To be so angry that people like this are in charge of SEND budgets

[Dalmatron]

Has anyone seen the thread on twitter/X about the Warwickshire Councillors at the scrutiny panel for SEND spending?

I am so angry!

Some quotes:
(Talking about institutions) "They had better ways of dealing with them at that time. Let's go back to those ways"
"I don't know what the fix is, I just look back at years gone by those people by whatever means, it was right at the time".
"Is it something in the water?"
"Families are swapping tips to get diagnosed"
"Why are there so many people jumping out with these needs? Where were they when I was at school?"
"Why do so many people have this badge of SEND and special needs?"
"To stop this spend fix the problem at source"
"the plea of a Mother saying Little Willy has ADHD when Little Willy is just really badly behaved & needs some form of strict correction"

How can people like this be in these positions? Why has nothing been done to remove them or apologise? I felt sick watching these clips.

Warwickshire Council thread

YANBU, it's awful.
"fix the problem at source" - i.e. less disabled people should exist. Lovely.

It is awful that people have these attitudes are in charge of budgets. Especially, those suggesting institutions. However, there does seem to be a massive increase in SEND and I think many people rightly question this. I don't say rightly to suggest that there is misdiagnosis, but we do need to conduct research to find out why. Is it because SEND levels were always this high and just undiagnosed, environmental factors etc. If we can explain what is going on, then it may be easier to fight for adequate support for those who need it.

I was told recently by an SEND teacher that her first ever class at a specialist SEND school 10 years ago would nowadays all be in mainstream, because needs are so much greater than 10 years ago. I’m not entirely surprised that we’re seeing pushback, because there are no specialist places and far more children who need them.

I have no solutions to this crisis, apart from a vast injection of cash into schools and the NHS.

(I’m an SEND parent and teacher).

What an utter disgrace.

People with attitudes like some of those expressed have no business being in charge of children's education.

They need to realise that the world has moved on and kids with SEND are no longer dumped in "remedial" classes where they were basically not given a chance to achieve anything.

That's exactly why rates of diagnosis/waiting lists are so high at the moment. Lots of adults who should have been diagnosed are now being. I'm on the waiting list now myself. I'm 45.

Are there really more kids with SEND than ever as a percentage of the population. For years so many kids were ignored, hidden and never diagnosed but looking back in the 70s/80s in my experience there were a lot of kids who would now come under certain diagnosis. Plus children surviving difficult births or early births and many more older parents can be a factor.
But the ignorance of these people is absolutely dire. No wonder the country is so corrupt.
I would hate to go back to people being hidden away in an institution.

How can people like this be in these positions? Why has nothing been done to remove them or apologise?

They're voted in. More people need to vote in local government elections - typically terrible turn out - and to ask questions of the people standing for election to try and weed the shitty ones out. The pay for councillors and the time commitment means it is often difficult for people who need to work for a living to apply so the demographic skews retired, which doesn't help.

Unfortunately the parents of kids with additional needs are least likely to have the time and energy to do this so the burden should really fall on the rest of us (but for the love of god at least sort yourself out a postal vote if you possibly can).

I agree with this. Some of the things that the councillors have said are offensive and wrong, but I do think we need to get to the bottom of why the numbers of children with SEN have seemingly sky rocketed. This is worrying for the children and parents involved who will almost certainly face additional challenges as unfortunately a SEN diagnosis is associated with an increase risk of all kind of other conditions and outcomes. It is also worrying for society as quite frankly we aren't very good at supporting those with SEN and we can't afford all of the additional astronomically expensive special school placements without bankrupting local councils or paying a hell of a lot more tax.

I know many scientists are looking at environmental factors like whether the water we drink and food we consume is playing a role so I'm not sure that raising this as a possibility is wrong in itself. I also think we do need to explore the link between parenting and SEN diagnosis, not in a pursuit to blame parents but to understand for example the link between trauma and some SEN diagnosis. Also mentioning parents swapping tips to get a diagnosis is relevant even if it's just a fraction of the cases. The difference in provision between having a diagnosis and not having a diagnosis can be stalk so of course parents that understandably want support for their children will do what they can to make sure they get a diagnosis over the line (I know at least two friends who did this). I'm not suggesting this is a major factor behind the increase but it will skew the numbers a bit and cloud our understanding of what is actually going on.

LAs cannot cope with SEN processes and needs. I think it should be taken out of LA controls and implemented nationally perhaps. Cuts to the services have also made it this sort of target.

Local councillors generally are clueless as shown here.

All those people saying “these children weren’t around when I was at school” - think of the kids at school who were labelled ‘stupid’, ‘naughty’, ‘weird’. Think of the classmates you had who had a sibling who mysteriously didn’t go to school, or didn’t live at home. SEN children have always been there. Their needs were just being ignored.

I partially agree with this, although I find it hard to ignore the experiences of SEN teachers who are suggesting the SEN issues are getting more extreme. I struggle to understand why this would be their experience if it was simply a case that SEN is being recognised and diagnosed more?

One thing I have anecdotally noticed amongst my children's friends is that this latest generation of children do seem more aware of their power and autonomy than kids of my generation. They seem empowered to refuse to participate in things they don't want to do and therefore be disruptive in a way that my friends and I would never ever have done. This seems true across the board, with NT and ND kids, but I wonder if it makes the ND children harder to manage and therefore their needs seem more extreme. I do think a societal change is largely behind this as children used to be routinely frightened of authority figures (parents and teachers) whereas now this is rare and seen as problematic. Not saying the old way was better but it certainly made children more compliant and easier to manage in a school and home setting.

My mum was a teacher in the 80/90's and was true you didn't see children in school with SEN but that's only because mainstream schools didn't take SEN children. In our area many children with additional needs were educated at home.

These kids used to be 'invisible' a lot of the time. They usually had a SAHM so if school was stressful they had somebody to accommodate those needs. Now everyone is expected to work (unless eligible for DLA, so need to prove a need for those such as a neurodevelopment condition). Schools have bigger class sizes, and there aren't enough special school places. Children who may have coped with better staff to child ratios now are struggling, and that starts at nursery and childminders so they aren't getting that support from early. And now we have better understanding of SEND we don't accept that some kids will just be failed in school, be in remedial, and then an institution. I wonder how much we used to spend on Borstal and Asylums for kids who now just need a bit of extra support at the beginning, but then go on to lead much fuller more productive lives. I wonder if that budget is not now going on EHCPs instead, and if they looked at it what we are seeing is a societal shift in the way money is spent not the percentage of money spent on the same people. Over time we might find that early intervention for SEND, better special school provision and sufficient EHCP funding, and an investment in the earlier years of SEND children might long term result in decreased funding in mental health, social care and institutions such as prisons. It's just that the spending comes first, and to E pay off comes later.

I used to work with secondary children as a 1 to 1 and now work in exams. I definitely think there are more children needing access arrangements for exams this year and notice more children clearly needing a lot of support now. I think that "when I were a lass" a lot of children got places in specialist schools. Those places aren't available anymore so more children with SEN go to main stream school. The threshold is a lot higher for being considered unable to go to mainstream school. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing tbh. I think it's depends on the child. But either way, schools are struggling to cope with the sheer numbers of children who really need support. We can't keep TAs in the job for long either, so are usually understaffed. Only kids with EHCPs which state 1 to 1 get it regularly and even then it isn't guaranteed.

No solutions - it's a mess.

But these councillors blaming the kids and parents are clearly dicks

I think both parents working long hours also means more demands on services.

When I was a child (70s ) school was v strict and you had to conform whether it suited or not. So people with ASD and ADHD etc were generally forced to comply by the use of physical punishment and shame and we had a society that didn't really recognise a lot of those type of disabilities. If you were severely disabled more than likely you were in a residential placement.
Many people suffered untold mental and physical abuse and were further impacted as a result. My brother was one of them.

Our school system has also changed. Much more authoritarian, detentions, exclusions, internal exclusions. For kids with (for eg) ADHD, they are getting disproportional sanctions for something that they may not have in the past. They may have been able to leave school early and get a grade that may have suited their need not to be sitting in one place for eight hours. Now they have to study, track a teacher, have the right equipment in class. If not they get a detention.

I really think it is a combination of all the factors mentioned. And I think Covid really accelerated any MH declines that a child may have had in the future. So we seen this explosion of SEND now and generally a school system that doesn’t understand it.

Can’t believe they would actually say things like this out loud. However he does raise legitimate points in a a very poor and clumsy way. My LA is on the verge of going bust and one of their biggest increase in spending is ECHPs. The number has tripled since covid. Tripled in just a few years. There is no way LAs can keep up with that kind of demand with their measly budgets. Something is going on but I think it’s the job of central gov to deal with really.

The joys of childism. I don’t know about other schools but my school spends ages teaching children about their rights. UN convention on rights of the child etc which is lovely in many ways but my 11 yo argues like a barrister it’s all mildly aggressive and accusatory with leading questions.

I’ve had a teacher tell me at parents evening that she genuinely has to stop and check her thinking as she is put on such a back foot. His teacher now is really young and very engaged she says she gives children s lot of respect but has high standards and strong boundaries, He’s actually responded incredibly well to her.

Possibly schools/ schooling will change as children become less responsive to an old fashioned disciplinary model.

Marking my place as I have a lot to say about this, but need to go to work.

I think there are probably lots of reasons including parental pushiness and removal of some stigma causing more middle class parents to shop for diagnoses. But I also think they way school has changed, the expectations, the tracking makes it harder. When I was at school in the 80s daydreaming, doodling, staring out of window all day - even walking out of school - was totally tolerated and even encouraged as easier than dealing with a difficult child.

It's not that there's more SEND children, it's that there's more awareness. I remember when I was at school, the children who had SEND were the "naughty" ones, sat at the back of the class and who we were told to "ignore" and not give any attention to. They were all placed in the bottom sets and spoken about as if they were pointless individuals who were never going to achieve anything.

The reason why I advocate for my children is so they receive the help they need in school and so they can thrive and achieve the same as neurotypical children.

To think some Stone Age brained fucker in a council meeting is talking about my children in this way makes my blood boil.

YANBU but the entire government is pretty awful at the moment. You could say the same about those who are in charge of the NHS, our education system, prisons, everything.

All you can do is use your vote at the next election.

Well, these people should ask themselves...if my council (and all the others) wasn't spending billions collectively on denying SEN children educational support they are legally entitled to...would we perhaps have significantly more time and resources to provide the actual support?

Councils are losing more than 90% of the tribunal cases brought against them.

How much extra stress have they caused to parents and children with SEN?

They're openly breaking the law.

Of course they blame children and parents. They can hardly stand up and say they're breaking the law and making a difficult situation worse.

'shopping for diagnosis' is quite a judgemental phrase although I am aware it seems in heavy rotation currently.

As if parents have a tick list of desired outcomes, rather an acknowledgement that we know the systems are fucked and want to get to the heart of the problem as early as possible.