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

whilst fully appreciate that parents want the best for their child some demands are unrealistic and it is a case of priority in spending

So what “demands” would you cut?

The majority claim benefits, and that's a fact nor a criticism. It's just not realistic for many of them to work. Some are up all night with their very medically complex child and when their child is at shool is the only time they get to sleep

Not they aren't at all unreasonable in expecting a school place for their child. But a previous poster said having a school place is to enable parents to work, but in many cases it's actually to enable them to function, to give some respite etc which is equally valid.

Both my children have multiple medical appointments and I can only work part time to be able to get them to them.

I think local authorities are in a very difficult position. More specialist placements for all kinds of SEN are very much needed. However, the huge costs of some independent placements means that is causing costs to spiral. I was in a meeting recently where the cost of the proposed ( residential) placement was over £400k for ONE year. I can’t help feeling that someone is making a profit there and that not all the money is going towards actually funding the placement. I would like to see an investigation into the actual spend on each student by some of these independent specialist schools compared with what they charge for the placement. If fees were more realistic and transparent, this may mean a little more money available for all.

DS is one of many children in the system who has a high level of needs but is also fairly academically able. Ideally he would be in a specialist provision but locally only one provides close to a decent academic option and that is a private provider. For other reasons that school wouldn’t have worked for DS.

Thsnkfulky due to finding a good mainstream school ds is now in year 10 and doing ok. But the school have had to change a lot for him and his package (including full time 1-1) won’t come cheap.

I had to fight the LA to get that support though even though that support gives him the best chance of becoming a functioning adult.

if the placement at this school had failed then an even more expensive EOTAS package would have been the only option due to nothing being suitable

I so agree. Your experience is in no way unreasonable. I've dealt with a case where the taxi firm took it on itself to arrange a more sensible journey as they were being expected to drive for an hour to pick up one child only to drive back to near to their starting point to pick up a second and then drive round in a circle to pick up a third child to get to school. For some reason the local authority wouldn't have that and insisted on them going back to the original journey, so they gave up the route - whereupon the LA arranged something even more expensive.

Surely it must be worthwhile for LAs, at least in well-populated areas, getting together to set up their own transport fleets and/or use other facilities such as school minibuses? They could contract them out for other purposes during the school day.

Also, many have a place but getting them in every day is not a guarantee! So if you spend an hour getting your child on the bus, or having to find them because they've run off rather than getting on the bus, you can only ask your boss for so much good will.

YABU. I really dislike OPs like this because your ego is involved in this assertion that the provision at your school is good enough for these children.

Some children do need out of county provision. It’s not their fault or their parents fault that councils are bankrupted after all the Tories did for 14 years.

Most parents win at tribunal. So what does that tell you?! That they only fought for what their child is legally entitled to.

Of course people are going to vote YANBU if they don’t have a disabled child, because they know nothing about it and they don’t care about issues that don’t affect them.

My LA is trying to end all EHCPs at 18.

Apparently if you are capable of A levels you can't be disabled. Who knew?!

YANBU

It’s a really difficult situation because the parents are fighting for their child’s needs and sometimes the schools are given funding but it isn’t allocated properly.

But parents can also forget that their child isn’t the only child in the school and it’s often not possible to implement every single thing for every single child all of the time.

A PP said more SEN schools should be built, which I do agree with but I actually just think more schools should be built in general.

Lots of kids are struggling at school and people want to label them SEN so they get extra help or have a ‘reason’ for why they’re struggling (which I don’t blame them for) but not every child has SEN and even those that do have a huge fight to be diagnosed, which can take months or years.

Building more schools, reducing class sizes, increasing TAs and having a more inclusive approach to all pupils, would help solve so many issues and would probably work out cheaper than building designated SEND schools.
It would also mean that those with actual SEN get the right help quicker because they’re not on a waiting list with those who are suffering with treatable conditions such as MH like anxiety or depression.

" because we are told they don't have enough staff to organise the transport in a timely manner.
I also worry about the fact that there is now a big money-making industry around SEND and some individuals/organisations are raking it in"

Surely this is another symptom of underfunding and a broken system.

Government cuts budgets and asks all public services and council to " identify efficiencies". Politicians campaign for reducing government bloat / civil service etc / gold plated pensions etc

Councils resort to private sector suppliers which are apparently more efficient but as rail and water shows are no such thing...

Your voting options are really poor, especially if you want a meaningful discussion.

You see these kids for a very short snapshot of their day, during which, many of them will be masking. Their parents / guardians see them the rest of the time and have the rest of the jigsaw.

Of course SEND spending isn’t infinite, these people are parents not idiots, and treating them like idiots isn’t really in the spirit of working in partnership.

Look at the statistics around the number of people in mental health and criminal justice services with unmet SEND. That is what the impact is of not meeting these kids needs, you can say it’s because of resources and in some cases it is. But in many more it’s because teachers don’t have the training or personal resources to manage (and in some cases even care about) these kids needs.

If you genuinely want to make a difference and you genuinely are interested in this area, look at the bigger picture and learn from experts in the field (not all of whom get paid for what they do).

I have 2 children who attend special school, both adopted and do d to have quite substantial additional needs and I will fight for whatever I feel they need to succeed as would any other parent. I no longer work - I was a teacher until 7 years ago when it was clear that my children’s needs were great and not compatible with 2 parents working.
my eldest has brain damage, communication problems, his is deaf (only diagnosed at age 8 after a huge fight with medical and education that he wasn’t just “ignorant” as we kept being told) we were correct he Is deaf and needs 2 hearing aids. Should I not push for these needs because someone like you believes that they know my child better and they don’t deserve the funding needed to support them??
my youngest is medically complex and requires lots of additional support for his condition to stay stable - should I agree to stop this extra support because it won’t cure his problem? If it was stopped his condition would deteriorate.
i will continue to fight when necessary for the things my child needs, I’m sorry that if agreed funding will be removed from elsewhere but that will not stop me - maybe if all parents fought for the support and were supported by educational professionals government funding would improve, By doing nothing and just accepting what we are given we are accepting that the broken system is okay and that it is okay to fail our children with SEN.

I disagree. It's not for parents to step aside and accept substandard state-provided education for their child. It's on you as an educator and ally to advocate for these children to ensure they get their needs met. The system is deeply flawed and underfunded, I agree, but the solution isn't to accept this (to our child's detriment), it's to try and change it for the better. Money needs to be made available, it is there, just being mismanaged or wasted elsewhere. If we cannot provide adequate education to our children (ALL our children) then really we are failing as a country.

OP I really struggle with your Statement that you don't believe the children need what their parents are asking for. We have had years of school staff telling us our son doesn't need additional support or diagnoses. In school, he behaves well and until recently just about kept up. Outside of school, he has enormous meltdowns, which often put him at risk, panic attacks and cannot pursue any extra curricular activities because he cannot cope, melts down, cannot focus etc. but school's view has been accepted as right. We fought and fought for diagnoses, and he now has diagnoses of ASD, ADHD & DCD. We are now at a point where his headteacher recognises his extreme masking and the distress this causes, but only as a result of her having read his reports and accepted specialist advice. She now believes he needs a SEN secondary school, but a year ago, she told me he didn't need anything! Obviously, he probably won't get a place, because there are children whose needs present more overtly and need managing in the moment. So my child will continue to have a life where he remains in 'recovery' for all of his free time, because of the masking. (He won't, we'll hone Ed)

I'm also not sure what your role is OP, but I have had some shocking experiences with TAs who present themselves as experts. On balance, we have had some absolutely amazing TAs, but we have come across several who have made grossly unprofessional judgments about my child without even knowing the full story that school share.

So while you may be right in the cases you talk about, schools often don't see the extent of SEN issues for some neurodivergent children, unless they are expressers, and this does enormous amounts of damage to these children.

I do, however, agree, that there are not bottomless pits, and the whole system needs an overhaul. I strongly believe that if school were not as they are, many SEN children would cope much better. If there were not 34 children in DS's yr3/4 class, cramped into a Victorian classroom, and if there were adaptable teaching styles, things would be easier. If there was more openness to flexi-schooling so we as parents could sort some of the 'therapies' etc, adds life would be better. But the system is broken and grossly underfunded, which actually increases the level of need for some children and almost certainly means some children need support which they may not is a different mainstream system.

I agree with this. My LA do use a local taxi firm, so I send my female send teen in a taxi with a strange man (always a man, always a different man every day). I'd much rather she go with a person who is trained to do this rather than a random. That's without the knowledge that the taxi firm recently had a driver put away for sexually assaulting multiple women and the rumors that the firm had been aware of the accusations for a while.

So what do you suggest we should do with such people? Just sling them into an institution and forget about them? Are they not entitled to be taught to be as independent as possible, even if that is very limited indeed? Are they not entitled to quality of life?

As an ed psych in a local authority this is 100 percent untrue in my area. There is no maximum or nominal budget per child that constrains the advice we can give.

We might get an eyebrow raised and someone asking us to explain our thinking if we recommend something incredibly expensive or very unusual such as residential provision for a young child. However the very fact that it is an unusual recommendation is all the justification I need - this isn't a typical package I would recommend, so clearly I have a good reason for doing so now. The LA might grumble a bit but they have no power to overturn my recommendations.

I do perceive that some "independent" reports are no such thing and are just writing whatever the parent wants. I have seen particular independent settings named (which is highly unethical) and some dodgy recommendations. I have also seen some good reports.

SEN support in schools is underfunded.

This country doesn’t invest in children and young people. There were practically riots when the Winter Fuel Payments were finally means tested however no one bats an eyelid at the amount of children currently out of school due to lack of support.

@Willyoujustbequiet yet another way of LAs acting unlawfully. They should appeal and the EHCP must be maintained until the conclusion of the appeal.

If there wasn’t a young person at the centre of it all, I always think the A levels thing would be laughable. It shows LAs use whatever line fits their narrative since they equally say an EHCP isn’t needed when the YP isn’t working towards formal qualifications.

Remember that Rotherham involved taxi drivers and vulnerable girls. Most people would tell their children not to get in a car with strange men, we have to do it

The Perry Preschool Project is a longitudinal study started in the 1960s in Chicago and proves exactly this. Governments are incredibly short sighted and that’s linked to the media and to the public’s own shortsightedness- very few people want to hear that investment in a service now will reap rewards far into the future, if there isn’t an immediate payoff now. That’s why austerity was broadly supported- people see government spending as being comparable to their household expenditure, without factoring in the way in which governments bring money in and how they can save. It’s a misleading comparison but it convinces people because it’s relatable.

FWIW I agree with pp who say that there are a large number of interconnected strands in this debate, and it’s possible for several points of view to be right at once.
SEN is underfunded and children are massively let down. (Mainstream education too.) The system is brutal for children and their parents.

Money is wasted at alarming rates and as per the point about taxis, often for no apparent rational reason.

There are also parents who claim things they don’t need (like taxi funding even though they have a mobility vehicle for the child and are able to drive child to the provision and collect them) and parents whose expectations are unrealistic. Some have heard that a particular therapy is available at the setting and automatically want it for their child even if it isn’t indicated, or the opposite- they aren’t open to a particular therapy even though it would be beneficial, because they have a particular idea about their child.

Where I work there are children who are provided huge amounts of support but who are often unable to benefit from it because their parents can’t or won’t bring them in. On the other hand, sometimes the support can’t run because there aren’t enough rooms in the setting if every child is in attendance! We have amazing services but the physical space is inadequate.

There are also too few staff hours paid for, at rates which are very low, so that planning and writing-up ends up being done unpaid and after hours (as in other areas of education) to the detriment of staff and their own families. Staff resilience is often low because of the varied intense demands being made on them and the lack of effective support. To an extent, this is bound to feed through to decisions and interactions with parents, even if not with the children.

All I see here is 'services are broken' surely that's what's at the heart of the issue here. We're not training enough OT's, SLT's etc to meet demand.

I don't blame parents in the slightest for fighting for the best for their kids. It took me 4 years of secondary school just to get my son with ASD sat at the front of the class as he can't filter out distractions, I can't imagine the time and effort you have to put in to get something more complicated than that.

It's not clear though OP exactly how unreasonable these parents are being or what exactly makes their requests unreasonable. What is it the parents want that you consider unreasonable?

So twice in 5 years you have seen expensive provisions for SEN which you’ve disagreed with.

Twice in 5 years there has been a Code Brown at my local swimming pool.

Is the answer to cut SEN funding? Or close the leisure centre?

No. Just don’t shit in the pool.

@mnhq no one is being educated by this thread this is simply yet another thread to tell people who have the hardest lives that society doesn't see their children as worthy. This is not "in the spirit" or making parents lives easier.

If these parents were better people instead of colossal grabby cunts, they could parent their children better so that they wouldn’t be disabled and wouldn’t be a burden on society.

<my paraphrase>