The National Children’s Bureau is delighted to announce that the Raising Rochdale Integrated SEND Team, along with NCB family member the Council for Disabled Children, has won the Public Sector Children’s Team Award, at the CYPNow Awards.
The prestigious award presented at the Children and Young People Now Awards 2022, shines a spotlight on the journey that Rochdale, with the support of the Council for Disabled Children (CDC), has undertaken to embed an outcomes-based approach to commissioning.
In January 2021 CDC began to support the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Team in Rochdale with their ambitious work to develop an integrated service for children and young people with SEND.
Prior to this, Rochdale did not have a Strategic Outcomes Framework and parts of the system were working in siloes without a clear picture of their collective impact.
Now, Rochdale has created a multi-agency alliance to improve support and outcomes for their 5,913 children and young people who require SEND support.
With the support of CDC, the alliance has mapped out early intervention offers to recognise gaps and patterns, and developed a strong information-sharing system.
Jackie Woodall, Children’s Quality and Safeguarding Manager at Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Integrated Care Partnership said: “The Council for Disabled Children has been an asset in working with Rochdale supporting our journey to achieving our SEND vision.”
Children and young people’s outcomes were at the heart of this work and the team has consulted with families to create a shared vision of the future with a set of outcomes and measures which ensure progress.
Since the creation of the alliance, more children are receiving early intervention and support, and more professionals are accessing training.
The team has reduced waiting times for autism diagnosis and support, enhanced the input of young people, and commissioned three new peer-led projects.
Amanda Allard, Deputy Director at the Council for Disabled Children, said: “It has been a joy to work with Rochdale. They have such a committed team who have worked tirelessly to improve the way that the SEND system works for children and young people. I know they will see this award not as the endpoint but as a catalyst to support further improvement.”
Whilst Rochdale received support from CDC, the continued success of the project is attributable to the strong local ownership across different agencies, an ambitious senior leadership team, and the engagement of people with lived experience across the design, planning and implementation of the project.
