Westminster Hall debate on SEN Green Paper

[working9while5]

here

Thank you for posting this - I thought it was a really good debate and the MPs were very clued up on the barriers facing families in the current system (and included one MP with a child with SEN). It's about 1.5 hrs long but I found it all really interesting.

I would recommend to anyone going through the statementing process to watch at least the first speech by Alun Cairns - his wife is a SEN solicitor and he talks about the frustrations and delays due to appeals, why it's important to get statements specific, etc.

Just finished watching the whole thing, it was a very good debate and well worth watching.

I was very impressed with the Shadow Children's Minister who asked some very pertinent questions.

Thank you so much for posting this.

Fantastic link! It was so useful that I actually emailed the mp who organised the debate to thank him. Damn impenetrable waffly document actually started to make some sense!

How did you find it w9w5? They said they might have more...

I quite liked it, actually! There was great trepidation in the public services about a Tory government (well, there still is) but there is a lot of sense spoken in the green paper.

My primary concern is that, while I do understand why they are trying to move the focus to "outcomes" vs "inputs", there is still a need for quite a lot of input to achieve outcomes.

Also, while some of the national charities campaign heavily for speech and language early intervention to remove the need for intervention later, I do feel that the incidence of long-term speech, language and commmunication needs is underestimated. I don't believe that in its current guise, having speech and language therapy at 2.5 is going to radically alter the number who still need support at secondary level. Intensive input (3 times a week, ongoing, until language normalises)? Yes, maybe.. 45 minutes once every 6 months.. erm, no.

Still, I recognised so much in the discussion of the bureaucracy - and it IS wrong (as we all know) that it's about subterfuge and adversarial finger-pointing to control budgets etc. I like the idea of the "local offer" but I wonder what happens where this needs to be challenged? Will it still be more of the same? What justification is there for ignoring evidence based approaches that's not simply monetary etc?

I welcome the decision to increase teaching on SEN in initial teacher training but again, how substantial is this going to be? Someone told me that they had 2 hours while at university - if you increase this to 10, that appears to be a substantial hike in percentage terms but is still minimal. I think it needs to be part of the core content, and in the same way, speech and language therapists need to have training on educational pedagogies and differentiation etc. I'd like to see universities that offer SLT and teacher training do a common first year with people choosing different "paths" as they progress. However, as SLTs are also expected to train to work with adults, this is probably a logistical impossibility.

I think there's good in there.. but much that needs to be monitored and challenged, challenged, challenged. It does make me think it's worth engaging with MP's at this time, though, and with the consultation document.