Q&A with Sharon Hodgson, Shadow Minister for Children and Families -ANSWERS BACK

[RachelMumsnet]

This week we're inviting you to send in questions to Sharon Hodgson. Sharon is the Labour Member of Parliament for Washington and Sunderland West, and Shadow Minister for Children and Families.

As Shadow Education Minister and parent of a child with severe dyslexia, Sharon has been asked to review the Labour Party's policies on Special Educational Needs this year.

Sharon is keen to hear stories of people with experience of the special needs system, whether that's young people, their parents or carers, or the professionals who work with them. Full details of the review are available at j.mp/SENreview

Please post your story or suggestion to improve SEN provision and policy and Sharon will then respond. Using ideas to help inform new SEN policies.

Send in your questions to Sharon before the end of Friday 23rd March and we'll be linking to her answers w/c 2nd April.

I work with preschool children with SN.
They tend to be discharged over to the care of the eduction system when they reach five.
With no real follow up to make sure the LEA are doing their job.

You can go from a support network of therapists and medics to zilch in a few months.
The system is NOT working.

Ohdoadmitmrsdevere's quote:

'you can go from a support network of therapist and medics to zilch in a few months. The system is NOT working'

and that includes no full time education or support for severe multi disabilities!!!!!

Much of this thread thus far focuses on education. Our problems right now are access to physiotherapy and referrals to specialists.

My daughter is 2 and has Cerebral Palsy (moderately affected). She has spastic limbs - particulary her ankles. We have been told that she is at high risk of contractures and yet she is offered physio approximately 1 hour on four occasions a year. She's been referred to a clinic at Guys Hospital where she can have a partially dislocated hip monitored and assessment for botox - which would help reduce risk of contractures. She's been on that list since October last year. I heard some children wait more than a year. It's disgusting. We have to spend all of our daughter's DLA on private physiotherapy which means there is nothing left to pay for equipment - which guess what, by and large is not provided.

There is an issue with school access too. We want dd to go to same school as ds. There are some issues re access to grounds. Goverment has cut access grants to schools and school cannot afford to pay for a ramp.

Oh yes, someone just mentioned a real frustration for us. "Why do they have to fail before they can get help?"

What in god's name is wrong with being proactive??? We're trying to get DS2 into a special school, but it has been mentioned that it might be a struggle because he's not failing or behind at the moment. Yet the school acknowledges that getting him into a better learning environment for him would mean he was more likely NOT to fail or fall behind, which is better for him in the long run.

The idea that we have to wait until he is actually failing before we can access the school that will help him is ridiculous.

inhibernation brings me to my next post.

I work in an open plan office. When I started my job 3 years ago it was full. You could hardly hear yourself on the phone because of the sheer volume of staff in the building.

I shared my office with OTs, Physios, SN social workers, SEN admin staff, SALTs, Nurses and other support staff.

Now when I walk in the office it is quiet and I am surrounded by empty desks.

The cuts have slashed services for disabled children to the very bare minimum.
It is no wonder parents cant see a physio and have to wait a year to see an OT. The staff have either been 'deleted' (yes, they use that word) or have walked due to the unbearable working conditions.

This government promised not to do anything that would hurt a disabled child.

THEY LIED.

And our kids are paying for it.

They don't have to fail to get help. They have to fail disruptively, to get help. If they fail quietly - they're stuffed!

Why is there an LEA policy which LA staff adheres to regardless of the needs of the child? For example, if the policy is to close units in the interest of inclusion (and resources) why are professionals allowed to get away with recommending mainstream despite knowing that the child will do better in a unit?

After being told by everyone (teachers, ASD outreach staff) that my child would be better off in a mainstream setting, when he got into a resource base, the teacher remarked that she was amazed my son (sensory problems) could cope with the noise level in normal classroom and that he must have spend all his energy and time coping instead of learning.

I have a 13 year old child with moderate learning difficuities. As you can see i have a proberlem with my own spelling so i hope your can understand what i'm trying to say. He was 3 when he was put into a Speach and launage unit at the Dorking Nursery. He then got moved to a unit attached to a mainstream school in surrey. When We moved up to scotland i thought it was great as my son got 1:1 sen. As the years have gone on i thougth he was getting on really well but no. He has been tested twice for Austism both times they came back no he isnt autistic. As he dosent have a label we are having a straggel to get the right support for both him and us parents.

We are currantly waiting for a meeting between us his new seconary school his joining in August, present primary school and the education pycolist. This was ment to happen at the end of last month but as one of the people was ill and unable to attend we have an appointment at the end of next month. A whole 8 weeks in bewteen not knowing what to do.

Part of his special needs is he takes things and hides them. We have told he this is wrong we have even tried to get the police to talk to him but they say they cant do any thing until he gets arrested. My husband and i are depreat we really dont knoe what to do or say to him.

When a special occasion is coming up like christmas, birthday or hoilday it sames to make him worst. I am despreat to treat him and take him on loads of days out on the train out to dinner ect but it just never happens. Fingers crossed Easter will be a success. They must be some other parents out there who are in the same stituation? We dresspartely need help.

Why are professionals who are paid to work for the children allowed to get away with being not working in their interest?

The Ed Psych evaluated my child and kept quiet about what she thought was the best setting for him. I naively believed that she would guide me.

Now with the benefit of experience I read her reports where wrote how my son (ASD) was walking around aimlessly and said this was usual. He had 30 hours TA support - why did she not teach his TA how to help him engage? She observed him in class and knew that they needed his TA for other duties and colluded with the school in using his TA to help the teacher manage her class.

Cue 5 year down the line, she expressed surprise that my 9 yr old ds was assessed and his receptive language was found to be that of a 6 yr old - her words - who knew he would get that far?! Well, she certainly did not but did not recommend any strategies to help with his education - at least not till she knew we were going to launch a SENDIST appeal.

Btw, my ds's receptive language went from 4 - 6 years old in less than one year not because of any help from school or SALT. Progress was made because of the help I received from random strangers on the internet.

How would the Labour Government ensure that charities that receive direct funding both centrally and through Local Authorites remain impartial and don't become a part of the system that parents have to challenge?

How can schools be made more accountable when statemented provisions are not implemented?

School decided in Term 5 not to bother with communication sessions. I found out at the end of the term when it suddenly occurred to me to ask them. They did not even bother to lie. I complained to the LA but they knew with 1 term left they could drag out the process. In the end, it was my child's education which suffered.

The governors always side with the headteachers. The LA did not/could not get the school to implement the provision despite telling the head that it was a legal requirement. In facat, in the end, the LA agreed with the head that her provision was better than the statemented provision.

ASD specialist advice was ignored in favour of what was easier for the school to handle. Instead of social skills group as advised, with the recommendation of a specific book so that school did not even have to devise any sessions, the Senco decided that is was better to give my son sheets on what happens when you go to the doctor's, dentists, etc. This passed for social skills...

Why is there a 2-tier system where parents who have the money to pay for reports get a specified and quantified statement because they can pay for private reports but those who don't have the means have to put up with woolly statements?

Lol tired, believe me, you can sell your house, pay for experts and go to tribunal and STILL come out with an unquantified unspecified statement that contradicts itself and is full of spelling mistakes.

Trying sorry.

I would like to ask Sharon about accountability and costs.

In my view, we do not need the coalition government's SEN Green Paper, "Support and Aspiration" it would be cheaper to stick with the SEN Code of Practice 2001, which WOULD WORK if only there was some legal mechanism to ensure that Local Education Authorities were made to follow it!

As other posters have rightly stateed, at the moment LAs are free to spend tax payers money as they see fit, by employing expensive private barristers to represent them at SENDIST Tribunal, to go up against unrepresented parents.

Local Education Authorities have nothing to lose by parents going to Tribunal, as they save money by not having to put in place the provision being sought in the Statement while waiting for the Tribunal decision, which can take 5-6 months.

The Tribunal should have the power to make an award of costs against LAs that act unreasonably, such as by ignoring over whelming evidence of the need for support and therapy.
This remedy is available elsewhere, such as for planning application appeals, where LA can rightly be made to pay costs if they act unreasonably.

There needs to be a cheap, easy and fast legal remedy if the provision in the Statement is not being provided - at the moment the only remedy is Judicial Review! This is a totally unacceptable position, and beyond the reach of nearly all ordinary parents, so the provision in the hard won Statement is then unenforceable!

We have been through all this before with the Lamb Report, which now seems to have been forgotten about.

Statutory Assessment should be taken away from LAs, this was recommended as long ago as 2006 by the Education and Skills Select Committee, but never implemented. There is a clear conflict of interesting in LAs being both the assessor and the provider for special educational needs.

Star - yes, I know. Should have said privately paid for reports give you a better chance of getting a quantified and specified statement.

I would like to ask about independent parental support. I am sure that proper independent support which informs parents what their true rights are and assists them to enforce these through the appropriate routes would help. I don't feel that the current system of parental support being funded by the LA and staff being employed by the LA enables parents to exercise their parental rights properly.

I just want to be treated fairly, is this really too much to ask?

My youngest son is just 5 years old, his needs have been evident from being a few days old, I already have two LGO findings of maladministration with injustice (not that they go far enough in my view) and am going to my second educational tribunal in the near future in relation to him.

Why is it acceptable for practice to be so poor that LAs spend their finite resources on defending their indefensible positions and are focussed on adversarial relationships with parents. I do not see the green paper as being an answer to this but I do foresee it removing some of the few and valuable rights that parents have fought long and hard to achieve.

I could go on but my experiences are reflected in so many of the posts already on this thread by people far more articulate than I.

Are statistics/data collected on numbers of child protection cases initiated and dropped in the time period between parents appealing their child's statements and the hearing dates?

Absolutely.

Our Autism Advisory Service announced a new cheaper scheme that was going to be better for all children on their caseload. I asked the simple question:

'How and when will you know, that in 5 years time, the outcomes for a 10 year old will be better than a 10 year old now?'

They replied that Autism is about social skills and you can't measure improvements, but they just know that it will be better.

They also said that their service was currently excellent anyway but they can't waste public resources on independent evaluation when the best way of measuring their service provision is through parental questionnaires (of which I have never come across myself until I put in a FOI request and saw the VERY leading questions and multiple choice questions that left little room for anyone to disagree that they were getting a superb service).

These questionnaires were also given in the first couple of weeks of 'intervention' and only for very young children who I would assume had parents both vulnerable, in shock and most likely extremely grateful for ANYTHING regardless of whether it was making any measureable difference to the prognosis for their child.

Yes that would be good.

Our LA also provided a pre-reception training day for schools and parents to come together to be presented to about ASD.

It was all about them being visual learners and visual supports. Where has this nonsense come from? I understand that children with ASD often have visual strengths but to label them as visual learners is dangerous, and could well interfere with them being given the chance to develop other learning strategies.

I went home and researched the diagnostic criteria. Nowhere could I find that in order to receive a dx of ASD you had to be a visual learner.

I was further alarmed at the questionnaire at the end. The first and second questions were:

1. How confident were you at managing a child with ASD before you came today?

2. How confident now are you at managing a child with ASD?

So it would seem that our LA has no intention of educating children with ASD, only 'managing' them, and that their training is set up for only that, for which they don't apologise or even try to hide from parents (who also attended that day).

What frightened me most though, was the questions from the teachers. Whilst I was impressed that they attended and were engaged with the material, their overall lack of knowledge about autism was frightening.

Lots of good points raised here. Hope Sharon can sort them into some kind of order.

MrsDeVere - how depressing re the deleted posts. I know times are hard right now (I work in health too) but one thing that really angers me is that the therapists are dishonest. They avoid dialogue about frequency of input. They say things like "Well, you can over-therapise a child you know" But with quarter annual input, I don't see how anyone can feel that's an even near plausible comment/excuse for not seeing a child. There is something inherently corrupt about the assessment of need process. No acknowledgment of unmet need. Parents are left with the horrible knowledge that their child is not getting enough input and that this immediately disadvantages the child, but the authorities lack the integrity to admit it which means parents feel they cannot fight it. I suppose that's the idea.

not getting enough therapies........................my DS doesn't have any therapy, education, peadiatrician etc etc

The system is failing my son...............BIG TIME!!!!!!!!!!!

How do you motivate the unmotivated?
How do you engage with someone who doesn't want to be engaged?
What do you do when so far everything, everyone has tried and all has failed?

You leave the child at home for the parents to deal with and keep passing the buck!!!