Sarah Teather, Minister of State for Children and Families, live webchat TODAY, Monday 16th July, 10.30am to 11.30am

[FrancesMumsnet]

We're pleased to announce that Sarah Teather, Minister of State for Children and Families, will be joining us for a live webchat on Monday 16 July at 10.30 am. When elected to Parliament, Sarah was the youngest MP in Britain. She has previously served as Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Community and Local Government, Education, and Housing.

As part of the biggest reforms to SEN provision in 30 years, the government has recently announced the Children and Families bill. Sarah is specifically keen to get Mumsnetter's views on the proposed changes to SEN and statements. Further information about the changes are available here:www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/sen/b0075291/green-paper/progress.

Ms Teather also has responsibility for policy areas like childcare and early education, and the Children and Families bill will also deal with care proceedings in family courts, children's welfare in cases of relationship breakdown, and fostering and adoption arrangements.

Do please join us on Monday; if you can't make it on the day, please post up your questions in advance here.

Good morning everyone,

Thanks so much for taking the time to post on here across the weekend. Really grateful to you all for telling me about your experience in the current system.

What always horrifies me when I hear parent's stories is just how hard they have had to fight to get their child's needs recognised. This is exactly what we are trying to fix. It will take time to get the system right, and sadly no system will ever be perfect, but there is so much more that could be done by getting people to work together more effectively, and by getting professionals to listen more to parents and young people themselves.

I can see there are a few obvious themes coming out in your posts so I will try and group the questions together. I won't be able to respond to everyone individually but hopefully I will be able to pick up the main questions.

Sarah

Tania Tirraoro asked a question which was picked up by a few of you:
I would like to ask: What is your objection to listening to (as opposed to hearing) all those expert voices who are telling you that any draft bill should be delayed until the New Year?

The most important thing I should stress is that what we will be publishing in September is just a draft bill - it is for discussion, not for debate in Parliament. We won't be publishing the real bill until the Spring next year. The draft bill is an opportunity for parents and charities who are expert in this area to look at our ideas and tell us what they think. The education select committee in Parliament will also run a kind of inquiry on the draft proposals. It is one of the many stages we are using to test out people's views and make sure we have the detail right.

It is also important to remember that this is the half way point in the reform process. We began in September 2010, asking people's views on about what should change, then we published a green paper in the spring last year, more detailed proposals a few months ago, the draft bill in September and the real bill next year. We will also have lots of time in Parliament to debate the bill. It isn't being rushed through. It will run over two Parliamentary sessions. And some of the legislation will need to be done in what is called secondary legislation at a later stage.

Throughout this process the pathfinders will be testing things out and we wil be getting formal reports. The pathfinders of course are not just testing out the proposals for the legislation. much more importantly, they are about changing culture. You can't legislate to make people listen - you need to get better at it.

Sarah

What will happen if the draft bill is met with wide-ranging criticism? Will the programme be pushed back while it is rewritten, or is the timetable not-negotiable?

@AgnesDiPesto

1. I have heard that personal budgets may well be notional budgets and actually parents will not get control at all.

Hi Agnes, thanks for your very detailed post. The pathfinders are testing out a mix of notional and direct payments. It isn't always sensible to have a direct payment if there is only one provider of a service in an area. But for the most part, I would hope parents would get direct payments where they want one. The purpose here is to try and give parents more choice and control - but only as much as they feel they can handle. Lots of parents have also expressed some anxiety to me about whether they feel they could take on this responsibility. We are trying to ease parents' burdens and not add to them!

I certainly agree with you that parents are more likely to know what their family needs. certainly the evidence from the pathfinders the Dept of Health ran previously says that money was much better spent and families were happier if parents got more control.

I'll pick up your other points when I respond to others as some others have raised similar points.

Sarah

What do you think about the fact that 1 in 10 children / people are dyslexic and yet dyslexia is not taught in initial teacher training?

Also, schools do not seem to recognise dyslexia as a specific learning disability. I guess this is because the teachers have never been trained to spot it.

@TheTimeTravellersWife

There needs to be a legal requirement for the EHC Plan to specify and quantify the provision to be made, across education, health and care. The plan has to be legally enforceable, it is is not, then it will not be worth the paper it is written on and parents and children will find themselves in a worse situation than they are now.

sorry for delay in my post -- little computer crash problem...

The new plan will be legally enforceable in the same way as statement. What we are aiming to do is to add to the protections children and families get and not take away from them. That is the point about starting the plan from birth -- whereas at the moment, few families get this protection until their child starts school. we also want to extend protections up for young people who are still in education past 16. I doesn't make sense that young people lose protections for example, just because they are studying in a college as a opposed to a school.

Sarah

Lots of people have raised the point about local authorities and their performance - Agnes raised this point for eg.

We know that LAs are very variable in their behaviour. Not all parents have a terrible time. Some LAs pride themselves on listening carefully and working iwth parents. The pathfinders are about building on the best work and learning from it, but bringing the worst LAs up to the standard of the best.

One of the most important things pathfinders are doing is to develop better trust between parents and officials, in health and LAs. Pathfinders have been taking time to listen to what parents want - sometimes for the first time. It is part of the reason we continue to fund parents forums because they have suc an important role to play in arguing for parents and working constructively with LAs.

We want the whole system to be better from the first point of contact between a parent and LAs. That is what the local offer is about. We will require LAs to work with parents properly to develop the new local offer -- and that will be in the bill.

We will also be producing a new code of practise, which is an opportunity for retraining of LAs staff, making sure that they fully understand the law.

Sarah

Sarah, I am the chair of Kent's change board and think the "idea" of EHC plans is great. In theory though, how are you going to get the agencies to work together. Even people sitting in the same office give different levels of service.

Well, the retraining thing is a good step. Because a lot of current problems come where council policy conflicts with the child's legal entitlement and council staff are trained on policy but not the law, and genuinely believe the child is not entitled, when actually they are.

But the fundamental economics is duff. It is cheaper for LAs to break the law and pay tribunal costs and token fines than to stay within the law and deliver the provision our kids are entitled to. That is why they do it - they simply can't afford to do the right thing because that is how the system is rigged. You can't introduce a new system and hope everyone will be nice and principled and do it right first time from now on, if you don't change the fundamental economics of it. Not when LA budgets have been hacked and slashed as they are at present. It needs to be cheaper to do it right than to do it wrong. Period.

I have no issues with a new COP, but the newness of it won't improve outcomes. Accountability improves outcomes. Given the poor level of adherence to the last perfectly good COP, how is this new one going to make any difference?

@DebJay

I am very concerned about those special needs children who do not meet the criteria for an EHC plan. If the graduated approach is to be abolished how will the government ensure that these children's needs will get identified and supported. What resources will schools be given to support these pupils?

Finally, what support will be given to those children who are unable to access schooling due to medical and mental health problems. My child has been out of school for a year due to an anxiety disorder and ASD. As I understand it, they are only entitled to about 5 hours of home tuition a week (provided by the local authority). This is totally inadequate for those children who are out of school long term. Will the government be proposing to increase support for this group of children?

Hi Debjay, thanks for your questions, which a few other people raised too.

I want to reassure you about what we want to do to support children who won't meet the threshold for a plan. First the local offer is for all children with SEND. But we are also investing a great deal in training of school staff to improve their confidence to work with children with SEN. The new initial teacher training will provide more opportunities to learn about SEN, and we are offering scholarships to improve knowledge. We are training SENCOs and we are offering all schools the chance to be a part of the Achievement for All programme that had fantastic results in pilolt studies.

We will be joining the two SEN schools based categories (school action and school action plus) together -- but that won't result in any money being taken away from schools. We do want schools to ask better questions about why a child is falling behind. SOmetimes children are fallign behind for other reasons (eg a mental health problem) and that also needs addressing, without the child being labelled as having SEN.

On Debjay's other point about missing school because of medical problems, we are revising the guidance at the moment about this. We know it is a problem. We don't want LAs to do the minimum, we want them to do what is right for the child. Actually, this is one area where I have experience as I missed 4 years of school beacause of illness, and had no home tuition for most of it! So I have sympathy!

agree that 'just' bringing in a new COP will not change anyting.

the last one was fine, but not adhered to by the majority of LAs.

how will you go about addressing the abysmally poor expectations in many LAs/SN schools/anyone who works with a child with needs?

you can tinker with COP as much as you like, but if the expectations are that the children will not ever learn/achieve anything, then that is what will come about.

@DebsKent

Sarah, I am the chair of Kent's change board and think the "idea" of EHC plans is great. In theory though, how are you going to get the agencies to work together. Even people sitting in the same office give different levels of service.

The new bill will force health services to work with the local authority for the first time. Parents complain a great deal to us that health are not always willing to come up with the goods they promise, and it has been a regular complaint from LAs too. In the new system, health will need to commission services on the basis of need, and assess that need jointly with the LA. For the first time hopefully we will get the right kind of service in an area to meet the real need of children and young people, whether they have a plan or not.

Agree w Hothead. Schools, social workers, council leaders are begging us to do whatever we can to influence this bill to put in iron-clad protection of budgets and legal entitlements. They had rather spend this money on the kids than on mending the roads. But unless the cash is ring-fenced and protected by legislation, they will get voted out of office for doing so. They need - need more restrictions, not less.

@silverfrog

how will you go about addressing the abysmally poor expectations in many LAs/SN schools/anyone who works with a child with needs?

you can tinker with COP as much as you like, but if the expectations are that the children will not ever learn/achieve anything, then that is what will come about.

I absolutely agree on this. As I said in a previous post, we are making the Achievement for All programme available to all schools who want to take part because it had fabulous results. The pilot ran until last year and in many cases, not only did the children with SEN do better than those not in the scheme, but in some cases did better in English and maths than children without SEN.

the key to the programme is about high expectations, setting goals and monitoring them, and the real new: actually listening to parents -- not just talking to parents, listening to what they say and reflecting on it and making use of their views in teaching practise.