Hellawell, Beate; Smith, Sharon; Wharton, Julie; (2022) ‘What was required above all else was collaboration’: keeping the momentum for SEND partnership working in the wake of Covid‐19. British Journal of Special Education 10.1111/1467-8578.12413. (In press).

Preview

Text British J Special Edu - 2022 - Hellawellr.pdf - Accepted Version Download (145kB) | Preview

Abstract

Introduction In March 2020 and January 2021, schools in England were closed to help control the spread of Covid-19 (Gov.UK, 2020). Children and young people whose parents/carers were key workers and those with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) were allowed and later encouraged to attend schools (DfE & Williamson, 2020). The parents/carers of these children and young people did, however, have the right to keep their children at home should they so choose (Gov.UK, 2020). Local authorities and school leaders, including SENCos, were ‘left with responsibility for maintaining the systems of special educational “offers” … developed for their schools’ (Wedell, 2020) in a constantly evolving and unpredictable policy environment as the Department for Education (DfE) responded to the situation. Concerns about meeting deadlines led to the Government’s relaxation of the legislation about timescales for statutory assessments and for annual reviews, much to the concern of parents and others (Children’s Commissioner, 2020). Previously published findings from an online questionnaire (n = 100) undertaken by the Special Educational Needs Policy Research Forum (SENPRF, 2021) provided insight into how school staff were supported in the teaching of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) during school closures, what lessons had been learned, and the conditions required to enable these lessons to be harnessed in schools. This present article aims to ask, ‘What else?’ (Singh et al., 2014) and offers a thematic analysis of the optional narrative responses provided within the survey, which focus on partnership working across the local SEND system and the role occupied by policy actors (Ball et al., 2011) within this system. The contributing authors share a common interest in SEND. As members of the lead group for the SENPRF, we were part of the team involved in developing the questionnaire. One of us has worked as SENCo and SEND inspector in a local authority and is a university course leader for the National Award for SEN Coordination; another works as SEND advisor, and as a teacher and lecturer has previously interrogated the SEND Code of Practice (DfE & DoH, 2015) and its implications for professionalism, partnership working and ethical concerns; the third contributor has a disabled daughter and is undertaking doctoral research approaching the subjectivity of parents of disabled children and how it relates to inclusion. Accordingly, we each handled the analysis of the survey findings from different personal and professional perspectives. In the spirit of partnership, we have respected each other’s expertise and lived experience, and worked together with an open © 2022 NASEN British Journal of Special Education � Volume 0 � Number 0 � 2022 3 mind, engaging in the nuances and tensions that exist within partnership working, to embrace divergent understandings. In what follows, we will briefly review the literature on multi-agency working and inter-professional collaboration and how this is conceptualized within SEND literature, before considering the role of parents/carers in these partnerships. A methodology section then leads into a discussion of six key statements that can be understood as some of the lessons learned from the pandemic, drawing on our data and reflecting the experiences of parents/carers, school staff and advising professionals working in local authorities.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONCSVXML

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item