Sensationalist reporting - whipping up resentment towards education bills for complex SEN placements

[SoFuckingTired]

AIBU to say that the purpose of articles such as this is to foster resentment towards disabled children/young people? Clearly I'm naive but I'm surprised and disappointed that the BBC would report in this way. Yes £2.5m is a lot, but when you actually read further this is a placement for very complex SEN/behaviour spanning several years

Council billed £2.5m for pupil with special needs.

How come economic realities only ever seem to affect those who can least afford it?

How come we're always helping those who already have the means to help themselves?

Councils are fantastic at wasting money which is definitely something that needs to be looked at too and urgently.

Also some services while a nice idea in theory are rather inefficient at best.

I’ve volunteered with a local authority project called Skills For Life. It’s supposed to provide adults with moderate learning disabilities with life skills to improve their independence. Now the odds of this particular group I worked with ever doing any real work are slim to none. They just aren’t capable of it and that’s the reality of many, but not all people who attend SEN/SN schools. There’s no miracles happening in that respect no matter how good their education was but they could still really benefit from learning skills to develop some independence.

What life skills did the group teach? Cooking which was almost always cakes or cookies and on the other day they went to the cinema and no they didn’t buy their own tickets/sweets which would have allowed them to practice some real life skills.That was it. I’m sure they enjoyed it and it gave their carers/families a much needed break but these were people who couldn’t do very basic things that your average 7 year old had no trouble with and yet all they taught them was how to make fairy cakes or cookies every week. It was incredibly frustrating.

Yes some will never be able to answer a phone or wash themselves no matter what you do but adults with learning disabilities don’t stop being able to acquire knowledge when they leave school but there was no real attempt to try to teach them anything new or improve their existing skills.

So what are you actually suggesting at this point?

That I simply need to have faith that the LAs or the government itself will deliver even after further budget cuts?

Wait it out or do as my sister in law suggest and "keep my expectations low?"

Of course there are those who will not be able to live independently but many and I'm going to say most - who can.

@EastYorkshirebeast
You seem nice. Have you ever heard of this place?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouvet_Island#:~:text=Bouvet%20Island%20is%20one%20of,1%2C400%20mi)%20to%20the%20northwest.

@WaspsofWinter
I'm not sure who you're arguing with?

Show me a parent (SEND or otherwise) who doesn't want services to be more efficient. Money wasted is money not spent helping their child.

As for concerns about overspend, it's not that people are "burying their heads in the sand" it's that we are so far from that point it's just completely moot. Many disabled children are out of education altogether - their parents can't even access a "holding pen" let alone anything decent.

And as so many posters have explained now, it's actually cheaper to fund things properly, because it frees parents to work and ultimately allows their children to live independently.

We need to spend more on SEND education and we need to spend it more effectively. If we do that, everyone will better off, including economically. Where is the disagreement?

There are people on this thread to whom it is apparently taboo to discuss the fact that services, no matter how essential, are costing an ever increasing amount of money ways to reduce the costs or more money have to be made whether it’s the NHS, public services or SEN education. The reality is that ever spiralling costs are a very real problem no matter how unpalatable that may be.

Why would the mostly intelligent, well educated demographic of mn users care what people who use twitter think? The place where until recently you could be banned for stating facts or even arrested for hate crime but threaten rape or murder or to burn women in fire and that's brilliant if you are trans.

Where is the extra money going to come from?

Maybe because of that? If it's even too horrid for the Twitter/X demographic, then maybe, just maybe, something is very wrong.

'Something is rotten on "Mumsnet". That one may smile and smile and be a villain.'

The place where until recently you could be banned for stating facts or even arrested for hate crime but threaten rape or murder or to burn women in fire and that's brilliant if you are trans.

Unfortunately that seems to be the case almost everywhere now and it appears that feelings before facts seems to be the rule regardless of which online community you frequent.

Maybe because of that? If it's even too horrid for the Twitter/X demographic, then maybe, just maybe, something is very wrong.

Too horrid for Twitter? The fact that you can’t change sex and it is a fact, isn’t horrid. It’s how human biology works.

I wonder how many of these company's CEOs have mates that are MPs?

The tories have charged headlong into this disaster.

They've known for a long time that rates of children who will need specialist places are increasing. Primarily as the medical care for premature and complicated neonatal outcomes have improved hugely over the last 10-15 years.

I work in a send school, for children with moderate learning difficulties. The additional influx of children has been very notable in the last 5 years. And their needs are becoming more complex, as the schools for children with "severe" difficulties are full.

The children we would have had with us a decade ago are now in mainstream with ehpcs.

They've really fucked up.

Overcrowded specialist schools: ‘We’re teaching in cupboards’ www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-64418797

Advances in life expectancy, more awareness and better diagnosis means there are now more children and young people with needs that are difficult to meet within mainstream schools. The pandemic has added to a system already under pressure.

Nationwide, the number of pupils with EHCPs has risen by 50% since 2016, to just over 355,500 last year.

Death threats are genuinely horrid though but it seems that Twitter has no real problem with those, not just in relation to the trans issue as a friend who is a celebrity in his sport regularly receives death threats and they’re rarely deleted so I’m not convinced that Twitter and its community are fit to play judge, jury and executioner

Also - I know teachers with sendco roles in Leeds. Leeds have particularly fucked up over the last few years from what I can tell.

There are lots of private send schools popping up all over the place, charging the LEAs for placements. It's a phenomenal waste of money.

If more send schools had started to be build in the last decade (which Labour were doing) we would have a much better and more efficient system.

Twitter using its powers for good instead of for evil, for once.

Because like Mumsnet, Twitter is also not actually a hivemind. I have taken some screenshots of this thread and put it on FB for people to get a good measure of what is just another day ending in Y for families like mine.

Most have so far agreed that there were a couple comments that were simply out of order.

And current Labour, unfortunately, not going to be any better.

Starmer has already suggested they too will push as many as they can into mainstream.

Presumably also, as is currently, without the accommodations to support the children who are really going to need it.

The argument of how much everything costs is not new. Not at all.

Quote from a poster which I link: "This person who suffers a hereditary disease has a lifelong cost of 60,000 Reichsmarks to the National Community. Comrade, that is your money too."

What next? Do we want to fine parents who aren't aborting their disabled unborn child? Because of the cost? Quo vadis Britannia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_unworthy_of_life#/media/File:EuthanasiePropaganda.jpg

You are an anachronism. Your views on how disabled children should be valued are of a different time and place.

I wasn't talking about gender - and on that ... oh nevermind. I wonder what age you are and what you do for a living.

I dont know if you're old enough to remember Remploy?

Nationwide, standardised support and work for people with disabilities, within their abilities. Scrapped by the Tories of course.

Considering that I’m also disabled and that I’ve been talking about creating more SN schools and wishing my council would do their job and actually teach people with learning disabilities some actual life skills I’m not convinced that my views are all that close to a Nazis but feel free to continue frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog if it makes you feel better. It won’t get shit done but I guess it’s quite a spectacle even if not the one you intended to create.

@SpudleyLass I'm not surprised. The system will collapse.

Also, un evidenced "courses" and private companies/ people who claim to know how to help schools learn how to deal with send are popping up everywhere.

Not enough money to fund the gold standard courses, SALT teams and OTs.

Scrapped by the Tories of course.

I remember it and I’ve seen some of the damage it caused. Extremely shortsighted of them to say the least.

However there are also a great number of people with learning disabilities who will never be capable of real work or even occasional voluntary. But they would still really benefit from being taught genuine life skills as an adult. I’ve seen the difference in the quality of life between those who can do some things for themselves and those who can’t and it’s incredibly frustrating to see our council depriving them of that in the so called Skills For Life class while simultaneously wasting money.

My gods there are some truly despicable people on this thread.

And now look what else has been scrapped by the Tories.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/anger-sunak-scraps-minister-disabled-people-2808839