SEND Strategy Governance Board

Four adults and one child sat down having a conversation.

Overview

The SEND Strategy Governance Board (SGB) has members who represent the large number of different groups and services that help and support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

It's the main job of the board to make sure that the East Sussex SEND Strategy is working.

The board:

meet at least 4 times per year
reviews and helps deliver the SEND Strategy
started in September 2022

We have created a video that introduces the SGB:

Notes from the most recent meeting:

We welcomed new members to the board:

Kirsty Eydmann - CEO of The Southfield Trust and representing Special Schools
Honor Green - East Sussex County Council Head of Finance for Children's Services
Kathy Marriott - East Sussex County Council Early Help and Social Care
Jane Flock - East Sussex County Council Joint Commissioning

We gave special thanks for service to the Board by Alex. Alex has been an ambassador for children and young people. He will be involved in guiding and helping new young people board members.

We agreed a ‘work programme’ of important issues to be considered in our final set of meetings. These meetings will take place between October 2024 and the end of 2025. The current East Sussex SEND Strategy runs to 2025. We have agreed priorities after our last meetings in 2023/2024 and after seeing sub-group reports. There have also been direct dialogues with all board members and a set of reports into important areas of SEND support. These have covered:

Early Years support,
Post 16 SEND,
Education, Health and Care Plans, and
transitioning from one educational age phase to another and one setting to another.

We also discussed the final Local Area Inclusion Plan (LAIP) submitted to the Department for Education. The LAIP was in collaboration with West Sussex, Brighton and Hove and Portsmouth. We will wait to see its future as we expect new Government policy and funding announcements. SEND support is a subject of much national discussion which will impact on our work.

Also discussed, were the challenges and opportunities relating to Theme 1 of the current East Sussex SEND Strategy. Theme 1 is 'My Voice is Heard and Acted Upon: Participation’. We examined the ways in which we can capture the voices and views of parents and carers. These views can be influential in developing important parts of SEND support, such as:

the education and health care planning process,
the offer of SEND support to children and young people in mainstream schools, and
the shaping of help and guidance through the transition from one age phase to another.

To learn more about the strategy, please visit our page on the East Sussex SEND Strategy.