Shocked by what provision actually costs

[bigbobble]

I asked my LA to specify how much it is costing them for my son's provision under his statement.

We've got a Tribunal in July for a few extra hours and a bit if additional S&LT.

His 20 hour statement costs them £4,400. They must have spent that so far in 'man hours' arguing the toss against our reports.

Seriously, this is probably less than their tea budget for the year.

Of course, I appreciate that he is not the only one with a statement and that there are other children with funding too but what sort of world do we live in when we are constantly told that LAs 'can't afford' proper support for children but spend massive amounts of time and energy arguing about this sort of sum is peanuts.

Councillors probably spend that in a night on entertaining for a big function.

Agnes was right in her post on another threat the other week. It's not about a lack of funds, it's about how we choose to spend them as a country

moondog is always sayin ghtat the total cost of all the TAC meetings, and LA meetings, and mediation etc, not to mention time spent chasing other depts, or trying to coordinate provision etc ends up costing more than just giving the provision in the first place...

I know that for dd1, the sums add up in our favour, (LA main argument against her school is cost) and that is for a so-called exclusive private SN school. But by the time you add in the SALT costs (if we had pushed for "proper" provision, OT costs, plus her SN school place and extra support (which she would have needed) - you get to the same amount.

Not to disagree with the above, but just to offer some perspective. In our county the standard funding per pupil for a child at primary school is 2,500 (I think for the highest funded counties it is just over 3,000). So the provision is costing around 2,000 what the school is receiving for the average child (plus they will also be receiving the per capita funding for your child). This is not to say that you shouldn't get the extra hours and SALT. Just putting it in perspective of global funding issues.

It costs a lot more than that. Someone has to fund the square footage of the LA's EP's office, the IT support of the Advisory Service, the tribunal training of the SEN Case Officer, and the feasibility studies of feasibility studies of provision coordination. All these departments are funded my money attached to your child's name to have them on their 'caseloads' even if you never directly deal with them. The LA argued that ds' provision cost £8k, but through FoI I discovered it was more like £25k.

That 20 hours provision costing is actually only the hours of it that the LA funds, the school will be funding something like the first 10 hours, in some places 15. My DS's statement used to include the financial cost to the LA and it was about £5,000 for 5 hours TA and 5 hours lunchtime supervision 6 years ago. (They have dropped that monetary figure from the statement recently.) The first 10 hours of the TA was paid for out of the school's own budget.

Still doesn't seem enough to be fighting so hard over when good intervention now will save so much money when they need less support as adults, does it?

In social care it costs them £3 to deliver every £1 of provision thats received which is why I never understand why they are so mean about direct payments as every £ in DP saves them money.

But star is right the true cost of a TA is double their salary when you add on employer NI pension contrib training and premises, HR etc

Of course the cost to society of not putting in support is much higher eg lifetime DLA, income benefits etc

I recently ascertained that it costs about £1500 for a stage 2 complaint, I wonder how much it costs for a LA to enter into judicial review?

I would agree that spending on service provision is far more cost effective than constantly dealing with matters through costly complaints processes which usually also damage relationships when it would be better to negotiate more effectively with families. Mediation also costs around £1000 on average.

"The LA argued that ds' provision cost £8k, but through FoI I discovered it was more like £25k"

How did you find that out? I don't think they have taken into account S&LT as the NHS picks up the tab for that which is why they won't agree to go beyond what the NHS have recommended.

What did you ask Star to get that figure?

Ellen - schools pay for first 5 hours here.

I did a FofI request to every dept I could think of and asked questions like did they get any money for ds, was ds of their caseload, was was the annual cost of their dept. How many children did they have on their case loads. I had to do some extrapolation with some information and do second FoI request.

Our NHS dept (cosied up to LA) said "the SALT for DS will be nil cost because we are not going to hire a SLT specifically for him"
Same for every other service - we have the service already so cost to us is nil
There are legal cases querying this nil cost argument

NHS SALT would cost the NHS something like £60 per hour. If you add their travel time on a private SALT is much cheaper

this has some estimated costs in it for actual cost of services - however it puts SALT at £32 per hour which our advocate said was too low.
But it is a govt doc you can point to as true cost of LSA, EP etc

Bigbobble, if first 5 hours only, sounds like the TA is being paid peanuts. Are they just quoting the net cost of a TA's wages? That won't be the whole cost to them, surely? Something dodgy going on there!