Guest post: “Implementing our recommendations would ensure all children with SEND can thrive”

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Last week, after an 18-month investigation by MPs from across the political spectrum, the House of Commons Education Committee published its report into special educational needs and disabilities and the uphill struggle faced by thousands of families in securing support for children and young people.

We heard from more than 70 people in person and took submissions from hundreds more, including from parents and carers and young people with SEND – determined that they should be at the very heart of our inquiry.

The evidence that stuck most in my mind will be sadly all too familiar to Mumsnet users.

We heard from parents who were at the end of their tether, struggling to navigate the treacle of bureaucracy and find their way through a labyrinthian system.

We heard how many parents were having to take their case to Tribunal, and how many complaints were being upheld by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, although not every parent has the resources (not just financial), to do this.

And we heard stories from parents of exactly what they were putting on the line during the fight for support – their mental health, their businesses, their relationships and their homes.

It is obvious that many parents face a titanic struggle just to try to ensure their child gets access to the right support.

The government now has the evidence that the system is dysfunctional and their reforms of 2014 are not working, but our recommendations provide a way ahead to ensure every child gets the support that they need.

To help parents, there should be a neutral role created to guide them through the needs assessment and Education Health and Care Plan process. They could give advice, assistance with all the paperwork and coordinate meetings, as well as making sure that children and young people are able to feed into the process. This type of role already exists for looked-after children – so we know there’s a model out there that could work.

We want to see the Ministers in the Department for Education really understanding the problems on the ground – which is why there is a need for parents and schools to be able to report directly to the Department when they believe local authorities are acting unlawfully.

There also needs to be more therapeutic support available for schools and pupils, which is why we have recommended that the government should look for and then fill in the gaps across the country.

We want to see more accountability, through stronger and more regular Ofsted inspections of schools and local authorities, including a greater focus on the training that local authority staff have. Greater accountability should go beyond tougher inspections. There should be more powers for the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to investigate what goes on behind the school gate.

Support for children with SEND should not stop when they leave school. I am a great proponent of apprenticeships to set our country’s young people on the path to employment. We want to see government departments coming together with private business to develop a strategy to create more opportunities for young people with SEND to find their way into employment.

Young people want to grab opportunities with both hands but the reality is they are currently being let down by a lack of ambition, support and opportunities.

Our messages are important and we want as many people as possible to read about what we’ve found. Summaries of our report are available in EasyRead, large print and audio formats.

Getting the right support for a child should not be a fight, and children and young people must be put at the heart of the system.

Implementing our recommendations would ensure all children with SEND can thrive and succeed in fulfilling their potential in life.

Please note that Robert Halfon won't be able to respond to comments on this guest post as parliament will be dissolved next week ahead of the general election.

Make authorities accountable with clear methods of recourse when they fail to ensure adequate education

@Flanjango I understand why you would think this but it is not the answer.

We have this system in Scotland. SEN provision is funded and allocated by Local Education Authorities. The implementation then falls to Local Schools. It means there is a postcode lottery not only for which LEA you are in but also which LS you go to. This means there is no one place you can go to to raise a complaint. No EHP unit space? LEA blames the Government for no funding. No assistance in mainstream? LS blames LEA for not allocating hours. LEA blames the government for no funding, government says they have given funding its up to the LEA to prioritise. I've been on this merry go round for 8 years now.

I believe the responsibility should sit with the government. Any funding should be ring fenced, and local authorities should be KPI tested on the provision. It should form part of a separate assessment in the OFSTEAD report, and schools should be held accountable or be at risk.

Having said that, our Education Minister day in a committee where he was presented with real case studies of serious problems within Glasgow schools where parents had given powerful testimony to the committee. He responded by saying attainment statistics had risen (from about 15 to 18%) and all schools had written policies so there can't be any problems. It was hideous the way he effectively accused these parents of lying.

Whatever happens next, it has to be soon. We are losing generation after generation. And failure to educate and provide decent MH services effectively means our children go on to become adults who need more support. Those services are being slashed too. What hope do our kids have?

Personally I think that no school should be able to get an Outstanding if they have fewer than the national average of disabled children on roll. You do that, and you'd soon see the sorts of schools that carefully manage kids out, and treat parents so poorly they vote with their feet, worrying about provision. It would alter the present perverse incentive to provide as poorly as possible, so you get fewer disabled kids on roll, and convert it to a situation where you'd need to provide well or you'd lose the statistical requirement.

This is a fantastic idea.

I would start by removing the requirement for 6k zen support for a pupil to cons out of the school’s own budget. This sets parents and schools on a collision course and creates an environment when kids with sn are viewed as a drain on resources and a threat to finances.

Onceuponatime I might have misunderstood it but I thought the £6k the school had to contribute towards the full Cost of provision listed in the EHCP was simply the £6k pa that the LA give the school for each student on the SEN register. So, rather than use the £6k as the school itself thinks best, it has to be used as specified in the EHCP. But as I said, I might have misunderstood something here.

I work with dozens of really broken families every year, that these reviews and 'fact finding' missions will never get to hear about because the families are just so ground down by trying to get through each day, they have no strength, or energy left to join campaigns.

I work with many more families where the parents' English isn't good enough to understand the procedures

I work with other families who have cognition difficulties or learning difficulties themselves and they can't navigate the system

I work with other families who have the cognition, and have a good grasp on the English language, but don't have the literacy skills or the computer skills to negotiate their way through the maze

I work with families who may have English, Literacy, Computer skills, but who really lack confidence to challenge "professionals" and who innocently believe whatever they are told.

Please listen to the families that report in to any fact finding, but please know that these families are only the very tip of the iceburg.

So much disgraceful lack of provision is "got away with" by Education authorities, Health Authorties and by Social Care because it is provision that should be there for the most vulnerable people in society. People and situations that aren't known about, or the circumstances given a thought to, by the overwhelming majority of the population.
In our local news groups and community groups on facebook and in print, there is uproar when the bins aren't collected, but no-one hears when children with the greatest needs in our society are left without a school place.

Get more Applied behaviour analysis in schools, provided by board certified behaviour analysts.
Used evidenced based educational methods and therapies not unevidenced pseudoscience like "Sensory Integration Therapy".
Look at the special education models in America.

We want to see more accountability, through stronger and more regular Ofsted inspections of schools and local authorities, including a greater focus on the training that local authority staff have.

Uh huh. And what about the academies?

The academisation of schools has been a disaster for children with SEND. It has resulted in a situation where the LA has no power to compel schools to do anything for vulnerable children. School doesn't fancy admitting a child with SEND? LA can't do anything. School excludes or 'off-rolls' children who don't 'fit'. LA can't do anything. School doesn't fancy spending money on support services (that used to be LA offer to all schools)? Nothing LA can do. And there's nothing they can do to make schools use their delegated SEND money to support children either. In theory, LAs can remove EHCP money if the school is not using it properly but in reality they're too stretched to monitor it properly and it only punishes the child anyway.

Plenty of schools are good, caring places that do their best for children. But it doesn't serve them as they end up with the challenging children that others won't take, it further stretches their inadequate budgets and often skews their data for when OfSted come to call. Schools should not need to be incentivised to provide a good education for all, but neither should the system punish them, as it seems to do at present.

Oh, and LA budgets for SEND nationwide are over-spent. Tinkering with processes is not going to change that.

If you want to improve the EHCP process specifically, LAs need to be accountable for the plans they draft.

It should be utterly unacceptable for the council to draw up a draft that they know full well does not comply with the code of practice, putting the onus on the parent to understand the law and push for the plans to be amended. Nobody should know the law better than the LA co-ordinaries and Ed Psychs who write the drafts and reports, and yet everyone still gets plans which are vague, woolly and not worth the paper they’re written on.

I am currently trying to sort out EHCPs for both of my twins at the same time. Compared to many, our LA have actually been helpful but there’s still been a catalogue of errors, rushing things through that aren’t adequate, and plans with almost no specific provisions in them, needs listed with no provisions, requests I made which were denied despite the fact they’re legal requirements...

Why are LAs allowed to send out plans that they know don’t comply with the law? They need random checks and fines to prevent them from doing this.

I can honestly say that the whole process has pushed me over the edge. My anxiety is so severe right now I’m having palpitations 24/7, nausea, vomiting, insomnia etc and I’m only a few months into this.

We need a government who will fund SEND sufficiently. Clearly that’s not this government.

Could not have put it better myself SinkGirl. I'm the same, find it hard to switch off - thinking what is the next move. Why are the LA's allowed to break the law every day of the week?

Once this is done I am thinking of making a complaint to head of SEN.
'Family friendly and child-centred' my backside. Totally the opposite.

MapLand the school gets around 6k per pupil, the school has to use all of that fund on SEN provision before the LEA will top it up, it's not spare money, its money used to fund the mainstream curriculum that now has to be used for SEN, if too many students need additional support it becomes difficult to fund. Schools do get a notional SEN fund in addition to the per pupil funding, but this is generally well below what's needed. A fairer system would be for schools to go to the LEA once their SEN funding becomes insufficient, or after theres a certain number of students with complex needs. Its a difficult one.

@BatSegundo is spot on.

As Wonderstuff and BatSegundo have pointed out, since the Government started breaking up Local Authorities, all the funding for SEND had to go direct to schools, then there is no monitoring that this actually gets through to the children that need it. Whereas there were still lots of issues with the system prior to this change, funding did at least have to be applied for directly on behalf of individual children, so was proportional to the numbers of children and significance of their needs in each school. By it 'already having been distributed' without any knowledge of which dc are attending each school, it makes no sense at all, and certainly makes it incredibly difficult for a school to take on "more than expected numbers" or a child or children with "more significant needs" as the LA doesn't have funds to direct to where the children are.

Sink and teapot, I had a free hour with a SEN lawyer who reviewed our EHCP and ripped it to shreds as unlawful (which I knew from google searches, but don't really know how to approach challenging it).

I know from other mums that have taken the council to tribunal that they KNOW they're producing unlawful documents. They rely on the fact that the vast majority haven't the resource to challenge so they carry-on doing it.

I feel like we need a handhold through this, and to fight for my child to get into a more appropriate school, so are just scrabbling around for the £10k we'll need to prove it at court.