What's the picture of local areas and how well they are working to prepare children and young people with special educational needs for adulthood? What support are they offering to allow young people to reach their full potential? Preparation for adulthood arrangements in local areas: a thematic review - GOV.UK   Briony Balsom  0:07  Hello everyone, and welcome to this edition of Ofsted talks. I'm Briony Balsam, and this time we're focusing on preparing for adulthood. In December 24 Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission jointly published a report considering how well children with special needs and or disabilities or send are being supported in their preparation for adulthood. We considered survey responses from more than 2000 children, young people, parents and practitioners, and visited six local area partnerships to explore how children and young people with SEND are being prepared for adulthood. Later, I'm going to be chatting to Jess Taylor Byrne from the CQC, who jointly produced the report with us. But today, firstly, I'm delighted to be joined by guests from Newcastle College. We spoke to practitioners and leaders at Newcastle as part of our visit, and we found some really positive practice in this area. So joining us, we have Rachel Gibson, who's the Assistant Director at Newcastle College. We have Maxine Johnson, who is the SEND manager, Sabarina Logan, who's currently studying for a level three National Diploma in Business at Newcastle college. And also we have Adams Sproston, who is Ofsted senior HMI for SEND. Hello everybody!  To kick us off, I'd really love to hear from you, Adam, about what innovative ideas we came across that are really working at this really key juncture of a young person's life?  Adam Sproston  1:29  Thanks, Briony.  We found lots of positives across the six areas that we visited, typically, professionals in education, health and social care, working in very challenging contexts to meet the needs of children and young people, and they shared with us challenges in the economy, but also after COVID 19 and the impact that that's having on some young people. In particular, we found that providers that give high quality careers, information, education, advice and guidance are able to prepare young people better for adult life. May that be courses that they move to, careers that they want to be interested and and thrive in, or in other aspects. So for some young people with SEND that might be improving their independence or supported living as they become an adult. So that was really important to see where professionals know children and young people really well. They can be best placed to meet their needs and tailor their approaches to work for the child's aspirations. Briony Balsom  2:36  Wonderful. So let's come across to Newcastle and hear a little more about exactly what it is that you're you're doing so well.  Maxine Johnson  2:42  So within our support offer within Newcastle college for our learners with with high needs, so we have a dedicated team of SEND advisors who support our learners with HCPs, transition into college and transitioning with the school, the provider that they're currently with, liaison with any external providers to ensure that we can obviously meet their learners needs and support that kind of smooth transition in a college before they've even started, whether that's coming in on transition visits and doing tastes within the curriculum, or seeing the learners and doing observations in the classroom to see how their learning works and how this how they supported to again, make that transition as smooth as possible. We also do as part of our transition, we have a summer school within our life skills hub, which again, just cements and kind of builds those foundations for our students to be able to know the campus, become familiar with certain spaces that they may access when they're here, which again supports that transition into into college. So we have a de