Update on the Children’s Therapy Review

We have been working to develop and improve therapy services in Sutton and ensure services can continue to best meet the needs of children and young people in the borough, and reflect national best practice.

The London Borough of Sutton (LBS) and South West London Clinical Commissioning Group, Sutton borough (SWLCCG) have been working together to review therapy provision. 

The aim of the review is to develop and improve children’s therapy services in Sutton, and develop a sustainable model which reflects national best practice. 

We want to strengthen what works, as well as identifying ways to do things differently, to ensure we can continue to best meet the needs of children and young people, and improve their outcomes.

The review has focused on Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) and Occupational Therapy (OT) services delivered by the NHS and by Cognus, as well as some specific OT posts in the London Borough of Sutton (LBS), and has also looked at how we could join things up more across this system.

The first phase of the review, the ‘discovery’ phase, has recently concluded. In this phase we gathered information and insights from a range of sources including local data, benchmarking with other areas, engagement with parents, schools and SENCos.

We have now moved into the ‘design phase’ of work, where we will design an approach for services that will:

• focus on outcomes for children and young people

• provide support at the earliest point

• be embedded in schools and at home

• Offer provision at universal, targeted and specialist levels as part of a graduated response

We will continue to engage parents and partners on what this model should look like in Sutton and will be engaging further with schools and SENCOs over the coming months.

The work of this design phase will be based around five key areas of focus as outlined below:

1 – Model and approach: To improve services to align with best practice: with a balanced model, which is embedded in educational settings.

2 – Partnership and communication: To develop and deliver services in partnership with parents, and to build effective partnership with parents, and to build effective partnerships with professionals across the system.

3 – Outcomes Focused: For functional outcomes for children and young people to be at the heart of services.

4 – Joined up offer (NHS & Cognus): To align delivery across the NHS and Cognus, working collaboratively to provide a clear and holistic local approach to therapy services.

5 – Service provider developments: To take forward specific service developments relevant to individual providers: NHS & Cognus.

The full findings of this Discovery Phase can be found in the Therapies Review Discovery Report on the LBS website [External Link].

We would like to get feedback about the Review of Children's Therapy Services in Sutton. Please find a Form to provide feedback [External Link].