THE county's effectiveness in identifying and meeting the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities has improved, said inspectors.

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) carried out a joint inspection between September 26 and 30 of the service provided by Herefordshire Council and Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

As part of the inspection, inspectors spoke with children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and their families, along with council, CCG and school representatives.

They also visited a range of education providers to see how they are implementing the special educational needs reforms.

The inspectors said there was a clear understanding of partners strengths and weaknesses, along with a strong sense of purpose and aspiration to improve outcomes for children and young people who have SEND.

The child and adolescent mental health service is of a very high quality, inspectors said and the children and young people they spoke to indicated that they are happy, safe and well supported and their independence and aspirations are being well developed.

Inspectors reported that specialist education provision is of a high quality, although the progress of SEND pupils is not as rapid as other pupils within the county.

They also found that there are unacceptable waiting lists for some community therapies, which mean many children’s needs remain unassessed, so they’re unable to receive timely support.

For example, some families have been waiting for up to a year to be seen by the occupational therapy and the speech and language therapy services. This means that many children’s needs remain unassessed and they do not receive timely support.

Inspectors said education, health and care plans are timely and have a clear framework, but said the health and social care information is not consistently broad enough

Leaders acknowledged that communication with parents needs to improve.

Cllr Jonathan Lester, cabinet member for young people and children’s wellbeing, said: “We are proud of the positive work we do with children and young people who have special educational needs and/ or disabilities across the county and that our achievements have been recognised by Ofsted and the CQC.

"Partner organisations have put a lot of hard work into implementing the special educational needs reforms and the inspection has recognised the strengths we have in Herefordshire, alongside the areas we need to further improve. We will continue to work together with our partners to take forward the inspection’s findings, but at the heart of all of this, is our collective strong sense of purpose and aspiration to improve outcomes."