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.

And other friends within the SLT's of Academy Trusts....

The same can be said of the benefits system to whom the disabled children of today will be abandoned if they don’t get the life skills they need to enable them to contribute to society as adults. It’s all unpalatable and disabled people have been at the shitty end of it for years.

Indeed, they do seem to find ways of removing vulnerable pupils.
And as there is no-one above them till you hit the Secretary for Education they can do as they please.

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.
This is disingenuous. Your logic is like people saying "it's apparently taboo to discuss immigration" when what they actually mean is "plenty of people discuss immigration but racism and xenophobia has been challenged".

It's not taboo to discuss funding and SEND provision. Plenty of people have done so on this thread.

It is rightfully taboo to decide that some groups of children should be written off and deprived of a suitable education. This is nasty ableism.

I’m old enough to remember it. I also worked for what was then the department of employment - now DWP - in an employment rehabilitation centre for the disabled, where we did good work assessing capability and recommending the next step and support in training or job search. These centres were closed at the same time. Now the same political party who closed these and sheltered workshops are bleating about the amount of severely disabled people who are long term unemployed. No shit Sherlock - it’s because you took away the resources to keep them gainfully employed and reneged on your promises of extra help to find them alternative employment.

Government are now touting working from home as the answer and forcing severely disabled people into open employment, having destroyed the sheltered workshops that provided a supported and secure working environment. I worked in disability services at the time and I dealt with many of the heartbroken and humiliated ex Remploy employees. Not one of them received anything in the way of extra help and most of them are still unemployed today.

I remember the odious Iain Duncan Smith - the then Secretary of State for employment gleefully sharing his opinion that most of the Remploy employees weren’t productive and sat round drinking tea all day. Gives you an idea of the contempt with which the Tories view and treat the disabled. And we’re trusting our disabled children to the whims of these heartless bastards.

I mean really if you read the article they are asking if 2.5 million is proportionate and questioning the school not the child. This whole thread is a misinterpreted moan in the first place.
When you think funding is about 5-6k per child per year for schooling over 10 years this is 250,000 per year which is the cost of 50 mainstream pupils.
As la's have limited funds the places go to those who go to court.
The point of the article is that la's should build and staff more sn schools so people can't profit so much whilst providing likely substandard care. Same as what happens in care homes for all, elderly or with autism etc, huge bills paid by la for substandard care which is not actually meeting needs but lining some owners pockets.

Boomboom22
Many of us have said the same about it raising questions about the provider rather than the child's need. There's a lot of well informed posts on problems in the sector and how we've ended up here.

I think the follow on question and discussion was part of whether this type of story is useful fodder for stirring the deserving/undeserving pot. Unfortunately this thread shows that although many people are asking the same questions as you, there's a small but concerning number of people who find stories like this embolden them to say certain children shouldn't have appropriate education because it takes away from most kids. It's quite clear which posters are interested in improving SEND provision and which are trying to pretend their points are financial when they're actually ableist.

WaspsofWinter:

"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."

There are also people on this thread that would prefer to ignore the reason why there isn't adequate funding for these basic needs - because the Tories would rather gift taxpayer money to their Tory donors and themselves than spend it on essential services to benefit us all.

This story is in response to a £2.5m bill yet Tory peer Michelle Mone was gifted £200m - just one of the MANY during the pandemic. But somehow this community wants to rag on disabled kids? Billions have been wasted on PPE through the Tory VIP Lane but hey look over here so we can distract from Tories raiding taxpayer coffers AGAIN.

Tory voters did this. They're entirely to blame for this Dickensian shitshow.

I think YABU in suggesting that the premise of the article is ableist, though I do agree with you it is poorly worded and sensationalist. It does say that 'The £2.5m figure contrasts starkly with other typical spends on placements for pupils with special needs.' IMO it is saying that someone somewhere is making outrageous profits/exploiting the council in this case which has negative effects on everyone else. That's true, it's not wrong or ableist to say that if the premise of the article is that this individual case appears to be costing far more than other similar cases. I do think on the face of it it is absolutely outrageous to spend £2.5m on one child but without appropriate detail on what was covered or comparisons it is hard to say. Specialist care is expensive.

Raising concerns about the sum doesn't mean people don't think the child deserved the appropriate care, support etc, more that this seems a heavily inflated sum. Also all public expenditure is a trade off, if you spend it on one thing you can't spend it on something else, so I think it's natural for people to have differences of opinions on these kind of issues. I haven't RTF though so I am sorry if there have been ableist comments made.

It strikes me that this situation is similar to many other areas of the system that are in crisis e.g. maternity care where the amount paid in compensation for mistakes each year is more than that spent on actual maternity care, or endless locums employed in the NHS because of staff shortages when higher wages could improve staffing gaps etc. Often you end up sending more and more money when trying to spend less.

The reason SEN placements costs so much are complex. I’d suggest major reasons are:

1. these children and young people do genuinely have higher needs which cost more. In a decent society we should ensure children all have what they need to meet their potential, whatever that may be.

2. Children have been kept in mainstream too long and it has traumatised them and/or have experienced terrible broken attachment in either the care system and usually in birth families too. Often the staying in mainstream and the poor experiences in family life are due to CUTs to funding or not enough specialist places due to cuts. In other words, earlier is cheaper!

3. Due to cost cutting there is a massive, massive shortage of SEN state schools of all kinds. More and more children are then having to be placed in ‘for profit’ SEN independent schools. This costs SO much more and often provision isn’t any better or is even worse.

None of these are reasons to cut the SEN budgets, they are reasons to commission more SEN state school places!

@Rosscameasdoody We had a lovely Remploy table. They made good things.

This thread disgusts me. Utterly disgusts me.
To lay it on the table, my child attended a residential sen school because he required a 24 hour curriculum.
It cost just shy of £1m for the years he was there.
And I make no apology whatsoever for fighting for that provision for them.
Those of you who feel we should sacrifice our children for the 'good of the many' can get to fuck quite frankly.
Our children are not financial footballs competing for scarce resources - they are entitled to an education and if the lea can't or won't provide it locally then that's on them frankly.
None of you will guilt trip me into thinking my child stole resources from your child.
My child was entitled to their education.

👏👏👏 Well said.

But there is a variation in costs between private schools which should surely be investigated.

The schools are given a document called an ehcp, which outlines the things a child legally needs to access a suitable full-time education and a number of heathcare elements. This is a heavily scrutinised, evidenced based document. They are different for each child. The schools then say whether they can supply those things phrased as 'can meet need' and then provide a bill for how much it costs. The LA then picks the cheapest place that says it 'can meet need'. Sometimes there is a tension here because a school will say it can meet need when it cant. That tends to be when tribunals happen. So a child will have an ehcp saying they need a qualified nurse to do a certain medical process and a school with a carer will say they can do it, so parents will fight for the school with a nurse as they dont fancy their child having kidney failure.
Some schools will cost more because they are doing different things. Where expensive independent schools that make a profit are used, its because they are generally the only place that can meet need or are the same cost as meeting that need a different way. For example my sons independent has occupational and speech therapist on site. There is a cheaper school but then the LA get charged for the therapies on top which then makes the bill bigger.

The investigation is why is state provision so poor that there are lots of children whose needs can not be met in the state sector and why are profit making independents either the only or the cheapest provision rather than why costs vary.

Theres lots of reasons independents costs may vary due to what they offer and what the child needs varying. Some places offer 52 week residential care with a 2 to 1 ratio, some are doing 32.5 hours a week, term time only with a class of 6 to one teacher because the children need totally different things.

My LEA,s provision is better than most.we have two special needs primary schools and two special needs high schools
One of the primary and High schools ,caters for children with autism and or learning disabilities, who are moderately to severely affected
And the other primary and high school.cater for children with a autism and or learning disabilities who are severely to profoundly affected
We also have seversl.autism hubs,in mainstream schools
But even with this provision its not always a one size fits all for some children with complex needs .

I wish more mainstream schools would be more robust about making a fuss if children are placed with them when they are blatantly unable to meet their needs. If they write to the LA listing all the elements of the EHCP that they are not able to deliver and point out that this means they are in breach of their statutory duty to secure special educational provision, and then point parents towards SOS SEN and/or solicitors to take legal action, this would soon bring about a change in local authority mindsets. They only put children in unsuitable mainstream placements because they can get away with it.

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

Was there an explanation given for this? Why do they think it’s a good idea

The cynic in me would say because its far cheaper to have a child on a 1:1 in mainstream than in a specialist. School.
Lets face no political party really cares about e education of disabled children .

They don't really have the choice if the child needs support that mainstream schools simply cannot provide, e.g. small classes. Of if they are ordered by the Tribunal to arrange a specialist placement.

The article doesn't tell us anything about the needs of the child or the period over which this was spent. £2.5m over 7 years would be £350K a year. Very few special school places, even residential, cost this much. I would guess that the child in question has extremely complex needs requiring full-time support from more than one adult plus waking nights care. This is an exceptional level of expenditure, very uncommon indeed. It would be a mistake to think that all children or even a large minority of children with SEN require equivalent funding.

I think that as a society we need to be absolutely clear that we have two choices -

(1) Accept that we cannot afford to pay for proper, high quality care / education for all - some people's needs are so great that society simply cannot help them.

(2) Accept that the only way to pay for proper, high quality care / education for all is if all companies and rich people pay their fair share, and there fair share is MUCH MUCH MUCH more than they are currently paying.

Interesting that they became less tolerant of disablist posts and began managing it more effectively once it became clear it wasn't a good look on Twitter.

Well they preach inclusion bit the problem is the support for these children in mainstream schools isn't there and some parents even get a bit shirty seeing SEN kids with a 1-1, as if we're robbing their kids somehow.

Ultimately? Saves money, that's why they're doing this.