The 0-25 SEND Partnership

All relevant partners in Cheshire East are committed to providing the best quality education and support for all children and young people to ensure they achieve the best possible outcomes.

The 0-25 SEND Partnership is a multi-agency partnership arrangement which leads and drives developments around support, processes and provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disability (SEND) aged 0-25 years in Cheshire East.

The SEND Partnership includes representatives from the following organisations and groups:

• Cheshire East Council
• Cheshire East Parent Carer Forum
• NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board
• Providers of health services
• Educational settings (early years providers, schools and further education providers)

We are committed to working TOGETHER (our shared definition of co-production) when developing and shaping our services.

The 0-25 SEND Partnership includes a clear governance structure to ensure effective delivery and oversight of improvements at pace, and includes:

• The SEND Improvement and Assurance Board (SIAB), which provides strategic system and executive leadership, assurance, and oversight of improvements across the local Cheshire East system for children and young people with SEND and/or those attending alternative provision, and their families, as identified through our ‘Shared Journeys’ programme and Local SEND Reform Plan.
• The SEND Operational Delivery Group (ODG), which provides oversight, support and scrutiny of the operational delivery of improvements across Cheshire East for children and young people with SEND and/or those attending alternative provision, and their families. ODG brings together the leads for our improvement workstreams to hold them and their workstream members accountable for completion of actions in line within agreed timescales.
• Nine Shared Journeys Workstreams, where an appointed lead or leads bring together cross-functional colleagues from across stakeholder groups as required to complete assigned actions in order to improve outcomes and experiences for local children and young people and their families.

Our SEND Partnership Strategy and Plan

In 2025, the Cheshire East SEND Partnership finalised and published our SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Strategy and Development Plan, referred to as the Cheshire East SEND and AP ‘One Plan’ (PDF, 2MB), which set out what we wanted to achieve as a partnership for children and young people with SEND in Cheshire East, and the key actions that would be carried out to achieve our priorities of ‘Right Support in the Right Place at the Right Time’.

The document is referred to as our SEND and AP ‘One Plan’ as the partnership felt it was a clear, simple name which reflected both the concept of pulling all actions into a single document, and all partners working as one to a single plan with a shared vision to deliver our improvements. The document was produced by working TOGETHER, with feedback and input from colleagues and residents across the partnership, and significant work has taken place to deliver against the actions and outcomes outlined in this strategy.

Since the development of our SEND and AP ‘One Plan’, there have been significant developments around SEND and inclusion both locally and nationally, which now require the SEND Partnership to refresh its local strategy and priorities. This includes the requirement for each local area to develop and deliver a comprehensive Local SEND Reform Plan, setting out how partners will implement national changes to improve inclusion, strengthen accountability, and ensure children and young people with SEND receive the right support at the right time.

The Cheshire East Local SEND Reform Plan (PDF, 475KB)was approved by the Department for Education in October 2026, and will be delivered through our SEND Partnership’s ‘Shared Journeys’ Strategic Framework and Improvement Programme (PDF, 740KB).

Shared Journeys builds on the foundations of our previously coproduced SEND and AP ‘One Plan’ (with continued delivery against actions from this plan) and acts as Cheshire East’s refreshed change and delivery framework. It brings together improvement work under nine interconnected workstreams and sets out how we will continue to improve services for children and young people with SEND.

We are also developing a new co-produced SEND and Inclusion Strategy for 2027. In the meantime, Shared Journeys guides our improvement work, and supports us to deliver change, and measure progress and impact, until our new Strategy is launched.