Local area Ofsted and CQC SEND inspection
In February 2025, Lincolnshire local area partnership was subject to an inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. The inspection found that Lincolnshire “should strengthen the effectiveness of its communication with stakeholders”
The partnership should:
- engage with education professionals to inform them about the partnership’s systems and processes to support children and young people with SEND effectively
- ensure parents and carers are well informed about the partnership’s provision to support children and young people with SEND. This includes ensuring that the local offer is accessible and understandable
- ensure that parents and carers understand the range of activities and services available to children and young people. This includes support for next steps in education and towards adulthood, access to community activities, availability of transport and health care
The local area partnership recognises the need for further improvements to all of the communication channels including the local offer and an improvement plan has been established to ensure parents and carers have access to appropriate and up to date SEND information, which is accessible and easy to navigate.
As part of the improvement plan, the local offer working group have been responsible for the implementation of the local offer action plan and have undertaken the following activities to support improvements:
- LO working group completed a comparative exercise by reviewing other partnerships Local Offers deemed high quality in Local Area Inspection Reports to better understand areas for development locally
- baseline review of Local Offer was undertaken by Lincolnshire Young Voices, with local education settings to provide fair and honest feedback on quality of Local Offer
- the findings were reviewed to support developments to continue to co-produce, inform and shape a strengthened Local Offer
- the findings of the Lincolnshire Parent Carer Forum annual survey was also considered when identifying areas of focus for improvement
The activities have helped identify the areas for development on the Local Offer and a plan to implement these improvements is now in place.
