Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool
The Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool (POET) has been designed to capture the views of children and young people, parents/carers and practitioners about the experience of obtaining an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan and in some cases, a personal budget and related outcomes. The Children and Families Act aims to transform the SEND system to better meet the needs of children, young people and their families. The national and local data generated by using POET provide a way to evidence this change and influence implementation locally and nationally.
Liverpool City Council is one of a number of pilot local authorities involved with developing this work. A national survey has been devised by ‘In Control’ and is in part funded by the Department for Education (DfE) Liverpool, along with the other pilot authorities, will be trialling a questionnaire between October and December and would urge all those requested to complete the questionnaire so that we can gather as many views as possible.
The DfE’s March 2015 publication SEN and disability: supporting local and national accountability, describes the Department’s view that there should be a combination of local accountability measures; data analysis and independent inspection to show how the SEND system is performing, which parts are working well and less well and whether outcomes are improving for children and young people. POET is suggested as one of the ways in which such data and intelligence might be collected.