SEN funding isn't a bottomless money pit

[Sogfree]

I'll preface this by saying I really enjoy my job working in a SEN school. I care deeply for the children and families I work with.

I've had 4 different conversations this week with parents where they expect an excessive amount of additional resource to be allocated to their child. They expect this as, in their opinion, it's needed. I disagree with 3 of the 4 parents that this is needed.

All 4 of the parents are going to fight the decisions county have made. Their decision to fight will mean county spend more money arguing the challenge.

Services are already broken with the increase in need. Recruitment fails, as there aren't enough speech therapists/OTs/CAMHS practitioners etc to employ.

One parent demanding extra from one of these services means another child gets less.

One parent demanding a child goes to school X at £100k per year when a place at school Y at £30k is going to meet their needs means the child who needs the place at school X doesn't get it, and extra £70k per year is wasted. And the parent keeps their child out of school for 12-18 months whilst they fight for the place at school X.

That's the reality.

Every parent wants the world for their child. I understand that. But taxpayers can't afford to give every child the world.

AIBU - parents know their child best and we should fund what the parents say the child needs

YANBU - there's only so much money to go around and parents need to accept hard decisions have to be made without challenging them

The school situation is different from the home situation. Parents don’t see how their child behaves or copes at school - those at the school are able to be more objective. I don’t think the OP is nasty as some posters have said, they are expressing an opinion. At the end of the day money is scarce, what’s more extra support isn’t always the answer.

That's actually exactly the point I argued to them and they have since backed down and approved it.

I do worry however about the parents who perhaps aren't aware of the case law or are unfamiliar with the process and will simply accept what they are told.

I think it depends massively on supervision. If someone needs 2:1 supervision 24 hours a day then that cost hundreds of thousands per year. It’s over 200k in wages alone. Working 40 hours a week you’d need 8 and a bit people to care for one child with extra cover for holidays and sickness.

I think there should be firm auditing though. If you are claiming to need to pay 10 folk to manage one child and then it turns out you are routinely understaffed and paying less then should have to return monies.

@Sogfree may I ask if you are a parent yourself?
You seem to have very little understanding or empathy with the viewpoint of parents. We take the long term view.

I have 20 years "in the trenches" and one of the things I have noticed is that teachers take a very short term view and are only focussed on their stage of education, which is fair enough.

Parents are obliged to take the long term view. By the age of 8, the gaps between my child and others were already too big to be closed. My child's teacher is talking about the transition needed into Y7. I am already planning for "what will happen to my child when I'm dead?".

Perhaps that school you think is so expensive and unneccessary for Y7 offers boarding up to the ager of 25 which the cheaper school does not, or has an excellent post 16/18 provision which gets a lot of the kids into supported work where they can settle for decades. As a teacher, "you don't know what you don't know".

The current adversarial system is also very unfortunate. I would love to know what Lady Warnock thinks of her experiment. I am a parent who has studied education law in order to be able to engage with the system to optimise support for my child. I very reluctantly gave up my career to do this. I rarely trust the advice of professionals and have to double check everything as they seem determined to ration while I am the only person looking after my child's best interest. I need to get the best possible support in place while I can and iron clad. If I die or am incapacitated nobody else will show the same consideration for my child.

I looked at doing this, but the financial and social benefits of working for me outweighed the overall benefit to my family of me not working - it's a choice between two stressful and unpleasant situations. I think if I lost my current job I would be unable to find anything else which would accommodate my children's needs, but the money I get above what I would get from benefits makes life easier - it enables me to meet our needs as a family and accommodate their additional needs.

If the education system had recognised my children's autism when I first flagged it, and had made appropriate provision at primary and secondary level, and given me the support I needed to parent them, I think they would be in a much better situation now, their futures would be more certain, and I am sure it would cost less. Not all disabled children are like my children, but I think there are enough - and I think it may well account for the growth in EHCPs - to make it worth looking at how mainstream education could be provided more effectively.

They should have the chance my son is at best year one education level he is current year 7 but he is keen and he IS making progress maybe he won't be the next innovator of technology but he has the potential to be a solid minimum wage worker which we also need as a society

My youngest child ( of 3 ) went to a mainstream school but with a lot of additional support from a part time trained teaching assistant.
The funding was withdrawn from the school and while I’d have liked them to stay where they were , I knew I’d have a long drawn out battle to keep them where they were .
I was put in a position where I had to accept a placement at a school ( still mainstream but with a special education unit and extra staff for their needs ) further away but with transport .
This made logistics difficult when they wouldn’t get in the transport to school…but hey these things work out in the end , why would it matter that I was a frazzled wreck .
Anyhow I did push for a particular school for secondary education as I had a small choice , again mainstream but with a special unit attached.
So I wasn’t a demanding parent just a very concerned one .
I do think some SEN children and young people can do well in mainstream so long as they have a special education unit and a place / staff they can go to as and when necessary or when things are overwhelming

No child should have a school place costing £100k per year, that’s a obscene amount of money for tax payers to be paying! Quite frankly £30k per year for one child is ridiculous.

Hmm agree to a point.
Parent of a Sen child here and a lot of the frustration on my part comes from the battling for everything and the lack of communication from the LA.

My son went to panel for a place in a ARB unit. I really put up an argument, as did the school. My son is making slow progress, he is, but far far below his peers. Anyone who meets him agrees he would thrive in a more specialist setting. So we all fill out paperwork,hours of it! And got a 2 sentence email back telling me panel could not come to an agreement, no reason given.

I work in a school, we have non verbal children in year 1 and 2 still in our mainstream setting. They cannot handle the classroom and there have been numerous attempts to get them in there so spend their day in what used to be our music room with two LSAs. They are being failed well and truly by the system.

The system is broken. Mainstream schools have around £6000 per year to pay for children with SEN (non-EHCP) this has to go on staffing, buildings, etc. Yet private schools get £35k upwards a year yet people wonder why Mainstream schools can't meet need 🙄.

Mainstream schools need much better funding to meet needs of all children with SEN.

For EHCP students the LA will often have to fork out £35k + for a special school placement but they don't ever consider giving that same money or even half of that money to Mainstream for the same student! Therefore Mainstream can't meet need when actually, with the right funding, they probably could.

The underfunding of SEN in Mainstream schools is one of the root causes of the current broken system. Parents have no choice but to fight for additional funding through EHCP and expensive private specialist placements for children who actually could thrive in Mainstream with right support (of course there are also children with very high complex needs who still need specialist schools).

@equimum I absolutely agree. My daughter is in a year 5 class of 18, just due to natural lower numbers. 4 children in her class (that I know of, could be more) are ND, including her.

The TA takes small groups out for interventions for different needs - emotional, sensory, learning etc, so there is often as few as 14 in their classroom. Being a small class, in a spacious building with lots of break out spaces and outdoor space, their needs are being met through good provision for all.

In a crowded class of 34 with limited space, they may be in a very different position and need specific support which would be much more expensive.

@Willyoujustbequiet me too. All parents should be supported to advocate for their DC and enforce their child’s rights.

LA will often have to fork out £35k + for a special school placement but they don't ever consider giving that same money or even half of that money to Mainstream for the same student!

@Bellee11 the LA won’t do so willingly, but such funding can be provided in MS.

Op if the challenges parents made to county decisions weren’t entirely well grounded the win rate wouldn’t be so high.

You should know that more than 98%of parents win tribunal challenges. That’s on the basis of the law on what kids need.

The problem is that your idea of what kids should have is based on what your system is telling you the limits are, not what they really need.

The money spent on SEN kids is very well spent because it reduces future spend on prisons, physical and mental health care and unemployment benefit. This is why attempts to reduce the spend to save money are totally misguided. It will just cause more spending later down the line.

You’re showing massive ignorance. These are specialist provisions with all sorts of facilities and staff ratios which a severely disabled child needs. They’re not getting places at Eton and Harrow.

There a few activist SEN parents. Most SEN parents are just trying to get through the day.

I think a lot of this is due to local authority ineptitude, their poor systems, defensive approach and lack of accountability.

In my son's case, we gad a dreadful transition to y7, due to a 3 year out of date EHCP, which I tried to get the council to update, but they refused too. Then came a series of errors including a data breach, sending innacurate information to schools and losing paperwork. They lied too.

We had to fight to send our son to a local mainstream school. At one point, they consulted with a dreadful school, which would have cost over £100 in taxis a day (easily).

Since he started there, we haven't "demanded" any extra provision with the exception of ELSA. In his own way, he is thriving, in a SEN way.

But, the curriculum has let him down, and subjects that would gave been practical a generation ago, such as DT now involves so much rope learning.

In my town, there are 4 high schools, all broadly offering the same thing. It feels like there needs to be change in the education system to meet all children's needs, not just those who fit in the box.

I’ve actually addressed that in my post. You’re just determined to be offended and missing the points I’ve already made.

SEN spending in the context of GDP is minuscule! According to Parliament, the top ten tax reliefs in 2020 were costing £117 billion, which is less than 5% of GDP:

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/115823/pac-calls-on-government-to-account-for-tax-giveaways/

Its probably far more now, given inflation! The government has no idea, if they are having the intended effects.

The government could reverse the NI cut, the Conservatives made, before the election to spite Labour. This was estimated to cost £10 billion plus pa over five years:

https://cpag.org.uk/news/national-insurance-contributions-going-going-gone

HMRC was collecting approximately £731 billion pa in tax, as of the date of this report, £42 billion in outstanding tax had not been collected, and it fails to collect 5% of tax due pa. I make 5% of £731 billion to be £36 billion pa:

https://committees.parliament.uk/work/6883/hmrc-annual-report-and-accounts-2122/news/175322/hmrc-approach-to-compliance-means-public-purse-is-missing-out-on-billions-in-lost-revenue/#:~:text=At%20a%20time%20of%20huge,are%20able%20to%20pay%2C%20do.

Taxpayers will now never recover £10 billion given to RBS.

If you are so concerned OP about what the country can afford, turn your attention to the approx £163 billion pa as above, which is just the start of what the government is giving away via the tax system and HMRC’s failure to collect all the tax due (as its been hollowed out by staff cuts), rather than starting a thread, as an excuse to bully disabled children and their parents.

OP’s thread suggests to me, they have no understanding of how big GDP is and what the economy can afford?

Mainstream schools needs funding for support staff. They earn (indefensibly) low wages and each one can help dozens of children each day, through interventions, social stories groups, behavioural support, and social support at break and lunchtimes. Not one-to-ones, but straight up support staff.

But these important staff need to be properly paid, trained and valued. Because if they stay in the job, they gain experience and tools to help multiple children with a wide variety of SEN. They gain experience in phonics, remedial maths, behavioural techniques, dyslexia strategies, etc.

These staff are being sacked left, right and centre due to dwindling budgets and rising costs. Two experienced TAs or HLTAs leave and are replaced with one agency worker. Who come and go (and who can blame them?).

I do agree that some parents argue for the unnecessary, but too many schools don't provide the basics of social, academic and behavioural support, because there is no one to provide it.

I can get why you say that. But we could say the same about some medical treatments - some cancer treatments for example cost 100k+. What we have to look at is do they provide value for money, does spending that money mean a child will be able to contribute to society as they get older, are their concrete achievable targets which will make a significant difference to that child.

Totally agree. There are huge questions to be answered around the use of money. Lots of specialist private settings are popping up to fill the vacuum made by the lack of LA provision, I'm sure profits are being made from this. Specialist provision needs to come back under LA control so money can be spent equitably across the whole system for the benefit of all children.

I understand some of the points you make and can agree, there is a huge deficit in funding SEND and parents expectations can sometimes be unrealistic in terms of what their child's school can provide.

I disagree on your point about parents fighting for different provision and when it is awarded its taking that away from another child who needs it more. Even if you go all the way to tribunal, there needs to be the evidence there to prove what the child needs. A tribunal isn't going to make an order that a child needs a certain provision unless it is fully satisfied that it is necessary.

I currently work in a resource provision within mainstream, and have experience in other settings working with children with SEND and their families. The only examples I have seen of a child taking up a place that another child would benefit from is actually when County have placed them there e.g. in our resource provision, when actually their needs are much more complex and they absolutely need something more specialist. In these cases additional resources have to be redirected to these pupils to give them the best we can while parents/SENCO fight for them to be placed in the appropriate setting, ultimately taking resources away from other pupils in RP and mainstream because as you say, funding isn't a bottomless pit and schools are in desperate situations.

I actually agree there isn't a bottomless money pit for SEND. I think the money spent could be used much more efficiently and I think these profit making companies are milking the tax payer
.

I don't think the main issue is parent expectations.

I also don't actually think the majority if sen parents are looking at 100k schools. It's hyperbole to suggest they are. Most just want thier child to have a minor uniform adjustment, different attendance expectation and some coloured paper.

I hugely disagree that parents should just accept hard decisions without challenging them. I think accountability is really important in any system and being able to enforce legal rights is also important.

I wish teachers would just sometimes accept the possibility that they are not infallible. I remember helping with a case where a child was diagnosed with autism but his school swore blind that he had no real problems, they could meet his needs and his mother was just making an unnecessary fuss asking for an EHCP. They put up such a strong smokescreen that the LA started child protection proceedings with all sorts of bizarre and untrue allegations that the mother was arranging loads of assessments to try to get someone to agree with her. Much to their annoyance, the child protection action was stopped as soon as social services investigated and discovered the true facts.

Within a couple of weeks of a tribunal order that the child be assessed, this school who claimed this child had no behavioural problems and that they could easily meet his needs ended up permanently excluding him. He ended up in a special school which was quite expensive, but it was the only school in the country that anyone could find that would accept him. Fortunately that turned things around and he did well, but only after a LOT of work and therapy was put in place to help him. I've often felt that if only the original school hadn't been so determined to close its eyes to reality, much of that could have been avoided.

At the age of 9 my son, with ASD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, but a genius level IQ started to school refuse. We were a couple of lefties, who didn’t believe in private education. We felt that he would get an appropriate education in mainstream. He still couldn’t read.

A resource recommended by the LA Literacy Consultant was refused by the school as they couldn’t afford it. It was £40. I offered to buy it, they couldn’t let that happen as it would set a precedent. I offered a donation to school funds - no, inappropriate.

Externally (from school) concerns were raised about him being a suicide risk.
Eventually we won at tribunal, for him to attend a specialist school. It changed his life and ours. He achieved amazing exam results. He went to Oxbridge, he is very gainfully employed, in a loving relationship, and about to start a part time doctorate.
I suspect he has contributed in taxes at least as much as it cost to put him through that school, but actually that shouldn’t matter because what matters to me is that my darling boy has met his potential, and he is still alive.

And yet they penalise parents who take on the responsibility of funding a more appropriate education themselves.

the only conclusion is that they just don’t think send children should be educated.