Agenda item

Martyn Owen and Emma Price, gave a presentation to the Health and Well Being Board, focussing on the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Strategy and the SEND Strategy.

The Young People’s Mental Health Strategy was based around young people’s ambitions for improvements to mental health services and aimed to develop a 24/7 platform for children and young people to access peer support and mental health and well-being resources..  The Strategy outlined five key principles, which are detailed as follows:-

·         Effective partnerships at all levels

·         Prevention and early intervention

·         Resources and expertise in the right place at the right time

·         Quality education and services as close to home as possible

·         Maximise capacity and sufficiency in all education settings

The principles underpinned the aim to ensure that children, young people and families got the right support at the right time to prevent needing statutory services to step in, and encourage the thought process that early help was there to support. Extensive consultation had been undertaken across all areas of the field to ensure that the right message was delivered in the strategy to encourage people to seek early help when and where needed.

Members were pleased to see the progress that had been made to date, and felt the strategy was strong. However, concern was still voiced as to the timescales mentioned through the course of discussion with regard to accessing support. Officers assured Members that a huge amount of work was being done and improvements were being seen, with the backlog greatly reduced and that this was in fact a problem nationally.

With regard to the SEND Strategy, the Board was given an overview of its current context in relation to Doncaster, and also, nationally. It had been acknowledged that SEND was an area in crisis across the country, and there had been a huge rise in the levels of need post pandemic meaning that costs for education, health and care plans had all increased which was a huge representation of how the Covid Pandemic had affected families.

The overspend for High Needs was projected to be £18m by 2023, and was expected to reach £60m by 2026 which was largely due to the increase in need and it was important to ensure the right provision was supplied and an understanding of great depth needed to be applied on a case by case level.

The key principles outlined above, also sat within the SEND Strategy and worked to underpin the SEND Strategic Priorities which were detailed as follows:-

·         Ensure that a graduated response is delivered coherently and consistently

·         Implement a high quality partnership wide response to needs

·         Ensure that the neurodevelopmental pathway supports the needs of all

·         Ensure that Doncaster school provision meets the needs of SEND Children

·         Deliver positive transitions for young people with SEND to adulthood

·         Improve the use of information to better inform strategic planning and joint commissioning.

Members thanked officers for their work and it was agreed that the presentation was very well articulated and the Service was approaching the issues in a multi-faceted way in order to support young people and families with their needs.

It was acknowledged that the prospective overspend was daunting and work needed to be done to bring this down, but this would be challenging with the demand for support ever rising, but it was hoped that the new framework would have some impact on this.

RESOLVED that the update be noted and the Board looked forward to receiving a further update at a future meeting.