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

Why? Why shouldn’t some kids get extras? It’s not like they start on a level playing field is it?

There is a lot of criticism of things like transferring to a school with smaller class sizes or an independent school too - quite understandably based on a short term view/lack of understanding of the wider picture.

ie: Biff is a quiet, academic girl in mainstream. She shares a class with Chip, who is a loud, 'active' boy with an EHCP. Biff and her Mum are thoroughly fed up of Chip disrupting her lessons and wish she could have a calmer environment to work in. Chip and his Mum are thoroughly fed up of Chip being forced to go to an unsuitable environment that sets him up to fail. Chip's Mum undertakes a long legal battle to get Chip moved to a fee-paying school with smaller classes and lots of physical activity, so that he can actually access education at all. Biff and her Mum are not pleased by the removal of Chip, they are jealous because in their eyes Biff was more deserving of the "better" (more expensive) education as she was accessing the previous one more correctly - she got nothing but Chip was given the jackpot for his "bad behaviour", a private school whereas Biff has to stay in mainstream. 4 years later, Biff has good GCSEs and is off to 6th form - slightly better than if she had had Chip in her class right through school but not noticeably different to that, and probably not as good as she might have got at a private school. Chip has some GCSEs and is going to go to college - whereas had he stayed he might not have got both Maths and English at a 4 and wouldn't be doing anything much now or in the foreseeable future. Paying for Chip to transfer rather than Biff was the correct overall choice for the 'GCSE prisoner's dilemma'. Biff's Mum remained angry and resentful at Chip's Mum every time she signed a tutoring cheque to supplement Biff's mainstream education in Years 10 and 11.

@Rainbowpony6 there are some schools with climbing walls - of course they don’t have a climbing centre on site. For example, Wath academy in Rotherham and St. John the Baptist School in Surrey. Lots of secondary schools have fitness suites (some even hire them out) or at least some gym equipment.

So you don’t think DC in schools should have PE and clubs?

So your saying ....While some kids who can't access school ,and have no education,either with or without an EHCPs ..should have no education yet others get extras ... seriously..you think some SEN children should be left with nothing..while SEN children who's parents have money fight for more than their fair share
Wow ..just wow

Pitting DC against each other doesn’t help anyone. All DC should have provision to meet their SEN. DC don’t get more than they need. The system doesn’t work like that. Parents don’t need money to appeal to SENDIST.

It's all a complete distraction from the actual issues, all this bollocks about sailing amd drumming.

Newsflash. Some people in a corrupt system behave corruptly. Quite a few of them are in positions of power, unfortunately.

No, that is not what I’m saying. I am baffled that you could reach such a conclusion from my post. Try again.

No child with or without an EHCP should be without a suitable education. If EHE, then it's the parents' responsibility, otherwise it's on the LA. There are too many that aren't getting anything but that isn't because pushy parents are stealing unnecessary resources; it's the LA acting unlawfully.

Schools used to be more able to meet a variety of needs. Of course there used to be more special schools (Thanks Tony Blair 🙄), but there were children in mainstream classrooms 20 years ago whose needs were well met without having to fight for an EHCP or for support. There was a level of flexibility that meant things were more accessible and it seemed to work better for more children.

Now we seem to have narrowed what school is about and all but taken away any flexibility. I’ve noticed a huge change since loads of schools were academised, and whilst there are always children who thrived, there are very many who don’t, and I suspect this has played a large part in the current crisis.

We’re seeing growing rates of SN, and no one in a position of authority wants to address the elephant in the room that the negative changes in schools have contributed to it, and that there are certain practices that could be dropped and policies reversed that would make schools feel safer and more accessible to all.

Unless changes are made the issue with SN - the funding costs and the rising number of children needing diagnoses, the number of children unable to access school due to trauma, will keep growing until it’s a far bigger mess than it currently is.

So our local secondary school ,has a little house within the grounds ,with a special name , numerous children went there with SEN ,or attendance issues,some had all their lessons in there ,never entering the main school ,it also had a fenced off area with a bit of grass ,it was well used ,by children who couldn't access the main school.
But that needed teachers to be in there ,teaching ,and eventually it got closed down
It's currently boarded up and rotting ..such a waste
Those children are now either in a sense school ,or out of education.
But it worked well for the children who used it ,

Yet they can afford to chuck another £30bn into the NHS black hole that’s already consuming £200bn per year, for far worse outcomes than other health systems which cost a comparable or smaller amount for better patient outcomes.

Over 85% of the NHS budget is spent on the elderly. In fact, over 50% of the £1.27trn UK annual public spending is spent on the elderly. £93bn in total is spent on education including early years, primary, secondary, tertiary, university and adult education.

It is not unaffordable as a country to provide every child with an adequate and suitable education. Our spending priorities need adjusting.

Not sure I could get worked up about a kid who's not able to access education in any school or traditional academic learning being given drumming lessons to be honest.

Of course I don't! But this was just an example where the expectations were totally unrealistic, often encouraged by private therapists who promise the world to vunerable parents.
But many of the benefits of physio don't need an actual physio. Specialist equipment, positioning, integrated programmes, orthotics etc are much more beneficial long term than much of the hands on physio, and can be performed by parents or school staff, they don't always need a qualified physio to do it, only to devise the programmes and train the staff. But I have seen huge amounts of private physio written into EHCP's at £100 an hour, when it could be done equally well by a TA at £15 an hour, and a time and way (broken up into short slots, fitted around feeds, school activities etc) which works best for the child, rather than when she physio has a space in their diary.

I agree. Hence there needing to be a total overhaul of education with a far wider variety of schools available to all children to cater for different talents/ skills and needs as I’ve said.

I'm just musing on this now, we're at the beginning of EOTIS for DS3 after a failed independent special placement.

I'm currently self-funding 1:1 cookery (£30 p/h) and 1hr of specialist SEN tutor (£40 p/h). His currently named school made a hollow gesture of AP, which was unsuitable provision or 2 hours away. He's not attended at all since February but presumably they'll be paid until the end of Summer Term.

He can't cope with even forest school or care farm type provision yet. Yet I know my LA will refuse taking over the cookery. It's so frustrating. We're not currently getting DLA for DS3 as I was so burnt out I let it lapse.

What a ridiculous statement. Parents are not professionals and parents do not have a budget to meet nor competing demands to satisfy. So no, they are not the correct people to make such decisions.

On what basis do you make the statement that 'tax payers can afford it?'. Are you some kind of sage that knows how all tax payers feel? I certainly do not want to fund more SEN and know many many people who agree with me. So you are completely wrong.

Neither is it our fault, so why are taxpayers expected to stump up this extra money for individual children becuase the parents are adept at making arguments at a tribunal?

I think a lot of the problem is that schools are required to focus on such a narrow achievement set of measures, it’s inevitable that more children are outside it than ever before. If mainstream schools were properly resourced to support children, there would be less need for SEN provision. We have lost our way trying to make all children the same.

Parents - who have been involved in their child’s development and medical care throughout life - are far more knowledgeable generally about their disabled child’s needs than teachers and Local Authority staff who have never even met the child. The Children and Families Act recognises it but many schools and Local Authorities ignore it, as well as the child’s doctors and specialists who are actually qualified to judge and assess need.

My penny worth is that as resources have dramatically declined then the adversarial nature has made parents and LAs fight for the crumbs.
My DC had a reasonable experience at primary as there were little bits and pieces from TAs and a floating teacher at mainstream. Assessments were done promptly and health needs were met easily - OT, physio, SALT that was not a battle between NHS and LA buck passing to save costs, parcel out resources. Secondary disaster led to a specialist school where as far as I know most of their cohort were able to consider work/FE/Uni.
DC graduated and is grappling work with a disability and a couple of health needs that have appeared since childhood or old ones that are having secondary effects as an adult.
Being brutally honest, DC might not have survived birth in previous generations. Had they done so, then warehousing in a specialist setting would have possibly been an institution, not school, then either complete institutionalisation or a Remploy scheme. For better or worse, those no longer exist and world is so much harsher.
We do expect better for our kids and rightly so, partly because parents know there is no safety net of cheap/social housing, both parents need to work. If basic needs in early years were met without a fight then people wouldn’t be in desperate crisis. Beacause of early support, I got a good picture of DCs needs in education and also had a reasonably realistically idea of who they were and what might or might not be a reasonably expectation for them. That’s not to say that I didn’t have to fight really hard for specialist placement - we felt uttterly broken and I got a bit of compensation from ombudsman. It also cost LA a lot to fight us before they capitulated a couple of weeks before the tribunal.
But on essence, a stitch in time could save many millions

Parents are emotionally invested, and will want to spend the maximum amount without any regard for competing budgetary demands. Life is not just about what you want, it is about how we as a society manage competing needs at a macro level. So you are completely wrong.

What is so depressing is the lack of understanding of how families desperate for support have ended up there.

The misplaced closure of specialist settings last century and the failure to make any provision for children who will never be able to even cope let alone thrive in ms.

What most parents want more than anything is for their child to be ok and just manage in ms, but if you have a child threatening suicide, self harming, falling far behind, failing, melting down and unable to be in the classroom for hours every day, or not even able to stay in the setting at all, where else but tribunal can you go if the LA offers nothing other than ms, because they just don’t have the places?

Becsuse it's the law if no mainstream or special school in the LA csn meet the child's needs than the LA needs to fund one that does.

But there is not a bottomless pit of money is there? There are constraints within which everything needs to operate. I have seen a parent fight tooth and nail to get more expensive schooling arrangements for her son that she was convinced needing more intensive resources. Due to her resourcefulness and her dogmatism, she was successful and got her son a place at a hugely expensive school. It did not work out - school was not suitable - but of course she knew better.