To think all these Warwickshire Councillors should be fired?

[GreenBottleHanging]

If you haven’t seen the video from there Warwickshire Council meeting discussing SEND and their comments then I’ll post below (sorry but it’s the DM. The video is about halfway down).

Some comments seemed to be suggesting that these children deserve to return to institutions, to be ‘punished’ for having special educational needs. These idiots are not just ignorant, they’re dangerous. If you’ve never been around a group of children with SEND then let me tell you it’s heartbreaking. I have ADHD and life is a fucking struggle. I’m disgusted that people in power can hold such views and think they’re so acceptable they say them allowed in public.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13047901/Outrage-Warwickshire-councillors-call-return-ways-past-disabled-children-institutions-dealt-means-suggest-children-ADHD-need-strict-correction.html#article-13047901

I'm not at all surprised. I have Tory voting family who come out with all this crap. Wasn't around in my day, just poor parenting, you should smack him he wouldn't act like that then etc etc. Time passes and it's more and more clear he has significant needs. All the while everyone dismisses me eventually i beg for a break and family steps in to help me out a couple times looking after this child thinking 'he won't act like that with me!'. To cut a long story short immediately my mother accepts he needs special school after she has actually cared for him for a few hours (amd refuses to do so again as she couldn't cope), family are up in arms we have no support this is horribly unacceptable. My own mother crying because her poor grandchild has no school place and no one will help..... but literally a couple years ago she's saying my suspicions are just a trend I should smack him stop giving out money to lazy people blah blah blah Tory attitudes everywhere you look. It's all fine till it affects them personally and that's the problem. If it doesn't affect you personally it's easy to not see the problem

Ignorant and inept.
Yes, they should definitely be sacked.

This is what I cannot understand with such people. The job of councillors is to represent their community and make decisions on the basis of information presented to them that is formulated by people who are actually qualified to do so. At what point were they put in these positions to form hypotheses?

There’s no defending them really. If they were having a conversation about how best to cost effectively provide quality SEND services that would be one thing. Instead they were wasting time and energy having a wholly offensive and unproductive conversation. Also, even if the nonsense they were spouting was true, when has the government got away with not providing services because of inadequate parenting and lifestyle choices? Ridiculous.

Nest of pricks!

Yes but there will be non stst services they can pull but choose not to. They don't need to pull ones that would directly impact the same exact group. Christmas lights, any tea/coffee/ biscuits/ catering for council events, plants in the green areas etc all of these type of things although nice and not without value could be cut to start with.

Could you imagine if this conversation was about any other group of children, it just wouldn't happen. Oh there are more girls "maybe we should go back to when they didn't need educating", oh there are more children from single mothers "workhouses were a good solution". It just wouldn't be as allowed as this is.

Petition mentioned in newspaper is mine please search me on tik tok or Facebook or go to senreform in all our bios xx

Christmas lights, any tea/coffee/ biscuits/ catering for council events, plants in the green areas etc all of these type of things although nice and not without value could be cut to start with.

seriously? @Baileyscream From their budget reports it looks like Warwickshire County Council needs to find c£25 million to balance its 24/25 budget. That's an awful lot of biscuits. Christmas Lights - as a County Council not likely to be spending money on that. Not sure how you save money from something you don;t actually spend money on. So what real £ value non statutory services do you think they should reduce or stop to get close to that figure?

They have also published an initial list of possible savings. Worryingly £1m targeted from SEND school transport. Euphemistically this to be realised from doing it more efficiently,

Matter of hours before they hand in their resignations. The comms dept have already distanced themselves from these three morons.

Good. Horrific attitudes in this day and age.

Cue- EHCP will have to be reviewed and a class action by lawyers will already be in the pipeline.

I was giving examples of where they could start. I'm sure other savings could be made. My overall point is thst education is a statutory service, it has to be provided. Everything should be cut that is non statutory first, everything.

Send education gets treated like its a nicety that LA'S provide out of the goodness of their hearts. In reality its usually because parents have been to tribunal and possibly then issued pre action letters to get and enforce an ehcp.

La's can't just decide to not provide it.

I do think there will be reform of send law, so that it is cheaper for LA's but until that time parents have to enforce theirs and their children's rights.

This is the contract the Govt have signed - a system whereby they pay off councils SEND budget debt (I think there are around 35 or possibly more councils affected) in exchange for the councils reducing their EHCPs by 20%

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/10/revealed-covert-deal-to-cut-help-for-pupils-in-england-with-special-needs

I was talking to DS about this the other day

We were discussing how there should be far more specialised schools where DC with SEND who could benefit from it should have easy access to going to one if it suits their specific needs and those of the parents and family

Its generally fairly toothless sadly. I think the view was taken by the govt that the right place to deal with councillor behaviour was the ballot box... 🤷‍♀️

Those councillors are not fit for purpose

They are decision makers and they are incompetent

They not well read

Not well educated

Not well informed

NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE

I think there needs to be some sort of regular assessment process for councillors everywhere so we do not have people like this making decisions about our lives and immediate environment

It's appalling people like this sit on a council

They are way behind the times and not of any use to anyone

How can you possibly sit on a council if you admit you dont know what SEN even is and hark on about when you went to school 50 years ago

Bloody hell these people

If you're going to discuss SEN then do your bloody research

Someone needs to be in a position to ensure when they vote they all have to know that it is they're voting about and why

What in earth is the point of even having councillors if they are so useless and redundant

That video an those idiots have given me the rage

Anyone who is interested in joining a protest about these ignorant fools, come to Shire Hall, Warwick on Thursday 10am till midday

You get crap people in these roles because they're not salaried and take place at inconvenient times, so it's hard for anyone gainfully employed to do them. And imagine having to sit in a committee room with them!

It's all very well saying don't vote for them but last time I voted in a local election I tried to find bios/manifestos/a website for those standing and for some of them, there was nothing. I don't think they're required to say what they stand for? (although some do). It's not like campaigning to be an MP?

@Baileyscream I'm sure other savings could be made.

Yes, everybody's always sure that somewhere in local government there are savings that can be made that would fix these £millions gaps. Maybe in Warwickshire there are, but in the councils I work with there are very few savings left to make that don't create either hardship or more costs elsewhere. Another poster made the point about early help for families - it's non statutory but as well as being the right thing to do for the kids it reduces the need for more expensive, intensive help later on. It's pretty much all like this now. (I'm about to get replies about cycle lanes and I would respectfully ask posters to please first spend 5 minutes googling capital funding and why you can't use it for revenue spend even if not ringfenced for specific projects.) The local government finance crisis has been coming a long time. All the easy cuts have been made and closing libraries and swimming pools to fund SEND provision is going to cause a horrific backlash against SEND kids.

Obviously these particular councillors are arseholes but they do have a budget gap to deal with, it is their job to ask questions, and ultimately they were elected by the people who bothered to vote in council elections, who in Warwickshire will mostly be retired Daily Mail harrumphers who agree with these abhorrent comments. I hope some people take this incident as a nudge to actually engage with public life beyond social media outrage.

I think that’s a big assumption that people don’t engage with local politics and issues. I certainly do. I was asked to run as a councillor and I thought about it long and hard but in the end personal reasons made me decide not to (maybe a good idea given that I wasn’t aware they couldn’t be made to step down). My local community is very engaged in local issues, far beyond ‘social media outrage’. And even if others are only outraged on social media then I’m glad for that because this will be sending a message to others that holding these views is no long appropriate and they need to educate themselves.

And asking questions is their job sure - but asking whether children with SEND issues should be put in institutions or given harsh punishment because they are in fact, badly behaved or spending too much time of social media is absolutely unacceptable and how you can attempt to defend that is beyond me. Of course money is an issue, money is a huge issue in nearly all sectors and no one has said they need to produce that out of no where, all people are demanding is that they should a little bit of care and understanding towards disabled children and don’t speak about them in a derogatory manner - that’s not a fucking lot to ask of elected representatives is it?! Come on.

Exactly. It's possible to make budget cuts while being hugely sensitive to and regretful about the impact they will have

The best way to find out about those in post is to go along to (or watch online) some council meetings /committee meetings.

Very few people do.

Why aren’t they being informed of the realities re SEN by professionals in education at these meetings?

The other thread on this is really interesting discussion. My view is that LAs should not be in charge of SEND provision because it’s a way of absolving the responsibility from central gov and often the people in charge of LAs are quite incompetent. It’s not really fair to put them in a position when they have absolutely no money to spend.

The thing is though I don’t think enough people care about sen for it to have an effect on an election. It’s generally only sen parents and people connected to the sen world in some way that know how shit things are. It’s only due the comments went national and it’s locked up such a fuss they’ve apologised, majority of electorate wouldn’t care if they apologies or not

I still haven’t seen that thread, what’s it called and where is it please?