Welcome to the Sutton Council Consultation and Engagement Hub

Our Home to School Assisted Travel service provides support to help children and young people to travel to school or college when they would otherwise be prevented by disability or need.

We asked for your views on proposals to change the way assisted travel is provided in Sutton and updates to the Sutton Home to School Assisted Travel policy. There were two main reasons to consider changes:

Increasing costs and demand - in 2015/16, £4.2 million was spent on home to school travel assistance. This year we are expecting to spend almost £8.3 million - this is an increase of over 76%. With demand for travel assistance continuing to increase, and the cost of delivering that provision increasing, the current way that travel assistance is provided is unlikely to be affordable in the future. 

Preparation for adulthood – we want to explore more ways that young people can be supported to travel to their place of learning independently in the future. 

We received 155 responses to the online survey. A record of the consultation findings and decisions that were made can be found on the Council’s website (opens in a new window).

Each family receiving the Home to School Travel Assistance will be contacted individually to confirm travel assistance arrangements for September 2024.

A summary of key changes is included below:

 For all children and young people (ages 5-25) 

• To promote the Council’s free Independent Travel Training (ITT) offer more widely with families, where need and age-appropriate (11+ years)  

• To increase the use of Personal Travel Budgets (PTBs). A Personal Travel Budget (PTB) is a flexible payment made directly to families, designed to help them to get their child or young person to school or college. 

• Councillors decided not to use central pick-up points.

Under 5s 

• The Council will not provide any home to school travel assistance for children under 5 years old and attending pre-school, as they are under statutory school age. However, 4 -year olds entering Reception will be supported if they meet the eligibility criteria on need or distance. 

 Post-16 

• Where organised transport is being provided by the Council (e.g. coach, minibus, taxi) families of post 16 learners (young people aged 16 - 19) will be asked to make a contribution to the costs of that provision – £800 a year or £400 for families on a low income. This charge will not apply to families receiving a Personal Travel Budget or mileage payments. 

• Where organised transport is being provided by the Council (e.g. coach, minibus, taxi) a fixed drop off and pick up time will be introduced at the start and end of the college/school day. This replaces personalised services around individual timetables.  

We asked for feedback from Children’s Centre users, about the impact of Children’s Centre Services and the approach to running sessions in the community. 

Children’s Centre users were overwhelmingly positive regarding the services and the impact they have on them and their family. Many users said they wanted to see more services in the community. A few people raised concern regarding our booking system and the start times of sessions. 

We have reviewed the start times of various sessions for the September programmes, so there is more variation. We acknowledge the concerns related to the booking system and in response we have implemented a new approach.  Tickets for each session are now released throughout the week rather than all in one go to allow for people to be able to book on at different times. We will continue to review the way we manage this. Your feedback will help us review our services going forward. 

We asked for residents’ views on the Draft Learning Disability Strategy 2022-2027. This consultation was part of a much longer engagement period; the purpose was to validate what stakeholders had told us and check that the draft strategy reflected this.

There was support for the strategy and its priorities, while the feedback also emphasised the importance of having an overall delivery plan in place so as to ensure implementation of the key priorities.

Key themes which were incorporated into the final strategy are set out below.

The strategy was updated to reflect the consultation feedback, and a final version was adopted by the People Committee in December 2021. There were no material changes to the strategy as a result of the consultation - however we did make some small amendments and added emphasis to some areas as set out below:

• Emphasising the link between Education and Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) services and the transition to adulthood in the strategy.

• Strengthening the wording around families and carers to emphasise the vital role they play.

• Making it clearer that the section of the strategy about respite includes the needs of people with people with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD).

• Emphasising the importance of paid employment and the opportunity to consider how unpaid roles could develop into paid employment.

• Including the acronym STOMP (Stop The Over Medication of People) when we talk about reducing unnecessary medication (reflecting the national NHS agenda).

• Including the GP Champion in the foreword of the strategy, to emphasise the key role played by GPs.

We are developing a comprehensive plan with a series of workstreams to deliver the strategy. Progress will be overseen through relevant Council and partnership governance and reported back to the People Committee at least annually.