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.

@edwinbear me, I'd take it from the defence budget and make the Royal Family fundable by voluntary subscription (and probably shut down a few quangos whilst I'm at it). And I personally would be up for Scandinavian style taxes across the board. Thing is, I'm in a minority.

Everyone has the right to healthcare but no-one has the right to the best medical care money can buy. A wheelchair costs more than crutches, so anyone in need of a wheelchair should just use crutches or be bed bound.

Or does your logic only apply to hidden disabilities?

No.

What's fair, effective, prudent and most efficient use of funding is to give those that need it, a wheelchair. Sometimes people that need wheelchairs can't get them from the NHS so have to get private funding/grants to pay an independent company. They still need a wheelchair and you'd be lynched if you started saying they don't deserve one because it's too expensive, even if it's public money paying a private vendor for that wheelchair.

But again, your ableist logic only applies to hidden disabilities, doesn't it?

It's not ableist to point out that there's not enough money in the pot to pay for everything therefore there are decisions to be made. Because that's what's happening now, isn't it? Decisions are made about who gets a suitable education, a crappy education or no education at all. But if you have a plan to make everything hunky dory with no additional money then by all means tell.

@Tacotortoise not sure I agree on defence. It’s only 4.8% of our TME (total managed expenditure). Compared to our pensions & benefits bill….

I realise the conversation has moved on and this is not the main point of the thread, but "holding pen" is a common enough term when referring to institutions which are just "containing" people rather than fulfilling their stated purpose of actually helping them.

Whilst I obviously don't know the intentions of the previous poster, the phrase itself isn't reducing disabled children to an animal status any more than phrases like "happy as a pig in shit" or "pacing like a caged animal". It's describing the school as only functioning to give the children somewhere to go, rather than actually educating them or supporting them in developing independence, rather than being a comment on the children themselves.

How much would the RF subscription save? What do you think the ramifications of decreased defence spending would be at a time of such global instability? Would it be in our interests given we are no longer in the EU and on our Todd?

Im not pro royal family (or anti, Im indifferent to them) but it really does make me laugh when people say that they would defund them on the basis of saving money. Its a vanishingly small amount of money that pays for them all!!!

This bemuses me on several levels. Firstly we actually already have taxes pretty much in line with Norway. Secondly; we are so vastly different from the Scandinavian countries politically, culturally, geographically, economically and demographically even with their tax system we wouldn’t be able to produce the results they do.

"All children have the right to an education but no child has the right to the best possible education money can buy."

That is education law already so children in very expensive placements have already had that taken into account.

Taking it from the defence budget is a really bad idea

And taxes are quite high already

In health care the NICE guidelines most certainly do ration on cost. Noone gets the best health care possible if quality years of live saved wouldn't be worth it. Many effective treatments are not funded. So the same in education.

I think a lot of people dont understand that often the school that the child goes to is not necessarily the 'chosen' school, its the only provision that has places and would accept the child.

Not necessarily, some autistic children are completely non verbal and unable to talk at all and need to use devices. Some children like both my autistic children children can become non verbal at times, often making stranges noises or animal noises and disassociating

The right of special needs children to an education is enshrined in law in several areas of legislation, including the Equality Act 2010, so I don’t think we’re in danger of reverting back to the bad old days. But just from reading some MN threads it’s clear that there’s a lot of difficulty in securing the appropriate funding for individual children, and schools can be very difficult when it comes to providing reasonable adjustment, so it doesn’t translate very well into practice.

The government is also introducing major changes to the benefits system because it believes that many more severely disabled people can work and make contributions to society. The end result will be that people with more complex and limiting conditions will be obliged to engage with the system and look for work, whereas previously they were considered too severely disabled to be compelled to do this. The expectation is, that with the right support, many can secure working from home jobs which will facilitate the management of their condition at work.

The government says their aim is to give disabled people the same life chances as everyone else, and to my mind this starts with the fundamental right of disabled and special needs children to access an education, with levelling up so that their disability/health condition does not put them at a disadvantage. Otherwise, how can we expect them to contribute in the way the government expects them to do when they’re of working age ? The two go hand in hand.

This article seeks to undermine that principle and perpetuates the myth that the parents of special needs children are entitled and cost the tax payer. Unfortunately disabled people have been subject to this kind of thing for as long as I can remember. Articles appearing in the press painting disabled people as cheats and scroungers, followed by cuts to benefits pushed through with no opposition because mud sticks. The same now appears to be happening in special needs education - this isn’t by any means the first such article I’ve seen, and it’s depressing.

As a country we’re not as enlightened as we think if we can’t make the connection that if we expect our special needs children to grow up and lead productive and full lives then we need to make sure they have the best education possible. And it’s not cheap, but as ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Not necessarily, some autistic children are completely non verbal and unable to talk at all and need to use devices. Some children like both my autistic children children can become non verbal at times, often making stranges noises or animal noises and disassociating

But the question is, does that vanishingly small amount actually represent value for money ?

I’ve just had a look at the actual figures as I realised nobody has actually posted them here yet. ‘high needs funding is increasing by a further £440 million for 24/25, bringing total funding to £10.5 billion – an increase of over 60% since 2019-20.’

So it seems spending on SEN education has gone up significantly in the last 4/5 years.

I’m just wondering if you believe this is an underfunded system, how much you believe should be spent? It seems an enormous sum of money to me, and is increasing year on year.

But disabled people get a double whammy don’t they ? Decisions on who does and does not get any meaningful education have ramifications in later life when those children become adults dependent on the state to support them because they haven’t been taught the life skills they need to work and be independent.

Iti is the same in Education I wanted my son to go to a private SEN school the facilities etc looked amazing he LEA Said no as the LEA special school could meet his needs and indeed they are doing
Those children who are being educated in expensive private SEN schools are there because no other school can meet their needs they may well have had several failed p!a cements before the LEA agrees to fund specialist provisions costing £££,s

My son attends a private special school because the state special schools could not meet his complex needs There was no other choice. The nearest state asc provision is nearly 2 hours away.

And fast forward to when these children are adults. The ones for whom it wasn’t deemed fair or prudent to be provided with a suitable education are now subjected to the same assessment of their worth when they become dependent on the state for their livelihood because they haven’t the skills to work and be a contributing member of society. So. Spend the money on education now, or spend it later supporting those who can’t support themselves because of the short sightedness of the times we live in.

I’m just wondering if you believe this is an underfunded system, how much you believe should be spent? It seems an enormous sum of money to me, and is increasing year on year.
The sector has been neglected for decades, councils haven't been able to invest due to cuts.

Children still have a right to a suitable education though. They don't go away because some people in power think they're undeserving.

So when parents take legal action to push for their children's right to a suitable education, what's found for them are very expensive services from private providers (who can get away with charging whatever they want because nobody else is offering such specialist support).

Getting a personal budget, EOTAS, and a proper suitable education for some of our country's most vulnerable children is incredibly difficult.Other parents end up so ground down that they withdraw their children from school and home educate, which is a nice little saving for the council because they can wash their hands of those children.

With proper investment in the sector, more children with SEND could be educated more effectively without needing to spend huge amounts on private providers. The problem is this requires long term, cross party consensus (which you aren't going to get when the current government has made it very clear how they feel about children and adults with SEN and disabilities).

Edit to add: and there's enough people on this thread who've made it clear that the government would have no issues pushing the disabled children as a burden narrative because they also think these children should be written off to protect the masses.

@LolaSmiles that doesn’t really answer what I said though. Do you believe there should be a cap, or theoretically should we just spend whatever is needed? If so which other budgets should be reduced to meet this need? Knowing there is a finite amount of money and that all spending must have limits isn’t the same as thinking people are undeserving.

And just to follow up on your proper investment point, what would the initial spend there be? I assume there would have to be a one off enormous spend to transform the system, I’m just interested to know how much that would cost and again where that would come from.

I take PP point about Tory corruption and wastage, all bar HS2 though is peanuts compared to the money we’re talking about here. It’s frustrating but even if we recouped all that money it wouldn’t go far.

@Naptrappedmummy Ine reason costs have increased is that people used to only have an ehcp until 18, but it now goes to 25 and this took a few years to bed in. Its an extra 7 years of funding.

The other is there has been a bit of a baby boom move through education. Its stopped now but there are mainstreams schools that expanded, took bulge classes etc so even with the same proportion of sen you get bulge classes there too but capacity didnt increase so people were forced into more expensive private provision.

Also some things used to be healthcare and are now pushed into education. Speech and language was very much a healthcare cost when my child was tiny, but it's now very much an education one.

Austerity and the gove curriculum has also pushed more children into the sen sector.

In terms of how much - its an unanswerable question. Id like to spend enough. Obviously we cant spend the whole tax reciept on one individual and provide no other services but that isnt on the radar.