To wonder how a £36k a year education can meet DS’s needs if a £250k one can’t?

[GoneBatty]

Private residential SEND college (out of area) costs £250k a year. They are saying DS’s needs are too high for them to manage.

Council are saying a £36k a year local outreach provision can meet his needs.

It’s all very fishy as SEND college at first said they felt they could meet DS’s needs so we visited, all was OK. As as soon as the council (who will have to fund it) got involved, college backtracked and said they couldn’t meet his needs.

They have given nonsensical reasons which I have mitigated numerous times. Both the college and council have told blatant lies and I’ve caught them out in two big ones!

Now we have reached Tribunal the college is suddenly full which was not an issue a few months ago so know they’re lying again as they would know numbers of students months in advance due to Tribunals and the time it take to get funding. Also most Tribunals due to take place over the summer were postponed for this age group.

AIBU to suspect the council has given the college a backhander to say they can’t meet his needs? It would cost council £750k for a 3 year program. They could have given a £100k ‘investment’ per se? Still saves a lot of money!

There is literally no other provision like this in the country. I have approached 21 other colleges, local and out of area. DS has had no proper provision for over a year and he is running out of time as age 20 - EHCP is to 25.

Do I sound nuts (I feel it)? Can this actually be possible?

"And others will suffer"
Are you suggesting that's the fault of the parents, who fight for the correct and appropriate provision for their child or young person?

@Itstarts , so sorry, I was attempting to back up your quote about ‘good’ and masking children and young people not being diagnosed until they are on the cusp of adulthood, or even later. Apologies for my quoting error. I’m on your side!

You may win at tribunal but his needs still won't be greater. And others will suffer.
What a dreadful thing to say. Children and young adults with disabilities are, without doubt, suffering within the education system as it stands. To try to blame the OP or any other parent for this beggars belief.

No one is saying his needs are greater than other young people with similar needs. But having similar needs to others doesn’t mean OP’s DS shouldn’t receive the provision he reasonably requires. If other DC need the same/similar provision they should also receive it and their parents should be supported to advocate and enforce their DC’s legal rights.

That's alright! The quotes within quotes always go wrong!

@Quisquam , would it be possible to PM me the details of your education lawyer?

She probably was!! The sen system in this country can take years. My child wasn’t managing in mainstream and he was the type that had loud aggressive meltdowns when he couldn’t manage. School said they couldn’t meet needs but it still took us from year one to year 4 to get him into specialist. Initially the la said he could manage in a ms with no additional support when he clearly wasn’t. Lots of children manage fine in primary and then the wheels come of at secondary and my the time you’ve spent a few years fighting and going to tribunals child will be 15

It's all a matter of priorities. Money should be spent in the right places, especially when money is tight. I'm not vexed at all about my 'hard-earned taxpayer's money' being spent, for example, on the education, health and care needs of individual children and young people with disabilities. A society should rightly be judged on how it treats its most vulnerable members.

I save my vexation for the completely wasteful and unreasonable spending of my 'hard-earned taxpayer's money' on individuals like Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, both now entitled to up to £115,000 a year for life, plus security costs. Boris has also been skipping parliament and his constituency - where he is still additionally paid to attend as an MP - to go on his third foreign holiday since resigning, aka being kicked out, of No 10. This latest jaunt reportedly cost in the region of £42,000 alone. Now that is disgusting and obscene, isn't it, especially in these cash-strapped times for public services like education?

Yes - but where exactly is the money supposed to come from? Ultimately there is a finite pot of money. This is why not all drugs are available on the NHS, why lots of people do not get as much help as they would like etc.

@MNHQ, where is the moderation on this thread, please?

Completely agree.

The 2014 code of practice set councils up to foot the bill for children with EHCPs until 25 (previously 18) with no increase in funding to councils at all.

People should be angry at the government for not properly funding the reforms, not people asking for what they are allowed in law.

Maybe then they should make mainstream schools / colleges more accessible for all. They do not because overall I guess this would be a more expensive model than paying for a few specialist placements.

I had no idea what price my ds's school placements costs when they were in mainstream. It really should not have been my concern the cost of placement when they had to move to specialist provision.What was my concern was that they continued to receive an adequate education.

"To be frank, in my opinion, with council budgets as tight as they are, they cannot and should not be paying out £750,000 for one individual’s higher education"

This isn't higher education. EHCPs stop when a person starts higher education.

"Yes - but where exactly is the money supposed to come from? Ultimately there is a finite pot of money."

Not giving every household £400 that they don't need would help.

I think the rub will be the residential aspect of the need. If there is a baggy echp which doesn't lay out clearly enough the reasons why residential care is required, it'll need a fight to get through.

They aren't spending £750K on education alone. It's called an Education, Health and Care Plan for a reason. Average prices for children's home places in England are £4,900 a week for a local authority place and £4,200 for a private placement - i.e. over £250,000 a year without any educational element.

A ridiculously high proportion of children with SEND who do not get proper support end up in prison. The average cost of a prison place currently is £45K per year, going up to over £82K for the highest category prisons - and that's before you take into account costs of police time, prosecutions, courts etc. So the cost of failing to provide support may well end up at several times £750K.

Sadly not. It happens only too often that schools and local authorities are in denial about children's needs and don't discover the extent of their difficulties until they are forced to arrange a proper assessment.

Certainly. I hope you are not saying that the fact that some children are being failed means that all children with EHCPs should be failed?

Exactly. And all of that is fully justified. So, if we justify that for your OH, we can certainly justify giving a child with SEND an adequate education that meets his needs.

Lots of parents successfully fight without solicitors and win at tribunals. In fact, the majority of successful appeals are brought by parents without legal representation. Please don't assume you are stuffed unless you have a solicitor.

And? By law, the LA has a duty to identify and meet needs. Schools have similar duties. They, after all, are the experts or have access to experts. Parents probably won't be experts, and may well be simply exhausted and ground down by the effort of caring for their disabled child whilst the school tells them they're imagining everything.

Fortunately, it is no defence for an LA to say "Yes, we know this child has greater needs because of our unlawful failure to meet his needs over several years, but his parents should have made us obey the law so we shouldn't have to do anything now". Do you think it should be? Why?

I do agree and I speak as someone who has a person v close to them with significant learning disabilities and other diagnoses. In terms of educating them they’re never going to progress beyond where they are now (they can’t read or
write and lack any self care skills) and yet have money thrown at their “education” what they really need is enriching supervision similar to that they receive at the respite they attend. They did. need specialist teachers but carers. The curriculum is of no value and I find it difficult that other children with SEN are missed where there’s so much money thrown at other individuals which will have no return.

Im not saying this is the case for OP’s son but I’m sure there’s many in these specialist provision who will never benefit.

Dons tin hat

It is what it costs in the current economic climate. Running specialist schools is never cheap. The law says that councils have a duty to meet children's special educational needs up to the age of 25. In this case, the council didn't even identify and begin to provide for OP's son's needs till he was 15, which is highly likely to be the reason why he still needs to be in education now. Had they done their job much earlier the chances are that, if he needed special educational provision at all now, it would be much cheaper. Should they be allowed to save money by profiting from their own failures? Is it OK for a council to say "Yes, we failed you for the first 9 years of your education, but we're not going to pay to put that right because our own failure means it costs too much?"

If the council could identify a cheaper way of meeting OP's son's needs, no doubt they would have put it forward. Offering a bit of outreach support is never going to hack it.

And that is because this government fails to fund care and education for disabled young people. It doesn't mean that one individual should go without just because you can point to other individuals who are also being failed.