SEND Services Team Restructure

What is the SEND Service?

SEND Services manage the Education, Health and Care assessment process and create Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). The team also manage Annual Reviews to monitor the progress that children and young people are making towards the outcomes listed in their EHCP, and to ensure that their plan is up to date. They work with schools, health services and other agencies to coordinate the support listed in the plan. They also assist with planning for key transitions, such as moving from primary to secondary school, or preparing for adulthood.

Why are things changing?

Parent carers have told us we need to improve the EHCP process. The main issues are:

• parent carers can’t get in contact with casework officers when they need to
• EHC Needs Assessments and Annual Reviews are not always completed quickly enough (including within the statutory timescales)
• the quality of EHCPs is not good enough

This is not something we’re doing to save money – this is about making the improvements that parent carers have been telling us we need to make.

What are the key changes?

You can see the current and new team structures on the SEND Local Offer website. 

• we have an additional 4 EHCP Co-ordinators, 1 Team Managers, 1 Senior EHCP Co-ordinator, 2 Initial Screening and Contact Officers (ISCOs) and a second Complaints Officer
• we have split the teams into ‘Pre-14’ and ‘Post-14’ in different areas of the county – so children and young people will be allocated to a team and EHCP Co-ordinator based on how old they are and where they live
• this means EHCP Co-ordinators can focus on the specific needs of these educational phases and make sure EHCPs and Annual Reviews include the right support for that stage of life
• we’re introducing a Postcode Finder to allow families to find out which team their child is allocated to
  • each team will have its own email address and phone number, so if an EHCP Co-ordinator changes or is hard to reach, families can still contact the team for support
• Casework Officers are now going to be called ‘EHCP Co-ordinators’ as families reported back to us that they didn’t like children being referred to as a ‘case’
• we will now have one Group Manager and one Practice Manager
  • the Group Manager will focus on strategic changes (e.g. looking at how to make improvements to the whole EHCP system)
  • the Practice Manager can focus on day-to-day activity to make sure EHCPs are good quality and completed on time
• we have introduced a 11-week induction programme for new EHCP Co-ordinators to ensure they are fully trained before they start working on children’s EHCPs

Additional changes to improve social care input into EHCPs

We now have a Designated Social Care Officer (DSCO) for SEND who will make sure all children and young people with social care needs will have those documented in their EHCP. They will make sure the social care advice in EHCPs is clear, accurate, and useful, so families and professionals understand what support is needed and how it will be provided.

For children and young people who are not already open to social care, our two new ISCO’s will play a central and important role in our service. They will talk to families to gather the child’s social care needs to support decision making, work with partner agencies and ultimately develop person centred advice to inform the Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) process.

When will the changes be made?

We will be moving children and young people to their new teams during June and July. Families can continue to contact their current EHCP Co-ordinator and the SEND Services Team via the usual channels and will be updated as/when things change.

The new team structure will be fully in place from 1st September 2025.