Last week my fellow ALIGN Executive Board Member, @dralexandragray, and I were invited to participate in one of the DfE\u2019s \u2018deep dives\u2019 into an aspect of the proposed SEND reforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The session was focused on ways in which children on EOTAS packages (Educated Other Than At School) can be supported under the proposed SEND changes. When the Education White Paper: Every Child Achieving and Thriving<\/em>, was published in April this year, the policy framework relating to EOTAS was omitted pending further consultation and research; the online deep dive forum we attended was part of that process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the dozen or so participants, with the exception of Alex and I, all were representatives of hospital schools or services which support hospital schools. There was an in depth discussion of challenges faced by children on EOTAS packages because they are too ill to attend school, and of the ways in which their needs can continue to be met through the reformed SEND system. There was a recognition of increasing need for these packages; of the lack of clarity around how Section 19 and Section 61 duties are managed from local authority to local authority and of the ways in which this can impact children.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The group, consisting primarily, as it was, of hospital school leaders, there was little attention given to the experiences of children with, for example, SEMH needs and\/or diagnosed\/undiagnosed neurodiversity. Those of us in the NSAP sector are well aware that many of the children we work with face equally intractable barriers to attending school, and their needs may well be best met under the new reforms through an EOTAS package, some may\u00a0 have one already. Alex was able to make the point that of all the children we used to work with when we ran an NSAP, none would have coped, much less thrived, under the Universal, Targeted or Targeted Plus layers of support set out in the SEND reform consultation:\u00a0 Putting Children and Young People First. <\/em>ALIGN members are very well placed to speak to the current experience of providers in the sector and the children and families they support. We would urge the DfE to consider running an additional session with\u00a0 more NSAP representation so that we can contribute to the discussion on behalf of children whose SEMH needs are best met\/only met in settings other than at school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week my fellow ALIGN Executive Board Member, @dralexandragray, and I were invited to participate in one of the DfE\u2019s \u2018deep dives\u2019 into an aspect of the proposed SEND reforms. The session was focused on ways in which children on EOTAS packages (Educated Other Than At School) can be supported under the proposed SEND changes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leadwithintegrity.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}