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 problem is that there are so few places for the children who need them.

To take just one example - we know a family with a profoundly deaf dc. The dc was falling incredibly behind at a ms primary. The family asked for a place in a deaf school. That dc is now thriving emotionally and in education with the specialist support needed. But they are having to travel a long way to that school,

This is going to give this dc future employment changes, better mental health and likely reduce future burden on the state.

One size doesn’t and can’t fit all but trying to make that work is how we got here.

I think though that this is why it's hard to recruit and retain TAs. Very high expectations on them to be a jack of all trades for £15 an hour. Actually nearer £12 anyway as a lot of them are agency these days not employed, and no holiday pay. Maybe £15k p.a. all told? Before deductions.

Exactly.

And I have noticed at our primary in a mixed catchment the middle class children all eventually get their slot at the very expensive special needs school whereas the children from much more deprived backgrounds never do.

@Marinade do you feel the same way about other things? Do you think there shouldn’t be any state schools because all parents should be paying for their child’s schooling since it isn’t the fault of taxpayers who don’t have DC in state schools that other people had children and others shouldn’t be expected to ‘stump up’? Or do you think you shouldn’t have to pay towards the fire service because it isn’t your fault other people require their services? (For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t agree with either viewpoint.)

Life is not just about what you want

You will be pleased to know no-one gets provision just because they want it.

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

If the provision could be fulfilled by a TA, the LA would not have detailed, specified and quantified direct physio provision in F, neither would SENDIST Order it, and if the LA thought SENDIST had erred the LA would be quick to challenge the decision.

@Marinade can I ask you a different question? Why is this different to treating eg a broken leg? We don’t say we can only treat one broken leg every two days do we? We treat the broken legs we get. Why would education be different?

Yes, lets not pretend its a fair and equitable system based on need. Its often about who has the loudest voice and sharpest elbows.

It needs to stop though. Completely and as soon as possible. Special schools aside we should not be funding private schools via the state,end of. We can’t afford it. A minority shouldn’t be hoovering up cash way from the majority with SEN. I speak as the mother of a child with an EHCP who very much fits the picture as regards “need” re a bespoke nice private little school.

Schools used to be more able to meet a variety of needs.

Absolutely-if we add the (boring, overfull and overfocused on certain specific things) curriculum, Ofsted (and the crazy, damaging effects it has), testing and assessment expectations, we have stressed teachers who don't hang around and stressed, unhappy children who have little option-they can't exactly get signed off if they are in crisis.

Even kids who have a stable home life, no additional needs and plenty of friends seem to hate school and feel like it's like being squeezed through an exam-passing machine with little scope for creativity or enjoyment.

If we make education suitable only a very small group of children (and even they are miserable), we are failing everyone.

The narrower the path, the more people will fall off...

Well if the SEND tribunal disagree these things are needed they simply won't order them. But considering 97/98% of parents win their appeals......

@ungratefulcat do you think middle class children with SEND don’t deserve help?

I think the vast majority of SEN parents want what other parents want: their child to get an education, and for them (the parents and later the child) to be able to work and/or contribute to society in some way.

SEN parents shouldn't get less than other parents.

I really struggle to imagine why anyone would engage with LAs and SENDIST for fun. It's the least fun thing I've ever done by a long chalk. Most of it involves writing long lists of your beloved child's problems and deficits and people lying to your face. Not fun.

That's because the system is so rubbish.
If they improved it it wouldn't only be educated MC parents who can navigate it.

There won’t be a defence system if education is not a priority. Isn’t GCHQ full of neurodivergent people?

@Marinade and @ungratefulcat doesn’t the very fact that children with no parents who are able to battle for them show that the state itself isn’t fairly allocating resources? Without any help from parents they are left to struggle. They should be helped by LAs who should be allocating them the right settings, but that doesn’t happen which is wrong.

I think the resources should be fairly shared out based on need, not who shouts the loudest

I rather fear my local authority does!!!

i have a learning disability and want to try for a child of my own but know that I might not be able to. I have missed out on a lot of opportunities and experiences that others who aren’t disabled get to have because of a lack of resources. I don’t know if the help will be there even though I’m legally entitled to it. I have an advocate that has been trying to get help for me even for my own needs. services are so stretched, so even though I deserve it, it’s a constant fight. It is really depressing

And telling mum, generally, that she’s a shit neglectful parent

@PennywisePoundFoolish DS3 has cookery lessons as part of his EOTIS package. It took an appeal. Between DS1 and DS3’s EOTAS/EOTIS packages they also have some of the other things mentioned here such as music lessons, physio (and other therapies), tech, gym membership, exercise/sport (including climbing and sailing) and a budget for mentoring/enrichment/accessing the community (during which DS3 has had a coupe of young driver lessons).

We all need to pull together to try to get LAs and central government to produce the right school places for dc with SEND. That’s why the current situation exists is because they don’t have them. I’m aware of a dc where every local ms turned down their consultation because they couldn’t meet need. The LA had no special school place to offer.

THIS is the issue, not SEND parents.

My child attend a LA special school that suits his needs so i have no skin in this
But it's not a one size fits all is it the school my son goes to caters for kids with severe and profound learning disabilities, it's a fantastic school but would be completely inappropriate for kids who are unable to access mainstream school, becsuse of various SEN but have at least average intelligence, where do they go?

They do however it needs to be affordable, not take away from the majority and not be from trampling over poorer children whose parents are less able to fight for them. Often these children are more needy with parents who present similarly and are simply unable to access the system in the same way.

My son’s school used to have a variety of rooms within the school called things like “the bridge” and “the hub”. They were designed to be accessible only to SN pupils (able to go to mainstream school) to go to at any point during the day, and they worked well. One was quite informal and chatty (but not loud), another was very quiet, and another was where SN children could choose to have lunch, because the cafeteria was so loud and unpredictable that it was a problem for autistic pupils.

One by one these rooms were lost. Policies were introduced that meant pupils had to be in the classroom or they were considered to be absent, even though children were working in these rooms. So children were stopped from going there, then after some time it was announced that these rooms were no longer being used enough to justify having them, so they became locked, unused rooms.

These are the kind of things that have changed. Absence rules have got stricter and stricter, meaning that even those with physical disabilities and needing regular hospital appointments are receiving threatening letters. School refusal is a huge problem affecting thousands of families.

Meeting SN needs isn’t necessarily a case of spending ££££££s, it can mean looking at policies that aren’t serving anyone, it could mean looking back 20 years at what was working. There are still going to be some children who need more, and that should be fine, but we are seeing schools that have become environments that actively harm many children, and mostly with practices/policies that could be taken away, or by adopting more flexible strategies.

The thing us people are seeing drumming lessons and thinking fun hobby that parents should supply.

But not seeing the child has auditory processing disorder and great ormond street recommended drumming as it creates a physical feedback for those noises and it's actually improving thier whole life.

They see horse riding and think fun hobby for rich people, but dint realise that it's actually engaging all the core muscles and lessening the need for a physio to do exercises in thier special sensory gym which actually cost more than riding.

Sometimes these fun hobbies are actually meeting some really core needs that could be supplied in a more expensive medical way and people would nod in agreement.

@x2boys that’s exactly the gap.

The state will not save money providing no or a very weak education to those dc. It only increases spending. NHS eating disorder units are full of ND teens and young adults, so are MH units and prisons. This expense could be reduced by properly investing in education.