Dorothy Hadleigh to present – paper attached.

Dorothy Hadleigh presented a paper on high cost SEN placements.

The education component for joint funded placements has a budget of £763k (£940k in 2015/16) with a forecast outturn of £613k (£715k in 2015/16), due to a reduction in the number of children placed in provisions outside of the Local Authority. (11 this year, down from 19 last year).

Independent School Placements are currently monitored by caseworkers half termly. It was noted that whilst there was no significant increase in the number of school age placements, the number of post 16 placements had almost doubled over the last three years, largely due to the change in legislation requiring statements to now run until the age of 25.

Due to these being funded through the DSG, it was agreed that a deeper analysis of spending is required; Andy Dempsey, Dorothy Hadleigh, Lisa Finn and Rachael Williams will liaise on this.