ßÙßÇÂþ»'s Additional Needs and Disabilities (AND) Partnership brings together key partners from all the sectors that are responsible for supporting children and young people with AND. It’s the forum that ensures these various partners are held accountable for their roles and responsibilities in delivering improvements to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system.
The AND Partnership Board meets every half term, and includes representatives across Education, Health, Social Care and the Voluntary Community sector who represent the voice of families, children and young people.
The Board has committed to make every effort to overseeing and guiding all the work and improvement plans being undertaken across these different partners to support children and young people with AND and their families.
Page contents
- How does the AND Partnership Board help families?
- Who is in the AND Partnership?
- Our Commitments
- News from the AND Partnership
- AND Partnership Board meeting summaries
How does the AND Partnership Board help families?
- Listening to families: ensuring that the voices and lived experience of parents and carers, as well as children and young people with AND are listened to. Making sure that their views are represented in the improvement and development of the services across the partnership.
- Overseeing improvements: of communications between SEN case officers and practitioners to parents and carers so that families are supported to understand the system and decision-making and to feel fully involved in the journey with their child or young person.
- Reducing delays: overseeing efforts to reduce waiting times for health assessments and improve the timeliness and quality of needs assessments, EHCPs, and annual reviews.
- Evaluation: evaluating services across the partnership, to ensure they are delivering positive outcomes for children and young people, and implementing improvements wherever needed.
Who is in the AND Partnership?
ßÙßÇÂþ» Local Area Partnership includes:
- Accept, Teach, Listen, Access, Support (ATLAS) (user voice)
- Family Voice ßÙßÇÂþ» (FVS) (user voice Parent / Carer Forum)
- ßÙßÇÂþ» Youth Focus (third sector and user voice)
- SEND Advice ßÙßÇÂþ» (impartial advice)Children and Family Health ßÙßÇÂþ» (community health providers)
- Mindworks ßÙßÇÂþ» (health providers)
- ßÙßÇÂþ» Schools Forum and Phase Councils (Early Years, Primary, Secondary, Special Schools) including links to post-16 Education, Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) and Governor networks
- ßÙßÇÂþ» Heartlands Integrated Commissioning Board (ICB)
- Frimley ICB
- ßÙßÇÂþ» (children's social care including ßÙßÇÂþ» Virtual School)
- ßÙßÇÂþ» (education)
- ßÙßÇÂþ» (adult social care)
- ßÙßÇÂþ» (commissioning early years, alternative profession and AND)
- And others identified locally
Our Commitments
There are several key documents which the AND Partnership Board uses to scrutinise and help drive forward this important work. These are:
- ßÙßÇÂþ» Local Area SEND Partnership Improvement Plan (PDF)
- ßÙßÇÂþ»’s Dedicated Schools Grant ‘Safety Valve’ Agreement (2022)
- ßÙßÇÂþ»’s Inclusion and Additional Needs Partnership Strategy (2023-2026)
These three documents all support the AND Partnership's commitment to enabling ßÙßÇÂþ»'s children and young people aged 0 to 25 with AND to lead the best possible life.
News from the AND Partnership
- The Board has recently welcomed a new independent chair, André Imich, find out more on the new independent chair of Additional Needs and Disabilities (AND) Partnership article.
For further new stories, events and updates visit the families, children and young people news section.
AND Partnership Board meeting summaries
The AND Partnership Board held its half-termly meeting on Wednesday 17 September 2025. The Board considered a range of important issues and updates.
Feedback from the Department for Education (DfE)
The DfE is providing us with helpful support and challenge as we continue with the plans for improvements to the SEND service across ßÙßÇÂþ». They visited in the summer and have now set out for us three key priorities for further improvements. The AND Partnership is focused on addressing these, and has put in place several actions:
Improvement priority | Action being taken |
|---|---|
| Communication with families and schools | We have already made improvements across the SEND service, including investing in more staff and improved training and processes. We are now developing, with families, a plan for improving our communications and participation across the partnership. |
| Data Development | We are making sure that the council and health partners report on key data at every AND Partnership Board meeting. We aim to focus on feedback and qualitative data about the services that most affect our children with AND. |
| Governance Arrangements | We have updated our action plan so that we can track, monitor and evaluate progress really closely. This means that everyone in the partnership can see evidence of progress and impact. |
AND Transformation Programme
The Board welcomed the news that there has been a recent increase in the numbers of team members in the council’s AND service.
ßÙßÇÂþ»’s AND Transformation programme has been reviewed over the summer to provide a clear plan for where focus needs to lie. Current priorities are:
- Reviewing and improving the information available to families on the Local Offer website
- Focus on evaluation so that it is effectively used to measure impact
- Refresh of Governance procedures.
Performance Data
Health and council partners shared key data and updates from their areas.
- With regard to Health and Wellbeing, the number of children and young people waiting for their first appointment continues to decrease.
- The number on the waiting list for Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health (EWMH) has increased slightly from its recent minimum in May.
- Timeliness of EHC needs assessments continues to be maintained at a high level at 91% in July, and for the last six months (compared to 46% nationally).
- With over 17,000 children and young people with EHCPs in ßÙßÇÂþ», annual review timeliness is still a challenge. The number of EHCP co-ordination officers is rising from 81 to 111 as a result of the £4.9m investment by Cabinet. This will increase capacity for more timely annual reviews.
- Families are now being invited to a meeting once they have received a ‘Yes to assess’ decision, to discuss next steps collaboratively and in partnership with the SEND service, health and social care. We will be seeking feedback on this additional layer of support from families.
We are planning to have a ‘deep dive’ into Alternative Provision performance data at the next Partnership Board.
Quality Assurance Framework
We know that an effective Quality Assurance Framework is essential to ensure we have high quality and timely Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), Annual Reviews and statutory decision-making across ßÙßÇÂþ». Council and health partners have worked closely with children and young people, parents and carers, Family Voice ßÙßÇÂþ», education settings and multi-agency professionals to review and improve our Framework.
The Board considered the amended Framework and was reassured that the revised Quality Standards do set out what ‘good’ looks like, and for what the Partnership needs to hold itself to account. The Framework focuses on the impact of the Partnership’s work, in particular how that’s felt through the lived experiences of families, and what that feedback tells us about actions and improvements which are needed.
The Framework intends to move from processes and plans not just being compliant but to being excellent, and ensuring that children and their families are actively involved and fully understand the process. It will continue to evolve based on feedback.
The Board gave approval to the Framework and agreed that the AND Partnership should formally adopt it. The first cycle of Quality Assurance activity using the new Framework will start this term and will be reported to the Board early in 2026.
Safety Valve Update
The Safety Valve Programme was launched by the DfE in 2021 to address the escalating deficits in local authorities’ High Needs Budgets in relation to SEND. The Board heard that, like most other local authorities in this Programme, we are currently off target in ßÙßÇÂþ» to meet the Safety Valve targets set out in the recovery plan agreed between ßÙßÇÂþ» and the DfE. This is due to common national factors including:
- Greater and more complex needs, and continued rising numbers of EHCPs
- Capacity issues in state maintained mainstream provision, and the need for greater use of non-maintained independent schools (NMIS)
- DfE Free School Place delivery off track
- Inflation and construction costs of planned special provision
- Numbers and unit costs of Alternative Provision packages.
Joint commissioning priorities
The Joint Commissioning process helps us to understand the needs and reasons for demand, and to make sure appropriate resources are being used. It can range from individual care and support to responding to needs within local communities and the whole county.
The Joint Commissioning Strategy has been renamed as ‘Joint Commissioning Priorities’ and a new Joint Commissioning Board has been created to bring together the many strands of work and governance in this area. Board colleagues commented that the success criteria for Join Commissioning need to link directly back to the impact on children and young people, as well as the impact on partners, which was taken on board by the team.
The Joint Commissioning Priorities include:
- Mindworks Review
- Children and young people neurodiversity and mental health pathway priorities
- Families First Partnership
- Team Around Schools, Communities and Places
- All-Age Autism Strategy
- A Joint Commissioning Board for children and young people.