Children and young people in Gateshead waiting too long for special educational help, say inspectors
Accessing special educational needs or disability (SEND) services for children and young people in Gateshead is taking too long, say independent inspectors.
A joint report by the Quality Care Commission (CQC) and Ofsted found that “too many” of Gateshead’s children and young people are waiting for speech therapy, occupational therapy and neurodevelopmental assessments. A Gateshead Council report in May had previously also found that demand for SEND services, including speech therapy and Autism Spectrum Disorder, has increased consistently for three years.
The report stated: “Too many children and young people wait longer than they should for specialist services such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and neurodevelopmental assessments. Leaders have limited oversight of the significant waits that children and young people experience.
“This has a negative impact on the progress that children and young people make and on the identification of appropriate provisions to meet their needs.”
Council documents from January this year revealed that out of the 27,148 children and young people in Gateshead, 4,478 have some form of special educational need or disability – equating to 16.5%. Other documents also revealed Gateshead Council has a backlog of 335 residents awaiting assessments for occupational therapy assessments.
In response to the assessment, Helen Fergusson, director of children’s services and lifelong learning at Gateshead Council, said: “We are ambitious for our young people with SEND and are dedicated to supporting them to reach their full potential. The report recognised that Gateshead is committed to giving children and young people the best start in life and that our multi-agency teams across education, health and social care are able to effectively provide positive outcomes for many young people with SEND.
“However, we recognise that too many children are still struggling to access the support they need, due to increasing demand and the impact this has on wait times and staff capacity across services. To address this, we will look to increase our capacity to offer the support and continue improving our partnership approach so that it’s as easy as possible to provide specialist support for young people and their families.
“We have an open dialogue with service users, parents and carers to continuously improve our local offer and will work closely with the ICB Integrated Care Board to address the recommendations of the report.”
Councillor Gary Haley, cabinet member for children and young people at Gateshead Council said: “At Gateshead, we’re constantly striving to improve our services for children and young people with SEND.
“Being able to support our young people to thrive is our top priority and we would like to thank the parents, carers and young people across our communities for responding to the consultation in significant numbers. Their contributions will ensure that the updated strategy includes the voice of our community and will enable our local partnership to continue improving our services.”
The next full SEND inspection will take place within approximately three years.