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SEND Improvement Plan

Since January 2024, we (the SEND Local Area Partnership - covering the council and health services) have been delivering our Priority Action and Improvement Plan.

This plan was our response to the SEND inspection report for Hertfordshire, which gave us 2 "priority" areas we need to urgently fix, and 5 other areas where we must also show improvement.

We are starting to see evidence of improvement in children and young people’s experiences, but we know this is not yet consistent. This means that whilst experiences have improved for some children, young people and families, it will take time for these improvements to be felt widely. 

View our full SEND priority action and improvement plan (PDF 995kb)

If you would like a copy of the full document in another format, or a version that will be accessible to screenreaders, please email SENDStrategy@hertfordshire.gov.uk.

As part of monitoring our progress, the DfE and NHSE conduct 'deep dives' and 'stocktakes'. Ofsted and the CQC also conduct monitoring inspections.

Below you can track our key progress against the objectives.

Priority actions - the most important things the report told us to focus on

1: Improve the way we share SEND data and information across organisations, so everyone understands where to focus improvements.

More about this aim

We will use the data we have in a more intelligent way, to decide where improvements in services are needed. We will make data easier to use and learn from by making a new “dashboard”. This is one spreadsheet that everyone can view (within our organisations), where we will keep all of the key service information and numbers. We must work quickly to get this new reporting in place. 

We are putting methods in place to make sure we listen and record what children and young people tell us about their lives and services they use or need, and use this information to make improvements.

DfE and NHS recognise improvements in the quality of our SEND data (April 2025)

After a 'deep dive' activity into our use of SEND data in Hertfordshire, the DfE and NHS recognised that our use of data can now better support a range of functions, including analysis of needs, quality assurance and planning. 

Read the full detail and deep dive letter

2: Leaders from all organisations need to work together better. They need to make sure that the work done by their services is high quality.

More about this aim

This "priority action" is about leaders in the council and health services working together effectively, with delivering this improvement plan as the key focus. Leaders will set this priority across all services, so we can achieve the aims of the improvement plan as quickly as possible.

We are putting things into place to make sure that the people in positions of leadership have the best ways to find out about what is happening in their services, so they can make the right decisions. We are changing the way our meetings work to improve this. This is known as our 'governance'. 

We will give children and young people opportunities to feed into this work and make sure leaders can listen and respond to what they tell us, through their decision making.

We will create guidelines that set out the expected quality of work that services should provide. We will develop ways to check that services are working to these guidelines.

Department for Education and NHS England 'Stocktake' review (January 2025)

  • The Department for Education and NHS England conducted a ‘stocktake’ September – October 2024 to assess our Local Area Partnership’s progress in delivering our Priority Action and Improvement Plan (PAP).
  • The stocktake summary report (PDF 188kb) highlighted that we have made significant progress across the plan, including a key focus on progress across both Priority Action areas. 
  • The review confirmed that we have established much stronger governance and joint working arrangements since the inspection. It highlighted the development of the data dashboard, which will continue to be instrumental in informing the SEND work that the local area does. The review also provided clear recommendations for further focus that align with our improvement plan, which we remain committed to delivering. 
  • The report highlighted that whilst improvement work is beginning to have an impact on experiences of some children, young people, and families, it is too early for impact to be widespread.

Improvement areas - important areas the report told us to improve on.

Improvement areas 1 and 4: Address the gaps and delays in service provision for children and young people with SEND. This includes services for autism, ADHD, mental health, audiology and speech and language

We are reporting on both of these improvement areas together because a lot of the work happening in our improvement services contributes to both these aims.

More about improvement area 1

'Leaders across the partnership should address the variability in children and young people’s access to health services that exists in different areas within the local area so that all children and young people with SEND in Hertfordshire have an equal opportunity to access appropriate provision and support that meets their needs.'

We need to redesign the way we assess children and young people for autism and ADHD so it is less confusing and the process is the same across Hertfordshire. We will improve the support children and their families get while they wait for assessment and make sure everyone can find excellent support no matter which area they live in.

We also aim to more get young people aged 14+ with learning disabilities attending the annual health checks they are entitled to.

More about improvement area 4

'Leaders should further address the gaps and delays in service provision to meet the full range of needs of children and young people with SEND. This includes services for autism, ADHD, mental health, audiology and speech and language.'

We will stop waiting times from getting any longer, and make sure services exist for the things our families need help with. Over time, we will make waiting times for services shorter, but within our 18 month plan, we will "stabilise" the waiting times. Some particular things that families need more help with, and faster, are:

  • mental health
  • speech and language
  • ADHD and autism
  • audiology (hearing).

We will also make sure that when families do have to wait, they know where to get support in the mean time.

We are also helping schools to use a new tool (called Valuing SEND), which helps education staff to identify a child's needs. This can be useful as evidence when getting the right support from colleagues in health and social care, and helps the school to provide the right support to the child.

Key progress:

Children waiting for speech and language (SaLT) assessments (June 2025)

Children waiting for speech and language assessments are now being seen much more quickly. We've reduced the number of children waiting longer than 6 weeks for their SaLT EHCP report from 535 in Sep 2023 down to 18 children in Jun 2025, a 97% reduction.
There has been an improvement in the number of speech and language therapist jobs filled over the last 12 months. In Jan 2024, 25.4% of posts were unfilled, but in Jan 2025, 4% are unfilled.

Faster hearing tests for babies

All newborn Auditory Brainstem Response tests are now being completed within the 4-week target, ensuring babies with hearing needs get early support.

Waiting lists for other paediatric audiology assessments have been reducing, but are still long, and we are working with National NHS colleagues to improve in this area.

Early support for neurodiversity extended (June 2025)

The Neurodiversity Support Hub has been highly successful in providing support to families and professionals (regardless of whether or not they have a diagnosis). A previous expansion of the service led to a 19% increase in usage. The service has therefore been extended for another 3 years.

2: Improve the quality of Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) documents.

More about this aim

EHCPs need to have really good information from professionals in them about the child’s needs and how to support them. The plan must also include the wishes and views of the child.

We are employing more professionals to work on EHCPs, across a wider range of teams with specialised experience. They will have excellent training and support in the "SEND Academy". We are calling this programme, which has a £7million per year investment, "Making SEND everyone's business".

We will improve our guidelines that set out the expected quality of EHCPs. This will cover guidance for the annual review process too.

Key progress:

We know there is still more to do to improve these figures and we are working to achieve further progress all the time.

Faster annual reviews (June 2025)

More children and young people are receiving timely annual reviews. Nearly half (49%) of plan updates following annual reviews are now completed within 12 weeks (as of June 2025 for the year to date), compared to just 15% for the year in 2023.

Higher quality Plans (June 2025)

The quality of new EHC Plans has improved significantly. More than half (55%) of new plans are now rated as 'good or better' quality (in May - June 2025), compared to just 5% when we started auditing plans in July 2023. We are still working hard every quarter to further improve.

EHCP timeliness (December 2024)

We completed 54% of EHC Needs Assessments within the 20 week timeframe in 2024. This is more than the previous year (40%) and national average (50%). This performance is against a backdrop of a 27% increase in the number of EHC Needs Assessment Requests agreed for the year to the end of December 2024, meaning we have completed both more EHCPs, and more in time.

3: Make sure that children who have EHCPs are attending the right type of school for them.

More about this aim

If a child's EHCP says they need a place at a special school or other type of setting, we need to make sure the right places are available for them.

We continue to create new special school places and specialist resource provisions. We keep you up to date on this work on our page: Increasing specialist provision and school places in Hertfordshire.

We will also focus more on helping children who are out of school or with low attendance because of social, emotional and mental health difficulties.

We will improve the way we make decisions about placements for children with EHCPs, so they have the right type of school identified for them in the first place.

We will do more to track how well the existing schools and education settings we have (including alternative provision) are doing, so we know that they are effective in meeting their pupils' needs.  

Key progress:

We are developing a whole range of suitable new provisions from early years through to college, both in mainstream and specialist.

Supporting children and young people in mainstream settings (June 2025)

We have launched an Ordinarily Available Provision Guidance (PDF 838kb) for mainstream schools and settings, co-produced with them. This provides guidance on what can be expected as part of the ordinary offer in schools, to improve consistency of practice and focus on supporting more children and young people’s needs in mainstream settings. From September, schools will be provided training and support to adopt the guidance.

More specialist school places

We've opened over 550 new specialist school places since 2023 - more than double what we managed in the previous 4 years – and hundreds more are planned or being planned for 2026 and 2027.

However, demand for places continues to outstrip supply despite new places being created, and we are focussing on placing children who have been waiting the longest and have the highest levels of need.

Read about the work happening to increase specialist provision in Hertfordshire

5: We should act to address parents’ and carers’ concerns at an early stage to reduce dissatisfaction and eliminate the need for parents and carers to have to follow formal routes of complaint.

More about this aim

We need to make sure all families in Hertfordshire can find information about SEND support and services when they need it.

We also need to communicate better with families who are receiving a service. This means making sure we actively provide updates, and answer calls and emails more promptly. We want to build trusted relationships with our families to help them feel confident in the service they are receiving.

We will make a formal process for communications that all organisations must follow, and create new staff training on the importance of communicating well with families.

In particular, we want to improve parent communication, experience and expectations around the EHCP process. One way we will do this is to increase the number of staff in the EHCP team as a whole. The Making SEND Everyone's Business work (as outlined in improvement area 2) will have a huge impact on improving communication.

We will commit ourselves to learning from previous complaints, by reviewing them and addressing patterns and themes in feedback.

Key progress:

Improving communication and service satisfaction in relation to EHCPs (June 2025)

We have been working with our staff to help them adopt our Accurate, Compassionate and Timely communication standards, when they interact with young people, parent carers and settings. This has included:

  • extensive training
  • setting up a new phone line
  • arranging for each Hertfordshire school to have a link Education, Health and Care Coordinator.
Satisfaction in relation to the EHC Needs Assessment process is improving, in April - June 2025, 68% of parent carers surveyed were satisfied or very satisfied with the process. For all of 2024 - 2025, this is 60%, an increase from 51% in 23/24. We know that not all families and settings are experiencing good communications and we will keep working to improve this.

EHC Portal has opened to all new assessment requests

  • The EHC Portal, an online tracker for parents, carers and young people to access information about their EHC Needs assessment, is now available to all families in Hertfordshire who request assessment. Previously, it piloted in the West of the county.

The SEND Summit and SEND Strategy 2026 - 31

Improving the SEND system is a top priority for us under new leadership and the SEND partnership wants to focus on what matters most to young people, families, schools and settings in our next SEND Strategy.  

We announced a SEND Summit to be held in September 2025 and through Summer we held a number of engagement activities for young people, families, schools and settings to get involved and have their voice heard. What we heard will directly influence the priorities of the SEND partnership and our next SEND Strategy. 

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