Decision

The Director of
Children, Families and Education has decided to make a direct award
of a one year contract with effect from 1st June 2025
with the option to extend for a further year at a total cost of
£140,649 (£70,324.50 per year) to provide consultancy
services for SEND process development and improvement, and support
for individual children and young people with SEND to Parent Point Ltd. (Company number 10624332) via the YPO
Framework, Managing Consultancy and Professional Services lot.

Reasons for the decision

Currently there are 5503 Wirral children and young people with
an Education, Health and Care Plan and 1110 Wirral children and
young people with an active Education, Health and Care Needs
Assessment (EHCNA) in process.
 
In January 2025, Wirral
restructured the Special Educational Needs and Disability Statutory
Assessment and Review team. This team is now known as
SENDSTART.
 
From
January 2024 to April 2025 there have been 117 Special Education
Needs & Disabilities tribunals in Wirral. The SENDSTART team
includes two new Tribunal Officer posts.
 
There
is a need for further strategic overview, reflective practice and
development of the current SEND tribunal and Education, Health, and
Care Needs Assessment process.
 
SEND
consultants will support the SEND improvement journey which
includes the new Priority Action Plan which has been written in
response to the findings of the recent Local Area SEND inspection
in January 2025.

Alternative options considered

In-house recruitment
of an additional member of staff to work within the SENDSTART team
– this work is short term and time critical. Internal
recruitment delays for a short, fixed term contract would cause
delays in embedding the necessary changes. There is also the risk
that we would be unable to source a suitably qualified and
experienced member of staff.
 
Not to go ahead with
commissioning this contract – this would result in us being
unable to carry out the identified SEND improvement work and
embedding the required changes.
 
The term of the
contract could be of a different duration but 1 year plus 1 year is
considered to be the most appropriate because this period will be
sufficient to undertake the identified SEND improvement work.