Members were shown the Safety Valve progress report that is produced by the LA for monitoring purposes. Rachael explained that she wanted Forum members to have the opportunity to say what else would they want to see as part of our monitoring and tracking moving forward as well.

The first point to note is for the first time, Torbay has seen a reduction in the number of Education, Health and Care plans this year, down to 1570 plans (just two above the target figure of 1568). This is a significant reduction. It's really been focused on that ceasing work but also actually managing the request coming through the front door. Whilst Requests for Statutory Assessments were reducing at the end of the last academic year, we are now starting to see an increased rate of Request for Statutory Assessments coming back through in January and February. The LA is doing some detailed work and we've put built this into our dashboards to understand the referral source for the RSA's i.e. is this from parents or from schools and what is the make up of those RSA requests.

Members were pleased to note that the refusal rate has also increased this time as well. In January we saw a refusal rate compared to the submissions of 40%. we're being really, really robust in actually how a Request for Statutory Assessment should be awarded within Torbay. We need to see the request coming down aligned with actually the implementation of the graduated response and the graduated response has been piloted across the local area. Rachael gave thanks to colleagues and schools that gave some really good feedback. We've now met as a graduated response group to take all that feedback and read and look at those documents and get them ready for publication from June onwards. It was noted that the areas where there were most feedback in the pilot was on social, emotional, mental health and autism provision. It is anticipated that the Graduated Response will support everybody's understanding of the threshold for a Request for Statutory Assessment.

Tribunals and appeals are now being tracked as well. The LA is being very robust in our decision making around that and also pushing back and going to tribunal when we feel that we've got a really good case to defend, but also using our global mediations and more to actually challenge those decisions as well. We've put in also a new process of next steps meetings within the local area. So when a request is refused, meetings are being held with schools, parents and a caseworker to explain what the next steps are for that child, and why a plan isn’t needed and how confidence can be built about the provision without having an EHCP.

The biggest challenge in our safety valve progress remains with our health contributions to our EHCPs. Huge amounts of work is being undertaken, including actually direct work with the Integrated Care Board and the most senior level colleagues around how they make available a budget within the integrated care organization for their contributions into education, health and care plans. Rachael confirmed that the Chief Executive also held a SEND summit with all of those and colleagues yesterday as well, to make our health colleagues are also aware that this forms part of our safety valve agreement and is being reported in that way.

Members asked whether there is a budget figure that we need them to identify which actually fits in with this overall plan for the safety valve, feeling that it would be frustrating if we overspent and it was an amount of money which Health should have contributed but haven't. It was explained that the LA has a budget and the detailed work has been done about how many plans should have a health contribution. This has been done both historically and for the current plans within the system. The LA would seek to bring in approx. £100,000 each year, but that's based on a very complex criteria.

Members then asked what would be considered the biggest risks of us not meeting our agreement.

Currently this would be the Independent Placements and the need to manage those really carefully. It was also felt that Element 3 and the EHCP top ups, as well as Bespoke Packages that children are placed on, are also areas where we can make the most significant reductions.

Rachael showed to members the Safety Valve dashboard used to monitor refusal rates and other data. It was asked whether this can be shared with members electronically, this will be done on a monthly basis.

The Forum gave thanks to Rachael and colleagues, noting the progress that has been made.