Helping one London Borough to manage increased demand for Educational Psychology advice
By Gemma Raw
Six-month EP statutory advice project
190 EP advice reports completed
91.5% completed within statutory timeframes
94.7% of first advice reports completed to agreed standards
A local and national challenge
Like so many local authorities, Sanctuary's client, a London Borough, was experiencing a significant increase in the number of statutory Educational Psychology advice reports needed to complete children’s EHC Needs Assessments.
This was not just a local challenge. A sector-wide shortage of Educational Psychologists (EPs) was making it incredibly difficult for some local authorities across the UK to meet their statutory obligations in providing timely advice.
Talking about the challenge, our client, a London Borough Principal Educational Psychologist (PEP), says:
“Although we have an established team of Educational Psychologists, the demand for EP advice reports was such that we could not keep up.
“I had heard from other PEPs who were addressing their capacity issues by bringing in EP project teams. As the PEP for my local area, I was keen to significantly increase our capacity for a period of time to give us the breathing space to get on top of things.”
A fully-managed service
Sanctuary was already supplying the local authority with agency EPs when we started talking to the client about forming an EP project team. We put forward a proposal not just to staff the project with EPs but to manage the processing, timeliness and quality of advice reports.
After several scoping meetings, we went into the project set-up phase. We quickly mobilised a team of Educational Psychologists tasked with completing 190 assessments within six months (averaging 30+ advice reports per month).
Our pace was swift. Within a couple of weeks of signing the contract, our EP project team was live. Talking about the speed of mobilisation, the client adds:
“If we compare Sanctuary to an agency solution, there’s a big difference in terms of the time and resources required from our end. We have some really good agency EPs who we use, but introducing them into our service takes quite a lot of time, both in terms of getting them set up with all the right IT equipment and access and transitioning them into the service and overseeing their work.
“Sanctuary is different. They manage everything. We simply gave them access to our EHC Portal and they were able to start work. The fact that they oversee the quality of advice reports and have a project admin team to keep a close eye on statutory timescales has been a big help.”
Sanctuary’s role, as a managed service was to:
Assume business management of the project
Allocate each referral onto the Borough’s EHC Portal
Collect and upload all advice reports from the EPs within the project
Quality assure all advice reports by our own Senior Educational Psychologist
Monitor and ensure the timeliness of advice reports
Hold weekly project meetings with the client, our senior EP, Sanctuary Project lead and our Business Support staff
Respond to any queries from SEN caseworkers about individual EHC advice reports, as required.
As soon as we were granted access to the local authority’s EHCP portal, we wasted no time starting the EP assessment process.
All EP advice reports prepared by our team were overseen by our Senior Educational Psychologist, who worked closely with the local PEP to ensure that the quality of each report met the agreed standard.
To make sure that advice reports were submitted within the statutory timeframes (6 weeks from allocation), our Project Support Team kept in close communications with EPs, chasing where appropriate and assisting with the administrative side of the submission process.
Commenting on his experience of working with our team, the client’s PEP shares:
“I know how demanding it can be to manage an agency EP resource. I must say that I’ve been impressed with how professional and efficient Sanctuary has been.
“They are accountable for the quality of their work. We are very particular with how advice reports are written. We expect to see detailed relevant information that carefully considers the strengths and needs of the child or young person, which Sanctuary’s EPs include within their reports.
“Even when we had a couple of advice quality issues at the start of the project, which we were fully expecting to happen, Sanctuary were quick to remedy them. That’s one of the benefits of Sanctuary having management oversight and a Senior EP overseeing the quality of advice – they go back to the EP and support them in reworking advice to meet the expected standard.”
A high-quality service
Between August 2022 and February 2023, we completed 190 EP advice reports, 91.5% of which were completed within statutory timeframes.
We’re proud to say that our EP project team has met a number of core objectives, as the local PEP mentions:
“There are four strands that have made the project a success.
“Firstly, the management oversight throughout the entire project has been very strong, enabling Sanctuary to keep on top of the quality and timeliness of advice reports.
“Secondly, the administrative support has been very good. Imogen, Sanctuary’s Project Administrator, quickly responds to any of our queries.
“Thirdly, a high level of quality assurance was provided by having a Senior Educational Psychologist on the team who quality assured each advice report and provided EP supervision throughout.
“Fourthly, the EPs themselves produced good quality work. This is the biggest driver for me as a PEP, to make sure that children and young people get the support they need from our local authority within statutory timeframes.”
