Background and Rationale

The government’s plans to expand childcare for school age children creates a significant risk of legal challenge to Local Authorities (LAs) if places for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) secured. There are currently significant gaps in the national strategy, and a lack of resources to support wraparound providers to deliver for this group.

Statistics show that children with SEND are, already, far less likely to access the early years entitlement, let alone accessing childcare once they reach school age. In some areas, fewer than 45% of children with SEND access their full early years entitlements. Research demonstrates that this figure is likely to increase as children start school, with school age childcare even more difficult to find. This situation impacts on child development and likely outcomes for children and young people, as well as parental employment, household finances and adult mental health, widening the gap between those families with children with SEND and those without.

Your Council are leading the way in considering this group of children with SEND now, evidencing that they are taking reasonable steps to secure sufficient places. Nationally, workforce development has been identified as a key gap. This can be supported locally whilst the case for improved direct resource is made nationally.

How Will We Support You To Take Reasonable Steps?

Whilst direct resource is key to inclusion, we also know that there has been huge success through supporting inclusive practice by upskilling the workforce, focusing on confidence, skills, practical ideas and resources. For example, in the early years, the Dingley’s Promise Comic Relief funded inclusion programme has (at the time of writing) trained over 15,000 practitioners nationally. Feedback from those who complete the training remains consistently positive with 96% reporting they can take more children with SEND as a result. 99% feel more confident as a result of the training.

This project aims to deliver training to support wraparound provision to be inclusive and safe as well as supporting business skills to implement sustainable change. Three course offers have been developed;

• Basic inclusive practice training for all those working in the wraparound sector. This course is online and accessed at providers convenience.
• Training on safeguarding issues which are most likely to arise in the wraparound sector. This course is online and accessed at providers convenience.
• A Behind the Behaviour course which has been designed to empower all wraparound staff – whether paid or voluntary – to confidently understand and support children and young people’s behaviour.
• Business planning for success, ensuring a focus on inclusion throughout, for managers, leaders, committees and owners. This course is delivered live but online to support accessibility, it is offered during day time and the evening to enable participation by the widest audience possible.

Engagement with the sector, an area that the team has significant experience in, will be crucial in shaping the design and delivery of these courses. Further engagement sessions will also be offered to help launch the project and support positive engagement.

Peer learning sessions will aim to create deadlines for completion of activities, enabling forum for consolidating learning and identifying good practice and sharing that back with the LA.

We will also work with you to develop a bundle of resources as a reward for those who complete the courses along with a recognition system for any WA provider who completes all three courses. Training completion can then be identified by families as they choose provision, which in turn will support greater engagement, and parent (demand) led change.

Evaluation of improved confidence and impact will also be critical to continually improve inclusive practice locally and ensure key measures are in place for the local authority.