Between January 31 and Feb 3, inspectors visited Dudley Council to assess its children’s services and what progress had been made within SEND (Special educational needs and disabilities) services since its last visit in 2019.
Following this 2019 visit the council and the Black Country and West Birmingham CCG had to submit a written statement of action (WSOA), which was declared fit purpose in December of that year.
In the most recent visit, inspectors recognised there had been “sufficient progress” in eight areas, previously identified as areas of weakness.
This included an improvement in embedding strategies, better co-production and engagement with parents and carers, improved understanding about inclusion in schools in Dudley and increasing the number of young people with SEND progressing into training and employment opportunities.
Inspectors, however, found that more needs to be done to be make progress in six areas including improving parent satisfaction and the management and sharing of information within EHC plans and
The report also recognised that throughout the pandemic we continued to prioritise the needs of children and young people with SEND.
Next Steps
Following the revisit in 2022, inspectors found that the Local area had made sufficient progress in eight of the fourteen areas identified at the May 2019 inspection.
The Local area was required to submit an Accelerated Progress Plan (APP) for the remaining six areas. This has now been approved by the DfE, and the plan can be viewed in the SEND Key Documents section, alongside the APP approval letter via Dudley's SEND Local Offer
In July 2019 Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission published their findings of their joint area SEND (special education needs and disabilities) inspection of services and provision that they carried out in May. The inspectors determined that a written statement of action (WSOA) or action plan was required. This was submitted to Ofsted in November and approved on 20 December 2019.
