The challenge
Consultancy+, which is part of Reed Talent Solutions, was asked to support a local authority which was struggling with a backlog of overdue Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) annual reviews, resulting in their service receiving a high number of complaints that were escalating to tribunals.
When the project began the local authority was in a difficult position:
Seventy-two per cent of annual reviews were not being completed within 12 months.
Annual review meetings were taking place, but there was no capacity among the workforce to amend EHCPs afterwards.
An improved EHCP template had been introduced, but a lot of plans had gone through multiple reviews without being transferred onto the new template.
The authority was in a position where, despite having increased the size of their permanent and interim workforce, there simply wasn’t capacity to cope with the more than 5,000 annual reviews they needed to undertake yearly, alongside a growing number of new assessment requests. For the council, it was important our solution:
Ensured continuity for children and families in their contact with the local authority.
Delivered consistently high-quality draft plans, ready to be sent out.
Involved the switching of plans to the new template, as this was highlighted as necessary by Ofsted.
The solution
We decided that to ensure continuity of contact for children and families, and that maximum value was added by our team, the existing workforce within the local authority would continue to undertake annual review meetings.
The role of our team was to examine annual review bundles, ensure the information was detailed enough to produce legally compliant EHCPs, complete necessary amendments in the voice of the child, switch plans to the new template where necessary, and record all progress on the casework system.
To make sure we could solve the above problems for the local authority, we took the following steps:
Engaged a pool of annual review officers who were highly experienced in completing annual reviews, for whom we completed full referencing for at least the last three years.
Implemented a quality assurance (QA) layer in the form of a full-time QA lead to check every plan. The QA lead brought stability to the consistency of quality across the project.
Structured the project on a per plan basis, so that only finalised plans were authorised for payment, which in turn improved timeliness and quality.
The results
The project continued to be extended as more reviews were required, with our team starting to take on phase transfer work to help the local authority cope with seasonal demands.
We have built strong relationships with key contacts within the special educational needs and disability (SEND) service at the local authority, and having helped to clear initial backlogs, continue to work with them in a scaled-down manner on incoming annual reviews, where their workforce does not have enough capacity.
Two annual review case managers are working with our client to provide support with their ongoing SEND solutions.
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