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

I work at an £100k+ independent special school. We do have some children whose needs could, in theory, be met in a maintained special school. However the reason they win tribunals is because there is enough evidence to show the maintained special school won’t be able to meet need, as outlined in the EHCP, or hadn’t met need so far. We do have a lot of cases go to tribunal that don’t win because a maintained school can meet need even where parents have done a lot of prep and put a lot of money into the tribunal, it’s not a given that they will win.

I do agree there are issues with funding in maintained school which mean sometimes needs could, on paper, be met but in practice they just aren’t In theory the maintained special school offers hydrotherapy, but in reality the sessions are regularly cancelled. In theory the maintained school offers an hour of OT a week, but in reality staff vacancies means there hasn’t been a OT in post for 6 months. In theory the maintained school offers a 1:1 TA, but in reality staff shortages mean that the TA ends up working with 2+ children at a time. This is all the sort of evidence a tribunal will look at.

The provision set out in an EHCP needs, legally, to be given to a child. If a maintained special school isn’t providing everything written into the EHCP then they are not meeting need, even if they are able to meet some of the child’s educational outcomes, and that’s why an expensive independent special school will win at tribunal. It’s true that some parents are more savvy at getting the right provisions out into an EHCP or at fighting when things aren’t provided, but ultimately if it’s in there it is the child’s right to have it provided and if a maintained school isn’t providing it there is the right to fight for a school that will.

Indeed. I don't think anyone is disputing that.
But we also have a finite budget and have to have sensible conversations about how much we can spend in each area.

Indeed. I don't think anyone is disputing that.
But we also have a finite budget and have to have sensible conversations about how much we can spend in each area.

Yes, but these, whilst being a great idea in theory, don't always work in practice. My friends daughter attends the one at the local primary where my daughters go - 8 children with 1 teacher and 2 TA's in a seperate classroom. But as the saying goes, when you have met one child with autism you have met 1 child with autism, they are not a homogenous group. Her daughter needs calm and quiet and personal space, but a boy X in her class need to make noise to calm himself, girl Y is very tactile and keeps trying to hug her daughter, when girl Y hugs boy X it .makes him annoyed and louder which further upsets my friends daughter and then she struggles to regulate to be able to engage in learning, comes home exhausted and has a meltdown.

I think that’s a fair point. There doesn’t seem to be joined up thinking in lots of areas. Education, healthcare, housing. People are entitled so get x I’d like to see someone looking at a situation / person and saying what would be greatest benefit for lowest amount of money.

Unfortunately I do agree op. I also think sometimes by secondary age we have to be realistic about education outcomes for some children, sadly - my own dsd would fall into this category, she needs 1:1 supervision, cannot do much at all for herself as an adult (can walk has very basic language, think young toddler) yet she was “in education” until 22. What she really needed was to be taught life skills instead, she finally uses the toilet (school didn’t bother with supporting this) and i recently got her buttering bread, such a small thing but useful

I expected that because most of the SEN parents I work with feel that the world is against them as everything has had to be a fight. I use the phrase "you don't know what you don't know" with parents a lot in my role, as it's true.

Because parents need to fight for every single bit of support their child gets. Even supports that don’t cost money but mean a teacher having some foresight, empathy and flexibility in dealing with your child. Because as well as fighting health, education and social work they’re also parenting a child with complex needs which takes a huge amount of emotional energy.

And “you don’t know what you don’t know” is hugely patronising to parents who know their children intimately from teachers who insist they know best.

it’s a huge problem that people can’t engage in objective discussion and think critically rather than emotively.

Can you accept the possibility that you might not be infallible, OP? If parents who have known their child from birth, qualified experts and an expert tribunal decide that a child needs that £100K school, it's possible, isn't it, that you are wrong and they are right?

Yeah, @Sogfree, the big problems of this world are caused by disabled children and their totally unreasonable parents. What we need in this world is more bashing of parents who have had to fight for every scrap of help.

Your values and priorities are appalling.

It's easy to say when it isn't your child that some people are automatically writing off.

I think the biggest issue is that the special school system is poorly funded. Most special schools take children with a very wide range of disabilities and needs. Ultimately this means that they don't meet the needs of many of the kids they have and the expectations are generally very low. My children have special needs. I fought for independent specialist and won at tribunal. The special school told me that my expectation that we could work together to get my son could be out of nappies aged 10 was unrealistic and that some kids would just never be toilet trained. Within three months at the specialist he was using the toilet.

My goodness. Awful.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get basic SEN support? No-one goes through that process unless there is very good evidence that their child needs the help in question. You don't just get "bells and whistles" because you ask for it or even because you make a fuss. You have to show pretty conclusively that your child needs it, and that is not an easy thing to do at all.

At the SEN school I work, I dont know of any child where both parents work. Its an excellent school, outstanding ofsted. The parents are not not working because their child's educational needs are not being met, they are not working because their child is medically vunerable, gets sick often, has lots of medical appointments and it's just not practical for them to work.

It’s an emotive subject, particularly if you are watching your child struggle due to the lack of support, knowing they could thrive with some additional help that just isn’t being given.

Critical thinking is fine, however those saying provision is too high, costs need to be cut somewhere often have no experience of parenting a child with complex needs.

Unless you live this as a parent it is impossible to comprehend. I have had to fight every step of the way for a cheap ( and it is) EOTAS package. I feel broken by the system, by the needs of caring for my DD. I cannot even put into words what this is like to manage alongside a FT job and other children. This is an unfair question.

Is it horrible to acknowledge a budget is finite? And try to have a conversation about that?

With respect, you really don't know what you are talking about. Going to tribunal is hugely daunting for most parents, who already have more than enough to cope with by virtue of, y' know, having a disabled child. The best advocate in the world will not get support endorsed through the tribunal unless there is good evidence that it is needed. The fact that you may not think it is is really not conclusive.

DS1 was in an ASD base for secondary. The problem was he was unable to access the mainstream lessons, but the base was not geared to have pupils there full-time. Hindsight is 20:20, but I should have fought to move him instead of believing the school they could meet his needs. Although the only GCSEs he passed were for lessons he didn't have any direct teaching for (History and Science) so maybe it would have made no difference.

It's just really hard to negotiate the SEN system, and the undertone that you're an unreasonable and demanding parent is everywhere you look.

Do you think parents don’t know the budget is finite? I can assure you they’ve been told there’s no resource right from the start of whatever process they’re in. No resource to diagnose, no resource to assess, no resource to support in school, no resource for treatment, the idea of lack of resource is hardly something that’s secret. But that doesn’t change the legal duty to provide an education, to provide support for disabilities.

The overall budget is finite, our government spends around £1300 billion and about 11% of that on education. There’s probably some room to prioritise within that.

My beef is wasting so much money on school travel. I look after a DC who gets free school transport to his special school which is over 20 miles away. Instead of a local taxi picking him up and taking to this school then charging to get back to it's base a taxi comes from over 33 miles away to collect him, then drives him 21 miles to school then drives over 40 miles back to it's base then the same in the afternoon in reverse. All this costs the tax payer over £43k a year. Using a local taxi firm would half the cost but they won't do it. I've already suggested it to the local council. Now we have a new party in charge of council so I'll try suggesting it again. It's makes me so angry because this money could be spent on the DC not wasted in this way. I know of 2 other DC this is happening to as well. I just keep thinking the wasted money could fund bus passes for such a lot of children because it comes from the transport budget.

So they put their case and it was accepted, what's wrong with that?

Oh good a send bashing thread. That's a great place to start being cheap. We could save a fortune if we took autistic kids and locked them up in institutions like we used to. Maybe we should start there.

Or, we could actually save money by refusing to pay "SEN" schools which are almost always private money making ventures run by people with no actual experience. If people knew the "qualifications" needed for a send school or god forbid children's home they'd be horrified and not at all surprised how many end up on the prison system after care.

I only know of two genuinely decent special schools that I woud be happy for my children to go to they're both run by the local authority and rare in that way and subject to Ofsted. The child thrive and parent are in love with the schools. Parents who fight from day one for the basics are not your enemy.