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

OK so are working Mum's now being made the reason for children developing SEN because that's essentially what is being implied.

Ah, I thought you might be working from more individual local data. The most recent government statistics are from 22/23, so data from Nov 2023 in relation to the LGO case is more recent.

The answer is we have more than 10 million more people living here now than in 1975

But we have 10 million fewer children today than we did in 1975.

I do agree the tone of the councillors is not appropriate for their office. I also have 2 dc with SEN but also feel something has gone terribly wrong with how dc are diagnosed today and SEN provision is not fit for purpose.

An educational psychologist up thread actually said some (emphasis on some) of the SEND she sees is just poor parenting. In those cases ofcourse it’s the parents fault.

There will be children who would have had SEND anyway and we do need to understand why it’s happening and how as a society we provide them with the best support possible. Clearly the system is under immense pressure and children who need help often are not getting it.

But honestly the report I linked left me utterly aghast at the number of parents who think school should be teaching their kids to go to the loo, eat and speak.

I agree with a lot of the points you both raised. I used to work with children in care and there is a strong link between neglect & trauma, family breakdown and certain symptoms of SEN and MH issues. And I say this as a ND woman.

If we’re really serious about long term change then we need to accept we’re not paying enough tax and everyone who can work should work, no claiming UC ‘because I prefer to be around for the school run’ etc.

and this. My friend and her partner both work part time - she only works about 12 hours a week and has only done so since the youngest was in school. Her kids are all 13+ now. She has no plans to work full-time. Or she would have to pay a lot of rent for her London house. I don’t blame her at all, wages have stagnated and she’s doing what the system allows, but I wonder if the system has to be looked at as it seems a few of us are carrying the financial load while working people apart from the super-rich who manage to get away with it - are paying a heavy price and it’s unsustainable.

Surely this 'burden' has risen since the law was changed meaning children with SEND are entitled to an education in their own right with an equal access to education as their peers? And schools and LAs have by law had to implement the various disability discrimination Acts.
The GDP spent on Education in the UK has been lower than many much poorer nations than ours for decades; but to now scrutinise and point the finger at children with disabilities for draining resources is a backwards step and disgraceful.
Children starting school unprepared because they've been sat on tablets since birth - which is true many have is a different matter altogether to the rise in children with disabilities.
Since 2010 austerity policies such as closing sure start have meant a decline in the early years precious building blocks. The Pandemic where health visitors etc didn't even visit families.
Yes there are a lot of societal factors but the fact is ALL children have been given a right to an education provided by the state and councillors should not be questioning that or deciding that they don't think it's right.

@SearchingForSolitude Thank you! For some reason I didn't think they included this data - super helpful!

I've just seen something on the fussy eaters in the olden days thread that made me think. Someone said that kids with ARFID would have just died, failure to thrive. Could that be why we are seeing more non-speaking kids at school age - they're quite literally just surviving that long now?

That's fine, if the goal is to satisfy school standards quotas. The problem is that it will actually obscure the student's actual ability when they exit the education system, unless it's an absolutely 100% accurate predictor of ability (which we know it won't be).

On the other hand, giving them appropriate accommodations but no weightings during education does give a wholly accurate picture of how they will be able to perform in a workplace setting when also given appropriate accommodations for their needs.

As a SEND parent I cried and ranted so much about this yesterday as well as emailing one of those counsellors. I was honestly just so heartbroken to hear a room of people like that in authority talk about our children like that. It actually sickened me. We’ve been through bloody hell on this send journey. They’ve not a sodding clue how hard life is for our poor children and us as parents. It’s a constant battle.

Yet schools and their rules are much stricter than when I was in a comprehensive school in the 1980s - the rules at the comp that my DCs have just left were ridiculous- detention for having a button undone and other very minor rule breaking.
I think parents wade in and complain more than in the past because there is s general sense of entitlement- perhaps rules laid down and observed down to the letter by schools are partly a result of this as parents definitely do not have the same respect of authority when it comes to teachers as in the past.
I don’t believe ND children are harder to manage because they believe they have the right to refuse to participate, they actually are forced to participate when being ND is often accompanied by extreme anxiety disorders.
SEND issues are becoming more extreme? You mean the numbers? Behaviour?
7 years ago I was told 1 in 10 kids had bern diagnosed with adhd, autism, dyspraxia by our head teacher, what are the statistics now I wonder?
In my 1980s comp the classes were streamed and sadly the bottom few classes were notoriously badly behaved- perhaps many of these kids had adhd and just lumped together to be disruptive with no treatment or help - I’m certain this is the case.
There comes a point when someone who can function perfectly well in a school and gets a diagnosis because they are a bit forgetful or need extra time in exams with pushy parents (this is a real thing), completely devalues the diagnosis of kids that really do have a problem and need support.

Thank you
@RainbowZebraWarrior

That's exactly how my dd is too

Did anyone in Warwickshire see the ITV news clip? This is a bit different to the one that was just on as the Council has just put out a statement.

www.itv.com/watch/news/catch-up-on-itv-news-central-west-midlands-from-tuesday-6th-february/jwks4m7

what Is really contributing to the escalation of SEND also is a very crappy children’s mental health system. In fact, it is probably one of the top causes. My child would never have needed an EHCP at 16 if she had gotten the right support for her eating disorder. When I asked for an autism assessment, I was ignored. My dc began self harming. No eating disorder support, no therapy. Just a meal plan they we were expected to implement. When we did, she started harming herself. We did not see all this but CAMHS did. Hundreds of scars. Dd out of school for a year watched over by dh and I. Social care package couldn’t be fulfilled - no workers. Dd now back at school but with significant long term mental health issues. This was all avoidable and a burden on the system that should never have been. Times this by 1000s across the U.K. Schools do not have the expertise to deal with this severe a case, yet they are expected to.

@ntmdino I don't think you quite understood my post (which is fair enough, because how schools are evaluated is boring nerdy stuff!)

I was saying that at the moment schools are not held to account or praised for how kids with SEN/EHCP do. For kids with PP (free school meals) they are.

E.g. school data says "average at this school is 60% get 5 GCSE at 5-9; 55% pupil premium get 5 GCSE at 5-9 [invented statistics].

Therefore a lot of effort goes into helping DC on pupil premium to achieve.

This leads to some perverse outcomes and means it's left too much up to the individual school management to be decent people and do the right thing by SEN (which is to give all the DC with places the best education they can manage). Makes it hard for parents to compare too.

Pp didn't say it's working mums' fault. She was explaining, not blaming.

Having more parents in work means fewer toddlers being supported outwith the education system. It's no one person's fault, but a consequence of societal changes.

Some SEN traits can be hugely valuable to employers though. My husband is autistic (recently diagnosed) and reckons more than half the people in his (v specialized) workplace are too.

Sometimes skills /behaviours not valued by schools /exams can be seen very differently in the workplace

Wtf.
My daughter is doing "perfectly well" in school. But her dyslexia tests show she is a severely dyslexic. Why shouldn't she get the adaptations and support so she can perform to her full potential?

My mum had undiagnosed dyslexia at school and since being diagnosed as an adult she has gone on to have a really successful career. The world lost two decades of her brilliant brain because people thought she wasn't that bright rather than realising it was dyslexia

His wording was abhorrent.

Some of the questions he raised in a terrible way are valid.

What did we do? Why did what we did work? How do we get back to working send provision?

This does raise the other question about whether it worked or not?!

But ..... a big part of this is austerity. We use to have class TAs . They supported the children who struggled with learning daily in small groups. They often caught up or continued to have the support to access education. Now they really don't exist at that level. We have children who the gap widens for and the resulting disenfranchisement and behaviours that go with that and self esteem and MH difficulties.

That results in them eventually needing an ehcp because they can't access education as offered in usual school day. That ehcp often pays for a Ta for 20-35 hours a week. Then another child in the class needs the support but that paid for TA is for the pupil with the ehcp. Eventually they need a funded TA. You now have 2,3,4 funded TAs in a class costing 4 times as much whereas previously just 1 doing early intervention work may have been enough.

I've also seen a huge shift in private education facilities provided. They have increased in need as state provision has been cut. Therefore the costs have risen per child to meet need. They've also switched massively from taking those pupils with severe needs who cannot manage even a send special school and many are now for pupils with SEMH needs. How have we go for the point we need so many specialist schools who tend to take LAC (again an increase in LAC which I wonder is a direct result of cutting surestart type services) with SEMH needs and those pupils with severe autism (for example) end up with no placement for years and unable to access any type of meaningful education which meets their needs. They get more severe in their needs during this time making it harder to place them and more costly when they do.

The system has failed in so many places on so many levels - added in with the idea of inclusion and a complete misunderstanding of what that means and looks like - and needs completely stripping back and starting again.

Schools also need in general to start building more relationships with pupils. Stop all this texting parents and sending parents lists of negative points for simple stupid childhood things that pupils do. Teachers need to deal with it internally and build relationships with pupils. You don't need punk stove punishment for everything. It does nothing to support pupils MH or ability to RA effectively.

I work in education - I despair at it most days.

But I love my job.

This is definitely the case, it works out better for schools to get rid/not have sen kids start in the first place. I’ve noticed it’s mostly ofsted outstanding schools that seem to be like this, maybe that’s a coincidence or maybe that’s how they get to be ofsted outstanding. Whereas on local groups when parents ask about supportive schools for their child it’s often ones that ofsted judge more poorly. The way the element two Sen funding works also gives schools an incentive to try and force some Sen kids out. If a child has an ehcp the school has to fund approx the first £6000 out of it’s Sen budget, this is an amount of cash they get that isn’t linked to specific children and it’s not ringfenced either so if it’s not spent on Sen it can be spent on anything. So for example if you have a child who needs a full time 1-1 ta if the school can force that child out they are automatically £6k better off, they lose the top up funding that is attached to that child but not the element 2 £6k. Sen kids are a lose lose for school they take up funds and they are more likely to bring a schools overall results down. Please don’t take offence at this anyone, it’s just a fact, there will be good schools that don’t do this, I’m just a jaded parent of a Sen child who has seen this in action

Fair enough - I honestly wasn't even aware that schools had no metrics in place to monitor their SEN performance, which is an absolute travesty.

I do remember that when my DD was at secondary school (a long time ago now), we had a blazing row with her teachers about her predicted grades, because they were ridiculously low compared to her work - and the school told us that they were nothing to do with her work at all, but entirely dependent on demographics, and that's how the school's performance was measured. If it's still anything like that, it's utterly insane.

Totally agree that ASD in the workplace can be a huge boost
But the setting has to
Be right for the individual and the person feels comfortable

My Dd Hated School and refused to go often. Couldn't go at times due to anxiety but is now doing really well in small local design company. Getting herself Up and going and earning. I'm really proud of her.

In my workplace we have ASD employees. They are reliable, never off sick unless it's genuine and
Lovely lovely to work with. Never embroiled in all the politics and crap. They are Some Of My favourite colleagues by a long way.

Workplaces that are
Not embracing autistics are missing out.

In my parents' school days, those who didn't pass 11+ ended up being factory fodder. They left school at 15. Kids with learning difficulties and from troubled backgrounds fared even worse. A whole generation of possibilities from within the working class wiped out. They didn't have the medical knowledge we have now. They didn't even know that smoking cigarettes caused cancer.

Dh (10 years older than me) is an intelligent man. He came from a good family. He couldn't focus at school, found it boring, left without qualifications to join the RAF.

When I was at school, there was a really clever boy. He often ran out of class crying. He spent long periods out of school, just couldn't cope with the demands of the school day. All the kids looked at this weirdo kid, shrugged and got on with their education. Looking back he had chronic anxiety. Today, he's stacking shelves in Tesco.

Generations have been failed due to lack of awareness. Neurodivergence has always been there, and in large numbers, we just didn't know about it.

And in the last couple of years, our understanding has improved even further. It's not that girls don't have adhd or asd in the numbers seen in boys, it's simply that their presentation of symptoms is different. Their difficulties were missed. Girls, and their needs, as in other parts of life, have been massively overlooked.

With all this recent knowledge, I am sickened by the councillors' ignorance and they have no place overseeing the services we rely on. Dh returned to education years later, armed with greater knowledge that he's not stupid after all, he just learns differently to the methods used four decades ago. But that clever boy who had so much to offer the world aged 10 is still stacking shelves in Tesco.

No, because there’s a long gap in time between ‘institutions and starving to death’ and the uptick we are seeing now - some 70 years. Nobody starved to death in the 1990s, and that was long before the increase in SEN.

I was at school in the 90s but there was an awful lot of anorexia in the news. I appreciate thats a different thing than AFRID but there was certainly people in the 90s not eating and dying.

A quick goodle says rates of anorexia are increasing, particularly amongst men though. So its another thing growing.