NHS refusing treatment to child who attends private school.

[floralcarpets]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/boy-denied-treatment-nhs-hospital-private-school-kingston-richmond-b1231805.html

AIBU to think this is disgraceful? The mum is likely paying loads of tax which goes towards the NHS and pays for state schools, yet her child is this treatment which they sound like they desperately need.

Haven't read the article. It's practically impossible to get OT even with a EHCP in state. My dd is the only EHCP child in her school who's had more than one assessment. The OT is also a bit shit and no worth the stress to get it into her ehcp.

I have two boys who to private SEN schools funded via their EHCP as there is no state SEN school in my massive county that sits a full 8 GCSEs. Neither are there any state speech schools. Both of these schools have speech therapists and OT on staff.

So it's never black and white. When you can't recruit or retain staff, indi can and will fills the gap.

For gods sake, it will be provided. It just won't be through that clinic because the LEA isn't going to pay for their OT's to go to a private school. That is up to the private school which is what the parents chose when they opted out of state schooling.

Ok think of this as an extra to health services provided for children who the LEA has an educational responsibility for. Does that help?

My son is in state and has OT. His situation was pretty extreme though and involves major rehab.

Ok, let's put it this way. Your local hospital strikes a deal with the government that they are only going to accept public sector employees as patients. Call it an employment perk. All funded from public sector funds. Everyone in the private sector can go elsewhere. They'll still be able to access the service, just not here. Go to the next town along. Or maybe your employer can pay privately. Because this is our hospital for our people. Fair?

Children in state schools aren't employees.
They are being educated by the LEA.

School nurses are also commissioned by the LEA.
Lots of MATs have instead commissioned Virgin Healthcare. It's crap.
Children in private schools can't access Virgin Healthcare nurses either.

That’s not even remotely close as a comparison though. The OT will be accessible. The same hospital in all probability, just not via the clinic funded by the LEA.

That isn't really anything alike. Not unless they moved from the public sector knowing the deal was coming and then cried it was unfair, I suppose.

Not to mention the enormous privilege that private school is which the vast majority of children will never benefit from, now that's unfair. I can't believe the hypocrisy to be honest.

I've got zero problems with LEAs commissioning private providers, none whatsoever.

I've got a problem with LEAs gatekeeping access to already scarce NHS services. In this case, an entire OT department dedicated to only working with state school children. It's either NHS, and it should be equally accessible by all, or it's not NHS and it should be made clear that this is a private service receiving no public funding.

Our DCs ehcp gives him 3 hours of OT support per year, including the time taken to write a report.
I would hazard a guess that people able to afford private school are able to afford far more than that provision.

They aren’t gatekeeping though - they are commissioning a school OT service for the schools they fund! OT still exists for everyone else but not from the LA OT service - my 80 year old mum couldn’t access them either - she’s not a child in a LA school

DD is now a paediatric OT in a hospital, they have private patients and NHS patients , the private patients do not get access to the NHS OT, they have to pay privately for an OT

Ds's EHCP gave him on paper, loads of OT. It boiled down to one meeting every so often to advise him to make his own packed lunches (buttering bread and executive planning (hmm) and help out at a community allotment.
A lot of time was spent assessing his difficulties and motor function mind you.

We passed on the allotment as ds particularly detested the feeling of dry soil. Maybe it was a test to remind me I had solutions of my own.

Anyway I think OT services are stretched incredibly thinly and I suspect they wouldn't have given him more than bare minimum if they had seen this child.

But if they went to their NHS GP and had a referral and waited it would be free - that’s how private healthcare works

and someone with more resources than the average family who has no other choice wants to stretch it even more using funding they opted out of.

Now that's unfair.

This isn’t true, though. The private schools could also pay to commission the services should they chose to. More money coming in wouid mean more OTs to allow them to serve all schools.

In some areas but not all. There are areas with no community SALT or OT at all for children over 5, where home ed kids can’t access these services via GP or school nurse. An ECHP is the only way to access them,

Nobody is asking for them to be provided in the non state education setting, they would simply like them provided at all.

You have no idea how funding works. Firstly the service is provided by education therefore, it will be 0% NHS funded. The parents haven't opted out of the NHS, but not opting out of the NHS doesn't affect education funding.

The central government get all the tax payer's money. From this they allocate a budget for Education. A sizable proportion of this budget is then divided up to individual Local Authorities, based on the following criteria:

1. A amount per child
2. B amount per child with SEN
3. C amount to cover the support for those children with EHCP plans.

The LA will then keep a little of this money to fund services it provides to support the work of all schools, for example that to cover funded transport, or to cover LA advisors to help schools, or clinics to support children with particular needs.

The larger amount will divided out to each school, allocated using the above criteria, A & B to form the each schools' general budget and C to enable schools to pay for particular support for their highest needs children.

This clinic, yes will be tax payer funded in that it will be funded by Government Money. However NO money will be there to fund it for this child because when the LA was funded for the services it needs to provide, this child was NOT counted in 1 or 2 or 3, because they are not in LA education.

Taxes, including those paid by the child's parents, will go partly into education funding, but the fact that these parents have removed their child from LA education will mean that the LA receives less funding than it would have done if their child wasn't removed. So yes while they still pay tax, removing their child means less money for the LA, which means less money for services for that LA. It makes sense that the child who's parents decision has meant less money is spent on education feel the pinch of less money being spent of education.

It isn’t possible to obtain any of the services the woman in the article wants on the nhs unless a child goes to state school and even then equipment can be shared between many students.

However most good private schools do provided some limited funding / burseries for things like this for disabled without a plan but they need to be diagnosed first and it’s the diagnosis bit that currently is a problem in the UK. NHS or private you’re looking at a 3-5 year wait

I agree that is 100% true but 100% irrelevant, since no-where in this situation are any health service being provided to anyone. They are all education services, not funded through health in any way, which is why the are available to those who are funded to be educated by the state and not be those who are not.

Ecelt on this thread, actually people are saying exactly that these ser ices, funded by the LEA should be available to non LEA funded school attenders

I don’t believe your hypocrisy. Two scenarios, one parent, millionaire, lives in a £2 million house, attends state school , ofsted outstanding, academically excellent, gets free school breakfast. Scenario 2, average wage, average house, child been failed by state school or local state school poor. No free school breakfast. Parents opt for private but it’s a struggle financially. Both children need OT and SALT input, one gets it for free, the other not and according to you the poorer family are hypocrites for asking for the same services as the richer family. OT and SALT services are in different circumstances provided within NHS hospitals. They are health related issues, the funding just happens to be via education. A cost cutting exercise from the Tory government no doubt.

Here’s the scenario. You have a knee replacement privately. You then have pneumonia requiring hospital admission as a post operative complication. Are you no longer eligible for the NHS as you’ve used private services? where are you going to draw the line?

I think they should be available to all pupils as they are a tax paid for service, not directly accessible for schools without referral to a specialist setting. Therefore they are not part of the standard service, I would expect from a private school.

But state schools buy into the service, private schools would need to do the same.