the first time.

And then the committee being quite surprised at that at the time.

But we also estimated that there was probably around 1100 children that were eligible for

free school meals that we didn't know about.

And that was the group that we were referring to, an awful lot of children.

You'll see in the paper now that we now unfortunately have over 10 ,000 children who are eligible

for free school meals.

But that's partly our fault for finding them.

Because we took that challenge away and looked at, and this is something that as a council

we should be incredibly proud of, because no one had done this before in London, was

look at how we used our data across the council.

And this is not just within Children's, but looking to our colleagues in information governance

to start with, because national government, government, government kind of shied away

from doing this, because they talked about data protection issues, and they didn't want

to share benefits data in the way that would mean all children could be identified for

free school meals.

So, working with our information governance colleagues to find a way to work with our

data analytics, with our revenues and benefits teams, then coming back into children's to

work with data support, business support, a whole range of teams.

And it's only local government that could do that and stepped up to do that.

It's something that we should be really, really proud of.

And it's something that we led on and London has adopted.

So now the GLA fund all London authorities from this year to copy that piece of work.

So that means that more and more children across London will be identified.

And you'll see in the paper that's absolutely key to identifying who are those children

that we need to reach and provide that support to.

So without that data, we wouldn't be able to provide uniform support to as many children

as we were able to this year.

We wouldn't be as able to provide as many vouchers for holiday meals as we have done

this year.

So that's really key in making sure that the funding that we put in to support those families

reaches and is targeted at those children.

But you've already identified that some of the programmes

are universal.

So we know that universal free school meals

has an incredible impact, not just on the children themselves,

but on the poverty of families.

As a benefit in kind, it's been identified

as one of the key benefits that lifts a large number of families

out of poverty.

So extending that to secondary, which is where the gap is,

because we've got universal free school meals at primary

in London now, thanks to Key Stage 2 funding

from the GLA and the mayor.

And so there is a gap at secondary.

But we're going to use the eligibility of the access

for all scheme to extend to those families in secondary.

And we're identifying those children now.

It's a little bit trickier because those families

are not eligible for preschool meals

but are still receiving benefits.

So they are in need, but they're harder to identify.

Because as you move across to universal credit,

you come off some of the other benefits,

and it's harder to find some of those children.

But we have been quite successful in doing that.

And communities should know that that support for secondary

is for one year only, because the government, as you talked

about here, eligibility for free school meals

will change next year from September 26

to be all families who are on universal credit.

So the impact of that is unknown,

because at that same time, we've had in place for a number

of years something called transitional protection.

So if you're identified for free school meals, that was protected until the end of the stage of the schooling that you were in.

That is all going to come to an end in September 26th as well.

So what we would expect is to see that some families, hopefully with their situations have improved, will come off of free school meals.

But actually then we'll have a universal credit cohort who will be added to that.

So it's a little bit complicated at the moment about identifying those.

But having that data has been incredibly helpful to us in terms of running those programmes.

And you'll also see in there that there

are other programmes that completely talk

to the discussion you just had.

So the Body, Partners, Imagination Library,

it looks at early years and supports our children

and trying to develop a love of reading at an early age.

And we've got that for five years in the Indian Institute

of Terms.

So that's going to be a really interesting piece of work

to see how that works.

And you'll also notice the Apple programme there.

And we've had the Apple programme for a couple of years

in our schools, and 20 of our schools

have benefited from working with Apple on,

with children on everyone can code

and everyone can create programmes,

and teachers doing their Apple training

to become more up -skilled.

One of the things that Councillor Osborne mentioned was,

how do we make teachers more skilled

and more able to support the children in their spaces?

And so one of the things we've done is look at that programme,

and how do we point it and put the energy and the knowledge

towards the SCN questions that we've got.

And so we will be piloting in our resource, two resource

spaces this year, that programme and how

we support the teachers in those resource spaces

to use digital devices with more accessibility features

than we've ever had before to bespoke technologies

to children to look at how we support their needs.

So we think there's going to be a great piece of learning that

comes out of that.

And hopefully that will contribute towards a more inclusive learning environment,

our SCN strategy, and the work that you're doing on EHCPs.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hippel.

And everyone's to be congratulated on all of these projects.

So questions.

Counsellor, my mind's gone completely blank.

Dobris.

Counsellor Dobris.

That's okay, no worries.

Yeah, it's really amazing to see and read about all of the fantastic work we're doing

and the learning that Wandsworth is kind of sharing across London.

I'm particularly interested in the Apple Schools programme.

Two parts, I guess.

What's new this year with the programme and also how is the learning from that programme

kind of being shared across other schools, across other programmes?

programmes, how can we kind of ensure that it's not just within that programme?

Thank you.

So what you have sort of briefly outlined that we've pivoted to move it towards the

resource spaces.

So we've had nine schools per year in that programme for the last two years.

This year on the coding and the creating programmes, we've reduced that to six so that we can concentrate

on in two of the resource spaces.

And the resource -based programme, we think, you know, holds tremendous potential for learning.

And one of the things we're doing alongside of working in the two schools, Granard and

Sacred Heart, Battersea, those two resource spaces there, with support from great school

leaders and special education needs leaders in those schools, is we're running a very

first Wandsworth Accessibility Conference with Apple at Apple's offices in Battersea

in October, where we're inviting all head teachers,

all our SEN leaders, resource -based leaders,

to that conference to share information with,

you know, we've got people coming over from the US,

and Apple, who lead on accessibility,

to come and talk to our cohort of leaders.

That's really, really exciting.

I think I had Councillor Sweet next,

then Councillor Owens, Crivelli, and then Councillor.

Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Hippel,

for a really helpful introduction.

I think the first point I wanted to make overall

is that I welcome very much the work that's

been done by the Labour Council to identify children in need

and give them support.

I think that's a great initiative.

I do, though, have a bit of a problem and concern

with the way this is being presented to us

by the cabinet member and the Labour Councillors.

What this paper really is doing is committing council funds to certain initiatives, but

there is no evidence about what these initiatives have actually achieved in terms of improving

outcomes, and there is no request for this committee to make a decision on whether to

spend those funds.

The paper is for information.

The funding is not clear.

In the comments of the Executive Director of Finance, it says the schemes are funded

from a 4 .9 million pound reserve, but I've had to search through the paper to find how

much each initiative costs.

And in fact, I think in the case of the Uniform Support Scheme, that figure is not actually

given.

So I'd like to ask the Cabinet member how has this happened and why are we not being

given evidence for why it's a good use of council funds?

Well, yes, because this committee

doesn't make decisions anymore, I'm afraid,

if they're made at cabinet level.

And no, you don't.

That's not the sort of scrutiny we're doing anymore.

But the figures are all in the public domain

because the access for all funding is agreed by cabinet,

and it's in the public domain.

We can get those decisions for you

so you can see how much has been agreed.

I mean the reserve was agreed a few years ago now because it's a key commitment of ours. We want to be a fair compassionate

Council we want every resident to be able to enjoy everything that's on offer so we created this access for all reserve

Which was several years ago now by finance committee, but I'm sure we can find the figures for you

You can see when we agreed this particular

bit for uniform support

Absolutely and the access for all bids then have to come back after one year or whatever the proper

designated time period and report back and what was the impact outcome?

I mean it's going to be qualitative isn't it in terms of school uniform.

It's not actually going to, well it might, but you can't measure the academic achievement

but it's about people's well -being and self -respect and being able to start school with a decent

uniform isn't it?

How do you measure that?

It's qualitative but we can try.

Councillor Sweet, do you want to come back?

I do recognise there's been a change to the way LSCs operate, but I just don't understand

the purpose of this discussion if all we're doing is talking about schemes that have already

been decided on without any evidence of what they've actually done for young people.

Well it was for information, which is an information paper.

Because otherwise, because we're now limiting the topics, the committee doesn't really get

to see all the wonderful work that's going on, so it's just to give you a little flavour

of all the fantastic work that's going on all the time.

Because that's not the way the question is anymore, I'm afraid.

But if you want, as I understand this committee,

you could say, we think in six months time you ought to be x, y, z.

And this committee could have a task and finish group

to decide what you want to do in the future and recommend to me.

But the existi -

It's a waste of time.

It's not a debate.

It's for information.

And you can ask us questions.

But it's not a debate anymore.

Sorry, can I just come in from the chair?

I do understand your questions, Councillor Sweet.

And we're in the early days of this new form of scrutiny.

And I, as the chair of this committee, I take the scrutiny that we need to do really, really seriously.

And particularly for children, because we have statutory duties here as well.

So when we just had three papers, I felt that that wasn't, in fact, it was initially only two.

and I felt that that wasn't enough.

It's because we're in the early days of this,

the next paper we're gonna look at is the work programme,

and I asked for that to come to committee,

and it will come to every committee,

because attached to that are the papers

that come to November committee.

So for the first time, the minority party

is going to see the papers that come to November committee.

Now, I know we don't know what we don't know,

if you know what I mean.

We can't ask about things that we don't know or papers we don't see.

But as we go along, this will start to function really, really well,

because we will be able to ask for papers to come to this committee.

If the committee agrees, there are particular areas that we want to look at.

Or certainly the financial papers, I totally understand that.

Then we can ask for them to come to committee.

But it's a bit thin at the moment as we go forward some into it.

Councillor Owens, I think.

Yes, thank you.

Just following on from Councillor Sweet and trying to sort of understand the paper and

where some of the support is targeted.

Just on the breakfasts, and I'm just trying to find it here, yes.

Obviously this is something we've discussed in the past and I think we started off with something like 20 schools,

as part of the most deprived primary schools in the borough.

And we're now looking at potentially it being extended to secondary schools.

And back to Councillor Sweet's point about targeting, I always sort of understood that a lot of the Breakfast Club

was not just about the bowl of Cocoa Pops, it was also perhaps about a mother who has to be at her desk at whatever time,

or at work at sort of 8 .30 in the morning.

By the time you get to secondary school, a lot of children go to school on their own.

And I was just wondering, within this, yes, I understand you're trying to extend these

programmes for various reasons, but I would like to understand a little bit more why secondary

has been chosen as somewhere for a free breakfast.

Similarly, on the access for transport services, again, I know how difficult it is in terms

of getting qualified drivers.

I've seen it myself as I've volunteered on a lot of school trips.

But also we are in inner London.

I mean, the number of times I've taken a bunch

of five -year -olds on a red bus from the A2, A5,

Battersea Rise, wherever, to Waterloo,

and then onto a tube is numerous, but that's just a point.

And finally, on the library, the Dolly Parson Library,

which is obviously a very interesting initiative,

I was gonna ask Councillor Gasser,

with our own libraries, and this has been discussed

in the past, and I think we had a teens' call on it

a couple of months ago, one of the things I've noticed

I was delighted with GCSE results being mentioned by Councillor Boswell because my own son received

his GCSEs from a Wandsworth school only in August and it was great to see someone from

the leader's office there to take photographs of them at Bolingbroke Academy.

I was going to say, Councillor Catter, I raised this with you before, one of the huge problems

we see with the children who are trying to get their GCSE and A -level results is during

the weekends and during the school holidays, they are desperate to get into the libraries

to do some revision.

And the libraries are still closed on two days a week.

And I was just wondering, is there anything we can do in terms of back to school, perhaps

you might be able to actually get to the libraries.

They queue from 8 .30 in the morning, almost every day of the holidays and at weekends.

What are we doing to try and get the children to use the libraries, our own libraries, rather

than just Dolly Parton's Imagination Library?

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Owings.

There was a whole range of questions in there and comments and observations and questions for the cabinet member on

Why we're expanding to secondary schools on a lot of secondary

School aged children that maybe there isn't any food at home. Maybe there isn't enough food at home

I would give just off the top of my head. I don't know if one of the officers want to come back on that

and then

Councillor Gasser can come in.

Yeah, I can take that.

Yeah, hunger.

So, talk to Secretary of Headteachers.

Hunger is reported on school safeguarding systems

as issues in schools, unfortunately.

So, that's one.

And nutrition.

You know, to have a breakfast,

but something that actually will make a difference

and it's not something that the child brings in themselves.

So, that's one of the main reasons for that.

I can also talk about for trips.

again, the reason that that came out was again listening to

Teachers about how we support them schools said that they one of the barriers they had to trips was transport

Despite having a you know a great transport system, but it wasn't just it wasn't just

access to vehicles it was a driver for the big so primary schools said, you know, you might have something you don't either have a

minibus or

We've got a bus, but the person who's qualified to drive it is the premises officer, and they've

got other things to do and are not able to take smaller groups out.

And it's particularly linked to the inclusion point, actually, because this came from schools

with resource bases who said they would like the opportunity to take smaller groups out.

So it wasn't the once a year school trip for year five.

This was more regular trips with smaller groups, just with a wider range of experiences for

things that they wouldn't have had before, going to the park or going to some of the

the initial request we've had have been very local and very simple.

I can also contribute to the question on libraries, which is really interesting because this has

been something that I've been trying to do for a long time, is one of the things I think

we need to put in place, and libraries are very keen to do this, but there's some technical

issues, is to automatically enrol school children as library members.

So we can do it with data, we can use it, but the library IT provider has some particular

obstacles but we are talking to them about doing that to make every child a member of a library so that when they have their

Visits at a library they go away with their membership card, which makes them feel part of something and hopefully use the library more in the future

Thank you mr. Hippel um

So yeah on the study space for children absolutely I heard you I heard you when we spoke before the leader completely agrees with you

We are

Officers are working on this, absolutely.

We're looking at how can we do a volunteering scheme, maybe in Northcote to have that one open longer.

We're looking at what other spaces there are around the borough that we could offer to children.

If the library's full, which happens, then where is there nearby?

Is there a community hub?

Is there a residence association room?

What other family hubs?

So we're officers are working on this.

It's been the summer, so things haven't happened as fast as I would like, or you would like, or the leader would like, but things will happen.

Just following up on that, it's the saddest thing is when they're queuing from half

eight in the morning, and it could be any library in Wandsworth, and they go to different

libraries every day in the holidays, and then they don't get in, and then it's too late

to go to the next one.

You could say, well, they could do it at home.

Of course they can do it at home.

But one of the things that I've noticed is they're far more motivated to revise if they

can go to the libraries, and then they use the libraries.

And as you rightly say, the facilities of the libraries and the books and all the rest

It becomes part of the community.

And I think perhaps even an app telling them

which libraries are available at what time.

You could use GPS, I don't know.

But they should definitely be open on more days

during the week in the holidays at the very least.

Reverly, I've got.

Can I just ask a question?

It's about the engagement with the Dolly Parton's

Imagination Library.

I think this is a great initiative.

I'm sure we're all aware of the benefits

of improving literacy and reading overall.

And I read a report from the Literacy Trust

that said that children who read for pleasure

are more likely to go on and have positive experiences

of school and much improved life choices.

I'm sure that comes as no surprises.

And you've very much highlighted in paragraph three

the differences in literacy between the most deprived

children and the least deprived children. I'm quite sure a lot of

parents are going to seize on the opportunity to sign up to

this but my fear is that the parents who are more likely to sign up to it are

probably the parents who are likely to be pushing their kids to read in the first

place and my question is what are we going to do as a local authority to try

and steer this towards disadvantaged children and families who would actually

benefit from it most because obviously they're the ones from all the statistical data that would probably benefit more from the

sort of

scheme

overall

Yeah, absolutely agree

into our very first

So our communications out to families where the family's known to children services. So

You know by default that they are some of those are the most disadvantaged we have

We have just under 18 ,000 zero to five children in Wandsworth from our data.

And we've had 4 ,500 sign up thus far really quickly.

The Dolly Parton charity says that they're in a number of other London authorities, and that's the quickest sign up they've ever had.

But that first cohort, within 24 hours, there was 2 ,500 who had signed up, and that was from the children's services data.

That was without it being advertised in more the public places where the more general families would have picked it up.

So we got off to a good start, but what we've seen week on week is you have a big rise in it, and then it's just going to be incremental, incremental.

But we're working with our health visitors, so we've got nearly just under 300 births per month in the borough.

From month one, we get data on who they are and where they are, so we will write to them, get them to register.

So there'd be very targeted support from the off.

And we want to be a universal offer, but every child in Wandsworth having that same experience

of reading, it's a fantastic opportunity.

But we're also marshalling all the resources within Children's in our Children's Centres

family hubs, all our holiday activity programmes.

Wherever children are, we'll be working to make sure that we find those families.

I've got Councillor Osborne, then Davies, then Ms Wilson -Home and Councillor Jeffery.

Yeah, it is a bit of a sort of basic scrutiny question, I suppose, which is that about measurement

and assessment of what we're doing on this programme, how do we know that the extra and

expanding support for children going back to school is actually what's needed?

Pretty good question.

Each of them are different in terms of how you assess them.

Some of them are raw numbers.

So some of them are about where we are trying to find the children for food support, for uniform support.

Really that is judged by how many we reach to do that, as Councillor Gasser has just explained.

The imagination library will be different because we've got data on literacy levels in our foundation stage at the moment,

which Councillor Correlli has just said about the gap between our most and least disadvantage.

So we will be measuring that to see if it's made that difference.

We also just some basic stuff about take up and again,

comes back to your question on are the families we're targeting picking that up.

So we'll have more data on some of those as well, so you'll be interested in that from your areas.

Are we reaching all the right areas?

So we'll be reporting back on that.

And some of it where it's in school will be relying on feedback from schools.

We trust our schools.

Our school leaders will tell us quite plainly whether things are working, their partnerships

with the council are working.

And this is really quite important for them.

You may have seen in the past week that the government announced the rollout of the replacement

of Ofsted and the new school report that they will be bringing in.

And there's 11 areas within that and inclusion is one of them.

And going back to what we said earlier,

schools will not report just on in terms of inclusion

in relation to SDN, but alongside

that economic disadvantage as well.

And we talked about the way those two are overlapping

and affecting each other.

And so schools will be working with us

on how we provide data on whether those things are making

an impact.

Yeah, and also to add on to that, I think for me,

things like school uniform, is really big for child self -confidence and their sense of belonging to establishment as well.

Getting children into school, because breakfast clubs do that, they get them into school.

And so therefore another thing we could look at is school attendance, which for me is something I'm really, really focused on.

I think it's something that the government, we know from our engagement meeting with Ofsted, attendance is a massive thing.

It has been for a long time and it will continue to be a huge thing.

And in terms of impact, there is so

much evidence that connects attendance to outcomes for children.

So therefore, I think that sense of belonging, that sense of pride,

getting children into school is a starting point, looking at attendance figures.

And then with good attendance, that leads to better outcomes.

So I think there's definite links there.

Thank you.

I've got Councillor Davies next.

I was actually going to talk about the, you know, about the Dolly party loads that have

been about enrichment and joy, about culture and speech and language.

You know, I love this universal offer.

And I know there's quite a lot of buzz in the community and in the voluntary sector,

like Learn to Love to Read and Home Start about this as well, and, you know, and particular

parents.

But I don't have the question because it's been answered, it's about tracking.

Thank you very much.

I have got Ms. Wilson home and then Councillor Jaffee.

Yes, my question was about tracking as well, so that's fine.

Thank you very much.

And Councillor Jaffee.

Thank you, Chair.

It's just a point of clarification.

So when we talk about school trips and then access for all transport service, is this

for all schools or is it for send provision mainly?

It's for schools.

It will mainly be taken up by primary schools.

Secondary schools and special schools tend to have richer transport options and the request

particularly was from primary schools and primary schools with resource spaces.

Because I'm just assuming, I mean, these busses are mostly like for smaller groups and normally

when children go on trips, it's normally like the whole year group or two classes going together.

So it wouldn't be suitable for two class groups in one go, no?

No, so I say it was for smaller groups to be able to be taken out on a more regular basis.

And we've been able to provide that because these are the busses that we use for SCN transport.

So they deliver children to special schools in the morning.

They pick them up in the afternoon.

But in between we were utilising that capacity at very low cost and very simply to meet a need of our schools

Thank you, and I just want to say that's a great idea

Especially as we're coming towards the winter month and in terms of travelling and the rain

I mean, you know how the what British weather is and so so need I say anymore?

So yes, it's great that we've got this provision and we're not the children not just stuck in school the whole time. So it's great

Um, I think I've got councillor Burchill next

Mr. Wilson home

Miss her in thank

Wonder I was confused

My question is regarding

inclusive learning environment page number 29 .6

Please, could you elaborate on the planned delivery model for this initiative?

And is there any dedicated budget allocated for the delivery of this programme?

For example, you talk about the iPad.

So will the cost covered by the local authority or the scope?

Thank you.

Neither, fortunately.

So this is funded.

We're very lucky to have Global Tech Company in the borough, Apple, and we've become part

of what is called their Community Education Initiative.

It's a global programme.

And as I said, we've been in this for the third year now that we're within that programme.

And they provide a grant to us to fund devices in schools and teaching and training for their

children and their teachers.

So, when we talked about inclusive learning environments, what we're looking to see is

by use of accessibility on the iPad, which would be one to one for the learners, what

do we learn from that?

And how do we make that environment that they're within, you know, where schools always use

computers, you know, they use computers, but can we use them in a way that makes the environment

that they're in more inclusive?

So, can it help?

It will help our nonverbal children have a voice.

For example, it might help with communication.

It will help with vision issues.

It will help with cognitive issues.

But do our teachers know how to utilise those and get the best out of them?

Not just our teachers, but our therapists and all those people working with, you know,

in our resource spaces as well.

So that's why we mean about creating more inclusive learning.

But from that, we can share that with all our other schools as well.

Thank you.

I've got Councillor Crivelli.

Can I ask a question?

And you mentioned uniform support and the extension of the access for all cohort.

And I think that that's a really sound initiative to try and

help those who would be struggling with the cost of uniform overall.

I can't help but have noticed recently with schools going by, the social media is very much alive with

a great number of parents berating the cost of school uniforms overall.

And obviously a number of these parents are people who aren't eligible for any assistance at all.

I do appreciate that schools defend their own unique identity and

are very keen to try and maintain their uniforms.

I know that we've talked about this before, and I know the government itself has actually tried some initiatives on this by trying to limit the number of branded items

that they want schools to have as part of the uniforms overall.

But are we as ones who are still engaged with schools, trying to put a bit of pressure on them,

to be mindful of the overall cost of uniforms

and whether or not they really needed to have

certain items with the logo on it

when an alternative is available?

Short answer, yes.

So I think a couple of years ago,

Lisa and I spent a bit of a summer

trawling through all schools' uniform policies

to look at whether they were in line with the guidance

when they first announced a reduction

in number of branded items that they could have.

There's further guidance about to come out, actually,

which reduces that even further.

And generally the primary scores are pretty good

because they can have a fairly standard uniform

which might have a badge that you buy

that seems to be sewn on.

Secondaries are slightly trickier

because there's probably a few more branded items

and more PE kit and different elements

that are ties and blazers, et cetera, that come in.

But our primary scores are generally pretty good on that.

Councillor Owens.

Sorry, just following on from that.

Have you in the past, when you were looking at this and looking obviously at the new programme

on school uniforms, looked at individual schools and what they do in terms of second -hand uniform?

Because obviously, I mean, my experience in Wandsworth has always been that the second -hand facility has always been fantastic.

That at the same time, if you give your children's uniform back at primary and secondary to the school,

the beginning of every year, they always have families they just give it to.

It doesn't even go via the shop.

And obviously they give them the best of what's handed back.

And I'd just be curious, because I would have thought, I've always thought it was a fantastic facility.

You never needed to buy anything new.

Shoes, of course, are an issue.

And I've just bought the second pair of one of my son's shoes today when I bought him a new pair I knew in August.

It wasn't great.

But some of the schools actually have very cheap shoes.

They have sort of 30 pound, who knew, 30 pound, you know, very good shoes.

I just wondered if you had done a piece of work on the secondhand aspects of school uniform.

The same as you.

Schools have really good provisions.

When we spoke to them about how we support them with this, most of them said we have

got fantastic provision.

The PTAs or school staff themselves if they haven't, the school office for example, if

they haven't got a PTA in place.

Some schools have got, they will proudly show you their shed outside where they have got

all of their uniform.

Shoes are an issue.

We haven't got solutions to that.

We looked last year probably at also bringing repair.

So we had a uniform support offer for new.

We had second hand and then we thought,

was there something we can do,

which was more around avoiding clothing

going to the dump or whatever.

So we did approach schools about a repair option.

A few of them are interested

and we have got some fantastic practise at Oasis.

There's a charity that works out of Oasis School down in Putney that do that, but we

haven't had much take up from many of our other schools.

Thank you, Mr. Hippel.

So if there are no more questions, do we note this report?

We'd note it for information.

Thank you.

5 Work Programme Report (Paper No. 25-318)

And we can move to the final paper, which I've already alluded to in an answer to Councillor

the work programme.

This references the new way of doing scrutiny,

task and finish groups, reports,

that will be coming to this committee.

It's the same paper probably as we have before

with a few tweaks.

We can certainly ask questions on it,

although we don't have anybody from Democratic Services

in the room who could answer those questions,

but we could get answers for you.

The main thing I wanted to draw your attention to,

and Councillor Sweet, this is very relevant

to what you were asking about being able to scrutinise.

So you will see on page seven that at the next committee.

I'm very sorry to interrupt you.

I don't think we have a further paper in our packs.

I'm so sorry.

It's because I asked for it to come to committee.

It wasn't with the agenda, but it was emailed out as supplementary agenda.

And it's been published.

It's really the same paper as we had at the committee before.

But on page seven, you can see the papers that are coming to November OSC, and then

you can see the papers coming to February OSC.

And that's what I wanted to particularly draw your attention to.

So although we've only had three papers at this OSC as we get started on this new form

of scrutiny. At November OSC, we will have a report from our Task and Finish group on

violence against women and girls led by Councillor Dobras. I'm very much looking forward to that.

There will be an update on the EHCP Task and Finish group that we've already discussed.

And then we get the annual complaints report, a very important paper that we have that here

committee because it's there, but we all spot things that may be not going so well.

And we can, with the new form of scrutiny, take a deeper dive on that. And then going

to February, we will have mainstream school standards, which was what the

minority party asked for a deep dive into this, and that will come to the

February committee that can be a task and finish group. It can also be a report

That councillors would be able to input into

Councillors week we probably need to speak about that

Not immediately. It's February, but how we plan that who leads who's going to be on it

And and how you want to manage it because I know

that

people in full -time jobs, it's very hard to be also doing these task and finish

groups, so it can just be a report that you would have inputted into if that

works better. We'll have schools finance, the education performance report, general

fund capital allocations, we'll have the annual review of charges and the work

programme again. So I just wanted that to come to committee so that to help maybe

you feel more confident that we haven't entirely thrown scrutiny out of the window.

There's going to be a lot of opportunity to scrutinise,

but it's going to be in different ways

and maybe we need to think more about that, how that scrutiny happens.

You can also ask for an area of interest to come to this committee to scrutinise.

Yes, Councillor Owens.

Thanks for that.

I was just interested in the Task and Finish Group

on violence against women and girls.

I was just wondering what that will be about

in the context of schools.

Thank you.

Councillor Dobris, as you're leading,

would you like to answer?

Yeah, of course.

So we've got Councillor Lindsay Hedges

and Councillor Caroline and Delisa Jule

on that as well with us.

We met for the first time a couple of weeks ago

and we agreed to focus on prevention involved,

which is why it's coming to both health.

It's gonna probably come to housing as well

and to children's because we're looking at

preventing violence against women and girls before it gets worse.

Under the Domestic Abuse Act, children are now victims of domestic abuse in their own right.

So there's kind of new provisions that came out a couple of years ago about actually when a child is in a domestic abuse household,

they themselves are a victim of domestic abuse.

So how we can safeguard children earlier on in the journey and prevent children experiencing domestic abuse.

So that'll be kind of a key element.

Training schools for young men and boys

about how to prevent misogynistic behaviour

so that that doesn't become abusive behaviour in later life.

Things about street safety, school safety,

having conversations about consent.

All of that kind of stuff crosses over into children's.

So I hope that's helpful.

I was just gonna ask, is there a particular focus

on children in care?

You know, the children that obviously

we're corporate parents responsible for within Wandsworth?

Or is that sort of, or is it sort of children,

back to your point about the ACT Parliament

or the domestic setting, is that that's all children

it's in terms of the domestic setting?

So we're doing what we did today,

which is coming up with key lines of inquiry.

So at the moment, it's how we prevent violence

kept so many girls in Wandsworth,

and there'll be lots of different key lines of inquiry.

So if there's particular things that you've just said

that you're interested in, I'm really happy

to consider those as part of the group.

Because it might be worth, because obviously we have our meetings, obviously you would do more on this, but with the safer neighbourhood teams and that sort of thing.

And that's broken down, domestic instances are broken down within that.

And I guess a lot of that is data, isn't it?

You working with the police and perhaps, it's not an area I know a huge amount about,

but I'd be interested to see some of the data within Wandsworth on children.

But I have my own sort of, be it my point, particularly with muggings and the breakdown of that and theft.

Because they're thinking all that statistic needs to come to Wandsworth because we have huge bonds with it children mugging. Thank you

Thank you very much. I can't owns

If there aren't any more questions. Yes

And so obviously not being one of the political parties that haven't had any input into any of these

subjects so, you know that that's absolutely fine and but

It strikes me that this is very educational heavy, which is fantastic

But one of the things we've done a lot about over the last year or two have been more of

the sort of social work aspects and just sort of noneducational aspects of children.

So for example, when we've heard from some of the youth mayors and so on, I was just

wondering how that might still fit in or whether that wasn't of so much interest anymore.

That's a very good question.

I know it absolutely is because obviously it's children services and education.

The split is obviously for the parent governors and yourselves to take part in task and finish

groups where we're looking at education.

So if we have a report or task and finish on school standards, then absolutely you would

be invited to be part of that.

It will come in the form of expert witness,

so if we're deep diving into various areas,

absolutely the voice of the child,

the voice of young people front and centre,

so it will come in that way.

And today we've had a lot of papers, the back to school,

a lot of that is about children's services

and not so much education.

So that definitely hasn't fallen off the agenda.

Yes, it just didn't seem to be so obvious in these particular reports, but maybe it will be there.

Yes, thank you very much. I really appreciate the question. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. Let's end the meeting.

Thank you very much.

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Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 16 September 2025, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Children's Overview and Scrutiny CommitteeTuesday, 16th September 2025 at 7:30pm

Agenda

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Votes

1 Declarations of Interest

2 Minutes, 25th June 2025

3 Drivers of EHCPs and the experiences of young people and professionals throughout the process (Paper No. 25-301)

4 Back to School 2025 Programme (Paper No. 25-302)

5 Work Programme Report (Paper No. 25-318)

4 Back to School 2025 Programme (Paper No. 25-302)

5 Work Programme Report (Paper No. 25-318)

Children's Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 16th September 2025 at 7:30pm