Newsletters
Our Regional Improvement Plan can be found here
If you would like to apply to be a SESLIP consultant, please follow this link to Kent Business Portal – KentBusinessPortal and after registering on the portal, search for Ref – SC240046 – SESLIP – DPS
Updates
Children on custodial remand
On 11 November the Children’s Commissioner published Children on custodial demand
“A production line of pointlessness”
Hundreds of children are being locked up while awaiting trial because of inadequate local authority provision, the Children’s Commissioner for England has warned.
Dame Rachel De Souza warned that children are being “treated as guilty until proven innocent” and called for the closure of all YOIs. She told the annual Longford Lecture that too many children who have not been convicted are being placed in custody as a “waiting room” while overstretched services struggle to provide suitable placements.
Latest analysis by the commissioner’s office finds that most of these children are unnecessarily exposed to the harms posed by being held on remand – in 2023/24, 62% of those remanded in England and Wales did not go on to receive a custodial sentence, while 17% had their cases dropped. Despite fewer children being remanded than a decade ago, the average length of time in custody has risen by 89% since 2013/14 – to 125 nights.
Best Start Family Hubs
On 5 November Centre for Young Lives published Best Start: A Fresh Start for
Children and Family Support
Part 2 Report
Part 2 Report from the Centre for Young Lives
- reveals how those local authorities where children are less likely to be ‘school ready’ are more likely to be ‘childcare deserts’ – and argues these areas should be a priority for Best Start Family Hubs.
- proposes new legislation to embed Best Start Family Hubs in law, warning that failing to put hubs on a statutory footing leaves them at greater risk of being dismantled in the future like Sure Start in the 2010s.
- calls for new Best Start Family Hubs information campaign and branding to ensure it becomes a trusted household name and urges greater clarity over the place of mental health hubs and Young Futures hubs in the Best Start Family Hubs network.
Thousands of children with life-threatening conditions not getting vital NHS support
On 30 October Contact published a policy briefing How Continuing Care for Children fails those with the most
complex health needs (England)
Continuing Care Analysis
Over half of the most sick and disabled children in England referred for NHS-funded continuing care support have been rejected.
Many families who get children’s continuing care packages live in constant fear of losing support at traumatic annual reviews.
We want to see the law and accountability around children’s continuing care strengthened and brought in line with the adult system.
Sign our petition demanding urgent reform of children’s continuing care.
Reminders From Previous Weeks
Success – whose definition counts? A co-designed framework by and for young people leaving care
On 11 November Rees Centre published Success – whose definition counts? A co-designed framework by and for young people leaving care
The four-year project was co-designed with care-experienced young people and commissioned by Become, the national charity for children in care and young care leavers. Together, we developed a new ‘Success Survey’ and framework that centres what young people say actually matters: stability, community, self-belief, and pride in small everyday wins.
Details
Current national data frameworks measure success in terms of the absence of failure such as whether care leavers are not in education, employment or training (NEET), or not homeless. These indicators, the report finds, are limited and disconnected from the realities of care leavers’ lives.
Instead, care leavers in the study defined success as:
- A personal and evolving journey, not a fixed endpoint – “Success isn’t a destination others impose on us. It’s a journey we define for ourselves.”
- Pride in survival and resilience – “You should be proud because you’ve been through hell and back and you’re still standing.”
- Community over isolation – “It shouldn’t be called independence – it should be co-dependence. We need a community.”
- Success in the small things – from “buying your first mop” to “being able to decorate your own home.”
- Authenticity and identity – “Being able to be yourself without being judged, getting to where you need to be, and being proud of yourself.”
- Stability was an important part of success across all areas of life.
Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper
On 20 October DfE published the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper
Details
It offers further policy information about reforming the identification and support for young people who are NEET or at risk of being NEET and linking to a new Youth Guarantee scheme.
There will be new systems for monitoring attendance of young people at college and to support and expect schools to target support for students at risk of being NEET.
A headline target is for two-thirds of young people to participate in higher-level learning – academic, technical, or apprenticeships – by age 25 by 2040.
Home to school transport: LA data collection
On 28 October DfE published Home to school transport: LA data collection for academic year 2024-2025
Details
Using data from the 115 responding local authorities we have extrapolated the number of pre-16 pupils receiving HTST to estimate the number of pupils nationally.
- Approximately 470,000 pre-16 pupils are eligible for HTST (6% of all pre-16 pupils);
- around 180,000 pupils receive HTST because of their special educational needs and/or disability (SEND) (around 40% of pre-16 pupils using HTST) and
- around 290,000 (60% of pre-16 pupils using HTST) are eligible for reasons other than SEND.
- These estimates have been derived by calculating the average proportion of pupils receiving transport in London, urban and rural authorities and using these averages to estimate the number of eligible pupils in local authorities that did not respond.
SESLIP QA Conference – NOW BOOKING
On Monday 8 December SESLIP is hosting a collaborative QA co-design event.
Headlines
On behalf of the SESLIP QA network, Kent Analytics has been research CSC QA processes and practices across the region.
This event will be an opportunity for QA leads and staff to participate in the co-design of new improved procedures based on the research findings.
SESLIP Targeted Support
The SESLIP Targeted Support scheme is now open to enquiries from children’s services authorities in the south east.
This project is funded by the DfE’s RIIA grant and is open to both CSC and SEND.
Details
The prospectus introduces our dedicated Targeted Support Core Team, which includes experienced, ex-local authority leaders, who have worked at director, assistant director and principal programme manager levels,
The core team’s practice is enhanced by collaboration with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from across the full range of children’s services.
A bespoke package will be agreed at scoping stage.
For more information, or to become involved as a subject matter expert, contact Claire@clairewoodcockconsulting.com
Regional Improvement Plan 2025-26
On 18 July 2025 SESLIP published our regional improvement plan for 2025-26
Headlines
The new regional improvement plan has 47 projects and a budget of just under £2m.
The plan incorporates our delivery plan for DfE’s RIIA grant of £1.6m to SESLIP for the current year
Tools & Templates
We have produced a Regional Improvement Plan (July 2025)
On 11 November the Children’s Commissioner published Children on custodial demand
On 11 November Rees Centre published Success – whose definition counts? A co-designed framework by and for young people leaving care
On 5 November Centre for Young Lives published Best Start: A Fresh Start for
Children and Family Support
Part 2 Report
On 5 November DfE and DHSC launched an independent review of social work regulation
On 30 October Contact published a policy briefing How Continuing Care for Children fails those with the most complex health needs (England).
On 30 October DfE published the annual Children in need statistics for the year to 31 March 2025.
On 28 October DfE published Academic year 2024/25 Home to school transport: LA data collection
On 22 October MoJ published Presumption of parental involvement review: final report
On 20 October DfE published the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper
On 20 October ONS published Suicides in children and young people across the academic year, England: September 2011 to August 2022
On 20 October The Children’s Commissioner published The Children’s Plan: Vision for Care
On 13 October The Domestic Abuse Commissioner published Everday Business
On 13 October Home+Future (the south east’s RCC) published Briefing 002 – cross regional placements
On 10 October The Youth Endowment Fund published Access to mental health support
On 6 October Ofsted published Children’s social care questionnaires 2025
On 3 October APSEND and CSTUK published Upstream – best practice examples from specialst, AP and mixed trust schools
On 3 October 2025 IFS published Support for children with disabilities and special educational needs as part of its Green Budget for 2025
On 2 October Kinship published its annual survey of Kinship carers “Handle with Care”
On 2 October 2025 EEF published an independent evaluation of the BITUP programme – a low cost programme to improve secondary school attendance.
On 26 September 2025 HMIPrisons published Children in custody 2024–25
An analysis of 12–18-year-olds’ perceptions of their experiences
in secure training centres and young offender institutions
On 25 September DfE published a research report, Family Routes: children who returned to care after leaving for adoption or to live with a special guardian
On 25 September 2025 the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse published Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse – A guide for safeguarding children partnerships
On 24 September 2025 West Midlands ADCS Network (the RIIA) published its team excellence awards brochure for 2025
On 24 September Speech and Language UK published Transforming SEND: An Alternative White Paper
On 17 September APPG for SEND launched Reforming the SEND
System in England
On 16 September The Law Commission published Disabled Children’s Social Care: Final Report
On 13 September BJSW published Fabricated or induced illness in England: Examining mortality and serious harm an article by Andy Bilson and Alessandro Talia