AIBU to ask if parents of SEND children agree with proposals to limit their rights to appeal?

[GenialHarrietGrouty]

Hidden away in the proposals in the Government consultation on SEND is one substantially reducing the rights of parents to appeal for their choice of school when the one named in the EHCP is clearly unsuitable. Although you will be able to appeal against the school named, if the tribunal finds that it was unreasonable for the local authority to name whichever school it has named, the tribunal won't be able to order that your preferred school be named. Instead the LA will be ordered to go away and think again, and it is perfectly possible for it to name the same school. So you could be trapped in an unending spiral of appeals with nothing being resolved.

They are also proposing to take away the right to appeal against the refusal to send an EHCP after an annual review and indeed to take away all annual reviews other than for change to a new phase of education. So if, say, your child's school placement is about to break down and you feel they urgently need better support, where you would now ask for an emergency review, that won't be possible.

Perhaps most seriously, your child's day to day support will be defined only through an individual support plan drawn up by the school, with no right to appeal to an expert tribunal if you disagree with it. Instead, you can go through your school's complaints process where it will be dealt with by governors with no expertise in SEND plus a supposed SEND "expert" who may be something like a SENCO in another local school. That's if the school can recruit governors willing to spend all their time on such panels, of course.

Just a few of the worrying aspects of the White Paper. If you don't agree with this, please respond to the constellation - full details on this post about this.

No it's terrible. Effectively you will no rights ad route to complain either as nothing will be legally enforceable.

Two of my kids get therapy because they went to Indi send schools. Ordinary parents like me will never be able to access that going forward and only the richest of SEN parents will be able to get in via paying fees.

But overall the whole system will stop and the vast majority of SEN kids will end in mainstream. You had better pray to God it's properly funded or you will have SLD and SEMH kids in classes of 30 with absolutely no way for the school to draw down the funding they need for that level of SEN.

I'm very glad my kids are a bit older. However it looks like there is no post 16 provision mentioned at all so my son will end up in supported living sooner than I had hoped by the looks of it.

I don’t think it will make much difference. My son has a ehcp and it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

I'm seriously considering homeschooling tbh

So what is needed is proper accountability in respect of the current law. Most of the problems arise because local authorities regularly ignore the law in order to save money, and there is no easy way to hold them to account. If LAs were actually penalised when they keep losing appeals, or when they fail to delliver the support set out in EHCPs, this sort of behaviour would stop immediately and EHCPs would be really useful documents.

But, needless to say, giving real accountability is the one reform that the Department for Education is not offering to make.

My son is old enough so we went through the EHCP and he had no idea what half of it was and said the school are not doing most of it. It was finalised with his current school and they refused to consult any of the schools I asked for as “it’s the holidays so they are closed” his educational psychologist assessment was a 5 minute voice call where the teachers were telling him what to say. (She said she would be speaking to him at school so I assumed it would be a video call at the very least) so anyone who thinks EHCPs are a magic ticket now are mistaken.

But at the moment you can appeal it…. That’s the point. You could get it changed via a tribunal.

It's appalling. I can't even imagine what it will look like. They are solving their problem by legislating incompetence.

With this amendment ds1 would have had to attend the local EBD secondary (social, emotional and behavioural difficulties) where he could have gained a maximum of 3 GCSEs (this was the school named by the LA for him at the Year 6 phase transfer). As far as I was concerned he had enough difficulties in life due to his SEN without taking away his educational opportunities too so put in an appeal. Given that he got nine GCSEs, A levels and a degree and is now working I feel that this was the best option for him and actually for everyone else too because he now does not need financial support as an adult. Too often people focus on short-term financial gains whilst ignoring that they are going to create higher financial burden later on.

Assuming you're not asking for independent schools, it's unlawful for your LA to refuse to consult. You could take steps to enforce the law, e.g. threatening judicial review. Currently, you could appeal against the school named in the EHCP, though the government is proposing to take that right away effectively.

I don't think anyone thinks an EHCP is a magic ticket, but if local authorities are made to comply with their legal responsibilities they can make a substantial difference.

Too often people focus on short-term financial gains whilst ignoring that they are going to create higher financial burden later on.

So true. Proper provision for SEND can make all the difference between a child being an independent, contributing member of society, or becoming wholly dependent.

Maybe they should also limit the rights of authorities to make bullshit decisions too

Following for when I get home

Sorry I shouldn’t have commented, I’m just frustrated with my own situation and how I applied for a ehcp for my son but they still don’t follow it so hasn’t made a difference.

Absolutely? The reason Georgia Gould gave for taking away the tribunal right to name a school was that she'd been told by special schools that tribunals had placed children with them when they were already too full and that had been unsafe, to the extent that they'd had to close down. It didn't seem to have occurred to her that the reason those schools were too full was that LAs were already cramming too many children in. I must say, I don't believe it anyway, surely if all these special schools were having to close we'd have heard about it?

I'm very sure she was told by many parents about cases where their children had been put in unsafe placements by LAs, but apparently that didn't lead her to think she should take the power to make placement decisions away from them - on the contrary, it led her to think she should strengthen the powers they are already abusing.

Of course you should have commented! Please respond to the consultation, if only to say that your experience shows that disabled children need proper accountability to make sure LAs obey the law.

Just a reminder - 11 hours to get responses in. You don't have to flog your way through all 39 questions if you are short of time. But if people don't respond, Bridget Phiiilpson is going to claim that it's because all parents like the proposals.