Tuesday 18 February 2014

It takes two, baby

Following not one, but two interventions by the Information Commissioner's Office, North Yorkshire has finally released the audit of its autism services by the National Autistic Society's Accreditation Service from 2012.

The document is not an accreditation report but an audit of the ASCOSS (outreach) service, the Enhanced Mainstream Schools and special schools. It was commissioned in order to help the Council re-organise the services for children and young people with autism, and was written for internal use.

The Council has said that changes have been made following the report's publication, but it is currently unknown what those changes are.

The original report, supplied by the Council, had incorrectly redacted the initials of a school (KJ) - which we take to be King James, and which prompted a second intervention by the ICO.

The document has been through an Optical Character Recognition process and does not retain the original formatting:



The National Autistic Society  
North Yorkshire Autism Review 

Management, structure and support  
Strengths 
o Growing capacity in NY for meeting the needs of children and young people with autism through the ASCOSS and EMS 
o Clear systems implemented for evidence based tracking of impact 
o Forward thinking joint working with health and adult services to map what is available in county for those with autism 
 o Dissemination of Communicate in Print to libraries 
o Development of termly surgeries with an EP and LA officer  
Areas for Development 
o Align outreach service across all areas 
o Call all areas ASCOSS 
o Ensure all work is consistent 
o Develop links with parents via information sessions 
o Consider a feasibility study of the travelling time required by different specialist teachers in leading outreach in the different localities, and a comparison of workloads 
o Consider asking ______ (Mowbray) to lead the special schools outreach across Mowbray and Forest in order to improve systems 
o Consider whether there is an opportunity to develop an EMS at Woodlands to provide for those with high needs with need highly specialist support as an alternative to going to OOC provision 
o Revise the partnership arrangements with schools so that there are clear expectations about the provision and its implementation from both sides, with regular opportunities to evaluate and report on the quality of this 
o Restructure the EP support to ASCOSS by allocating EP time to EMS and locality meetings 
o Provide appropriately trained EPs to all schools involved in outreach 
o QA EPS in EMS/special schools by asking TIC to evaluate the effectiveness of their service to support the EMS/ special schools at least annually. 
o ls it feasible to develop further training and outreach to colleges across all areas to ensure consistency of approach from school onwards? 
o Why are primary EMS resourced differently from secondary in terms of staffing allocation? 
o Re-evaluate the resourcing to ____ [incorrectly redacted - should read KJ (King James)] EMS based on the number of pupils with a statement for autism. 
Develop a LA autism strategy for adults as well as children and young people 
Develop further integrated working across agencies, especially social care 
Develop more support for families in the home to ensure consistency of health and wellbeing 
Why change the provision to ASCOSS when a diagnosis of autism has been given, when a pupil has had consistent support in EMS? 
Who monitors the pupils who are awaiting diagnosis and their access to receiving support? Eg Ryedale? 
Consider the ASCOSS going for NAS accreditation

Staff Competencies  
Strengths 
o Well qualified staff in ASCOSS and EMS  
Areas for Development 
o Clarify the role of the Forest specialist teachers: 
o Give more guidance and support regarding the allocation of roles to teachers and ATA. 
Ensure all staff in Forest School are supported to give a specialist support role in mainstream schools. Staff working in mainstream schools must understand the mainstream setting and what the initial observation and action planning indicated re further support. After initial discussion and observation a planned action plan to be agreed by specialist teacher and HT or SENCo. Planned liaison with mainstream staff so all involved with pupil are aware what the specialist teacher is undertaking and agreed times/dates.  
Appropriate grading of pupils 1-5. Awareness that pupil might move either way during thisprocess and if needs increase what procedures are in place? 
Appropriate awareness of each school and school staff before intervention 
Ensure strategies or interventions are possible in school before working with pupil 
Ensure that supports to help pupil and there to support pupil and not an exercise in producing aresource. What is the area that he specialist teacher is trying to support? Does the support help the pupil improve his/her understanding of this area? Is this support enhancing the expertise ofthe mainstream staff? How do they embed their understanding of this support in their practice? 
ls the specialist teacher using solution focussed therapy or evidence based therapy? 
CP training 
Hookstone- Ensure quality of strategies and interventions. Social scripts to be revisited by allschools. Encourage practise by mainstream teachers but main message of script is a positive social understanding of situation for the pupil not a change of behaviour. 
QA management of the service.

Outcome measures 
Strengths 
Rigorous Scientist-practitioner approach' applied to observation, assessment and interventions 
Portfolio of research-based interventions 
Comprehensive, detailed Record of Support and lntervention 
Autism specific KPls  
Areas for Development 
Currently outcomes measurements are not applied consistently across all providers. 
Quality assurance of school's views of the service provided by the EMS is patchy. 
Ditto re parent's views and pupil voice. 
This would provide ASCOSS with some baselines against which to measure effectiveness and improvement. 
ASCOSS database needs to include those with a diagnosis of autism, those awaiting a diagnosis, and those without a diagnosis but receiving support, to enable tracking of the interventions given by the ASCOSS. 
The support recorded should include any discussions at locality meetings. 
Consider using a provision management tool such as that used in Surrey to record 
     o The intervention and the expected outcomes, and the staff and children involved 
     o The overview of the range of interventions used, the length of time, and the success of theoutcomes. 

Specialist education 
Strengths 
Good practice seen in Mowbray, Boroughbridge, Hookstone Chase, King James, Springwater, Woodlands School   
Outreach 
Strengths 
o Innovative practice being developed: King James, Woodlands, Springwater and Mowbrayo Good use of Locality meetings and network meetings 
o Availability of ongoing support after intervention 
o Links with FE 
o Parent Partnerships at Locality meetings  
Areas for Development 
Ensure there is transfer of information about use of other agencies when a referral comes from a school,and how this is allocated, and the record of these inputs  
Ensure all schools understand the resources available on Fronter 
o Quality assure the use of different approaches eg social scripts (ref Hookstone) 
Quality of recording/Reporting Strengths  
Areas for Development 
o This needs streamlining with continuous recording rather than having separate reports for every visit  
Information and guidance 
Strengths 
o Shared resources and training  
Areas for Development 
o Be proactive in ensuring that secondary aged students have access to an understanding of what is legal and what is not in the criminal justice system, with an autism perspective 
o Understanding bullying 
o SRE  



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