Reform councils to cut SEN spending

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.. according to the Lib Dem’s. Can they even do this? My DC isn’t SEN but her class has 5 TAs mainly as 121s and I dread what would happen if their funding is removed. Our council isn’t Reform led but they’re pretty neck on neck in no overall control.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/apr/24/ed-miliband-energy-pricing-keir-starmer-nigel-farage-latest-live-uk-politics-news

The range of SEN and EHCPs is massive. We want as many people as possible to be financial independent and working, many EHCPs and SEN funding facilitates that.

So how is success measured? Are outcomes taken into account - post education 1 year, 5 year, 10 years?

Is the "allocated" vs "actual" measured too?

If we don't spend money educating children with complex needs, support when they are adults will cost more.

I have 2 foster DC both with quite severe life long learning disabilities due to their respective mothers taking a cocktail of alcohol and hard drugs throughout the pregnancy. 1 mother died of a drugs overdose a month before eldest DC school exams. He had not had any contact with her for well over 3 years, basically as soon as he could chose for himself. I couldn't help thinking to myself well at least that's the last time she would screw up his life.

I have two children with EHCPs and have been a teacher for 20+ years so I do understand in mainstream how outcomes/success/progress is measured, although this can be very problematic as does not take account of the young person eg whose parent died a year before their GCSEs. However you could argue with broad strokes it is reasonably successful.

My youngest child will certainly never take any qualifications. At 9, and at special school, his targets are to dress himself, start trying to use the toilet, increase the half dozen words he randomly says.

A good outcome for me is that he is happy, making some progress, able to access the world.
Obviously other children with EHCPs would have completely different targets.

What do you suggest for measuring outcomes for children with profound/severe disabilities?

Fake news!! Can't people see that? Especially coming from another party oh wait the Reform haters will take any scraps to hate against them.

People posted research suggesting this outcome. Research done by a highly biased group of researchers. Parents of children have stated over and over again how access to the tight education changed the path of their children's life's.

if you wanna know my situation: DC1 will never be independent but will likely be able to have a lot of basic independent life skills which means supported living will be sufficient rather than care in an expensive facility needed a much higher level of support. DC2 will likely be able to achieve GCSEs as we are finally getting into the right setting. and means they will hopefully have the option of doing A-Levels and higher education with hopefully a fully independent tax payer by the end of it. For now, they were set up for being a NEET in the next few years... I don't understand what you don't understand about how education can change lives. To even question the the right to an education just because of an disability is nothing but shameful and disgusting. You have really shown who you are - someone nasty with complete disregard for the rights of disabled people.

Since 1970 all disabled children have had the right to an education and Statements (now EHCPs) have existed since 1978. Yet 5O years later we have people disagreeing with this. I wonder what sort of dark ages or Gilead they want to live in.

I don’t think people are saying they don’t have a right to an education, just that the spending on their education has to be reasonable given financial constraints. A typical child has something like 8k a year spent on their education, is it reasonable that another child has 100k? I know equity isn’t the same as equality etc but we need to invest in typical children too as they’ll be the taxpayers of the future paying for social care etc

Are you really not understanding that these children are not able to access an education without the support packages?

Is it really that hard to grasp? No one is handing out expensive packages of support for the fun of it. These are rigorously assessed for. Without support you are absolutely advocating for children to be denied their right to their education.

It is also funny how the most vocal are skipping over the cost of Adult social care and the long term costs of denying children an education.

100k a year packages are exceedingly rare.

Every child has a right to an appropriate and suitable education.

And typical children usually get an appropriate education from the 8k a year.

If it's what they need to access an education all children are entitled to in this country? Of course. Or are we saying that because some children with EHCP's won't be taxpayers of the future that they shouldn't have access to an education?

Also keep in mind that some disabled children will also be taxpayers of the future.

One question is how much of the very high cost educational packages is truly education rather than health and social care. I'm sure physio and hydrotherapy are very beneficial to the right people, but I would class these as healthcare not education. If a child requires 2 to 1 are both those adults there for their education or is part or most of what they do actually social care?

You could bring this arguement to just about anything. How about restricting health care to those who eat themselves into diabetes, how about letting everyone with a terminal diagnosis just die and refuse life extending treatments, how about refusing UC for this fit enough to work bit who don't, how about redicing LA expenditures by stopping expensive final salary schemes, how about taxing the likes of amazon etc properly.

Seriously, why are you so obsessed with disabled children? It's completely abnormal. Are you ok?

I don’t think people are saying they don’t have a right to an education

That is exactly what you are saying because without the support in place these DC cannot access education.

is it reasonable

According to the law, yes.

@IHeartHalloumi hydrotherapy and physio, can be special educational provision and therefore the responsibility of the LA. Both people providing 2:1 can certainly be considered educational provision.

Health care provision and social care provision which educates or trains is deemed special educational provision in law.

For my son, it is a bit of both. He doesn't have any learning disabilities but he was in hospital for 10 months and only started Year 4 for the first time recently when it is obviously almost the end of the school year. He also missed the majority of Year 3 so he is very far behind academically and now needs a lot of academic assistance. He is physically disabled and needs 2:1 to be able to move around the school safely and for toileting.

physio and hydrotherapy are essential for him, we don't know what the future holds but he is disabled due to complications from an illness where he almost lost his life and we have seen some improvements so if there's any chance of him walking again and even potentially no longer needing a EHCP to access mainstream education then he needs physio and hydro.

Lots of packages are joint funded so a proportion form health and a proportion from children's social care... for a young person with very complex needs for example who needed waking staff overnight at home this would probably look like a 50:50 Social Care and health split and then education funded separately. To the pp who said that people should be "looking after there own children" there are children with complex needs who need round the clock 1:1 care from someone trained to use their vital machines.... evidently that isn't something parents can do without help.

Just to add the social care and education funding are both from the LA just different pots...health comes from Children's Continuing Care

I think most Reform voters want to have tented camps for refugees to concentrate them in one area so they don’t have to look at them in their towns. Possibly with a sign on the top extolling the virtues of work and the freedoms they afford. They would possibly have camps for SEN and other children who are polluting the life blood of dead old Blighty. They see what Trump is doing in the US and said to themselves, “He is doing such a great job for the working folk, let me have the little Trump in the UK”. They will get what they voted for and more and when it goes wrong blame it on poorly implemented Brexit or foreigners.

I’m worried about the effect on the education system. I don’t want cuts to classrooms, I really don’t.

so you do not wants cuts to education and you identified children with SEN as the culprit to bring these cuts about? you are fucking nuts!

You can't just stop someone's specific pension scheme - the scheme they are in it set by their start date. And it's part of a renumeration package which compensates for lower salaries than in private sector (I could easily earn double working privately).
Tax Amazon more? They will just move abroad like Google did when we tried to tax them more - they moved to Ireland. 10% of a million is 100k. 40% of zero is.... zero. Much better to have the 100k than nothing!

There is a law of economics (can't remember the name) that when you tax more, there is a point when you actually end up with less revenue due to people moving abroad, businesses become less viable etc, and I think we are pretty close to that point. Also, taxing middle and higher earners more with no clear benefits for them in return, pushes people towards extremism - such as Reform, which is bad news for everyone. There is no more public money - more money for one public service means less for another.

As a SEND parent and a local authority worker, I'd prioritise education over pensions.

well, and luckily you cannot stop a disabled child's education either. HTH.

With the DLA we get for DS we're still, overall, £6k/yr worse off than if DH and I both worked full time on NMW.