“The EHCP tool is excellent for providing macro and in-depth insights”, reports Middlesbrough Council

As brand new adopters of our Invision360 EHCP audit tool, we caught up with Middlesbrough Council’s SEND Quality Officer, Rachel Martin, and Resources Strategy Officer, Robert Douglas, to gather their initial impressions.

Although it is very early days, we are delighted to hear that the tool is already supporting the team in making targeted improvements.

To find out a little more about the direction they are heading in, our Marketing Manager, Lydia Polom asked them five quick questions, and here’s what they had to share.

1. Could you tell us about your local authority and the SEND team?

“Our SEND Assessment and Review Team sit within our wider Inclusion and Specialist Support Service which supports children and young people between the age of 0-25. The team provide support and advice to children, young people, families, and other professionals and ensures that all statutory processes are followed as outlined within the SEND Code of Practice.

“The team work together with parents, professionals, families, children, and young people to gather their views in order to write an effective individualised Education, Health and Care plan (EHCP) that includes good quality outcomes for the child to work towards.  

“Alongside this, the team supports arranging the appropriate special educational provision to be identified either within their current setting or sourcing new provision.

“The team also represent the Local Authority at statutory annual, interim, transition and multi-agency reviews.”

2. Can you explain what the QA process for your EHCPs was like before introducing Invision360?

“Before introducing the Invision360 EHCP audit tool, our EHCP quality assurance process was paper-based with a multi-agency SEND audit element.

“There was no digital process for bringing the results together or for large-sample analysis to identify themes, which made it difficult to identify areas for improvement and inform a learning and quality cycle.

3. Invision360 is a big change for your local authority. How did you find the onboarding process?

“The training on how to use the Invision360 EHCP tool was very useful. We had a couple of different training sessions. One was around the administration and reporting side, and another for case officers on how to use the tool.

“The reporting tool is gives us an overview of how we are doing with plan quality. It also allows us to easily track metrics such as the number of checks that have been completed as well as analysing trends by section or cohorts, which informs our learning and quality cycle and enables us to make targeted interventions.”

4. We realise it’s early days but what impact has the Invision360 EHCP already had?

“Already, it has highlighted some changes for us to make to our plan template, methodology and evidenced areas of development for action within social care. It has also helped us to identify some ‘quick fixes’ and ‘easy wins’ – things that we can easily address.”

5. How has the tool changed the auditing process for you?

“From a reporting and data management point of view, the tool is excellent for providing macro and in-depth insights. It allows us to look at auditing as a whole rather than in isolated deep dives.”

To find out more about any of our QA tools or to arrange a complimentary demo, please visit our contact us or book a demo pages!

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