Sarah Teather on SN in the Guardian

[smashingtime]

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/23/nhs-failing-vulnerable-young-people

It sounds lovely but I can't help but worry that these new care plans won't have the teeth statements currently have. I reckon there will be no statutory obligation to fulfil any of it and it will therefore not be worth the paper it's written on.

She didn't answer my question, boo hoo! Sounds like she might give a bit of a toss though, and anyone who wants to write to her could always quote bits of the Guardian interview where she says things like - how angry she is that things such as SALT and wheelchairs are extremely hard/impossible to get.

Yes - always there's that risk Al1son...
It's good to see these issues being raised and I just hope that it gets thrown right back at Cameron who should KNOW about these things as he supposedly spent so much time talking to 'real' people when he accessed support for his son.

You can watch her being interviewed by Parliamentary Select Committee on SEN Green Paper. I have heard her trot out the wheelchair and SALT thing a few times now and beginning to question if there is little more to it. The committee raised the issue about how education have a legal duty regardless of resources to meet need and when asked whether a similar duty would be imposed on health and social care replied 'no we won't be doing that'. so as far as I can see health will take responsibility for SALT but it won't be enforceable so children will be in a worse situation than they are now. Also these plans are being targeted at children with PMLD and I would expect most LAs to exclude children eg with ASD, Downs, SLI, dyslexia etc. I would not be surprised if the duty on education is removed or stated to be according to resources as well. No realisation that most parents win at Tribunal so its the LA not parents who are forcing cases there.

Our LA operates a banding system , I'm not sure how many others still do. They have bands A-F and I have found informaiton which suggests that they are devolving funding to school for any children on any band other than F. I wonder what this will mean. Will schools use the funds in the same was as if they were allocated via a statement? Is this just a way to make fewer children the subjects of statements?

I share other people's concerns about whether the new care plans will hold any weight and am somewhat cynical that this may purely be about justifying saving money though I really hope I am wrong.

Whatever happens, i'm sure we will all continue to fight to get what our children need if we have to. I for one would rather not be pushed into that position but if need be then thank goodness for Ipsea, Ace and SOSSEN.

Banding is in the SEN Green Paper as the big new idea which is hidden away in the small print. I agree its likely only a very few children will qualify for the statement / plan. They talk about personal budgets but what they mean is what money we allocate to band f children and a limited number of ways to spend it.

As far as I remember IPSEA picked up as one of their main points in response to the Green paper the implications for children who don't qualify for the care plan. All that stuff a few months ago about how there were too many children being put on the SEN register was in my opinion softening up for this. I predict much of the delegated SEN funding will go (the money schools get in their budget which is calculated per capita on children on the register) and there will in practice be provision only for those with Care plans. Most of the campaigning in response to the Green paper will be on enforcing provision for the most severely affected children (ie those who are statemented or will have care plans). The vast majority of children with SEN will fall through the net. Perhaps I should go down to William Hill and start a book on it.

I have not heard of banding,can someone explain it to me?

Plus

every disabled child matters implies that children without a statement would not qualify for the new education health and care plans.......I have read through the Green paper but can't definitively find an answer to this......have I missed it? My ds is disabled, but has no educational needs (well not major ones, just minor) but he has a medical condition which is disabling and potentially life shortening. It has been gods own struggle to get the LA to do something helpful now I think in the future we would be whistling in the wind!

I am by no means an expert, in fact reading threads on this site recently have made me realise how much I don't know and other parents do. That's a bit scarey and I hope lack of knowledge hasn't meant that I have let my boys down to much.

However, my understanding of banding is that a child's needs are assessed and the child is then placed in the appropriate band and funds are allocated according to the banding. My older son was on a band d initially and received 20 hours 1 to 1, following tribunal this was ammended to band E and he was given 25 hours. My youngest son has a band F and he has 32.5 hours funding.

My head is rather foggy these days sparklerainbow so if I haven't explained it very well apologies for that and I have no idea of the eligibility criteria for each band, a FOI request sounds like a good idea to me, perhaps we should all make such a request to our respective authorities!

Interesting discussion - am in the middle of a response for our SLD/PMLD school, and actually our take on it was that it was targetted at mainstream! lol. The main issue at our end is the logistics: there is absolutely NO WAY you could get all the people involved in a child's care round a table for a day, and then presumably get them all back in the same room every time the plan changed - kids with SLD/PMLD typically need more care and support as they get older, not less. So the plan would always be inaccurate or out of date. It looks unworkable to me, because these kid's needs are just so complex, and all of the difficult stuff about how it will work is being left to the pilot groups to work out.

Our head reckons it can be made to work, but only because he believes in the personal budgets thing and reckons that the allocation of money will be a better enforcer than the current law. If the plan says you get x thousand pounds for a child's total care budget and that x thousand pounds is given to the parents, then there is no need for statutory duties in the same way - the parents can spend it where the chuff they like, and the NHS will have to provide the agreed SALT because if they don't, they don't get paid and the parents source the therapy privately.

Re: the banding - I'm going to reread that bit! The issue is that it's a combined plan and Social Care is already banding (I don't know if that's the term they use but it's the same thing in effect) and has been for a while, so either you take it out of the combined plan, and Social Care costs rocket, or you leave it in, and Education entitlement plummets. No prizes for guessing the coalition's preference.

I can see the potential benefits to personal budgets in principle but if you look at social care, I think the allocation of personal budgets has been a cost cutting exercise and our children simply don't need to be short changed. I am not as knowledgeable about the green paper as I should be my copy has dust on it already but so far I haven't come accross any figures indicating how the personal budgets would be determined, has anyone else?

my question would be about the independent schools if a child had a budget would this then rule out the option of these school apart from those parents who can afford to top up the money they recieve. My son is in a special school so is not really going to be effected but over the last few years the rise in parents taking LEA to tribunals, and I have even read of parents fighting for a statement not for present difficulties but to have move of a case of secondary independent school. (not that I blame them as I would also do what it took to get the best for my child). i can see chaos and heartache ahead.

Utah , there is chaos and much much heartache already, I am definately not the person I used to be as a result of the constant battles and I don't think I'm alone in that. I agree there will be heartache ahead and I fear for those children not deemed to be severe enough because I don't think they will get a service that meets their needs. I don't know enough about how the funding will be determined but I don't think that the full funding that would have been provided to schools to cover 1:1 costs will be given to parents and if there is an element of this I think it will fall far short of what is required. In many cases I can see this leaving parents with as much adversary as before but perhaps fighting through different less established processes.

Personal budgets may be fine, but only if all the children who need them gbet them! I heard her talk about independent schools, and she implied that if the LA could not meet the child's needs reasonably withinj the LA they would still be expected to fund independent school places.

My ds has 30hours per week funded one to one, but he does not have a statement, so does he get a budget or not, not as it stands as he would not qualify for an education, health and care plan! This is quicksand!

Tbh, I'm as worried about the kids who don't have statements, and won't ever qualify for the educational part of the plan, but do have considerable health and Social Care support. Does that mean they lose all their provision?

I hadn't considered this group r3dh3d can you give any examples of children who would need considerable health and social care support but not education?

Section 17 of the children act provides for the LA to make provision for children in need, not just children with disabilities, would this funding cover the children you are thinking of?

Short breaks are covered by section 20 of the children act so this would still be provided here, I assume, although I am aware of moves to alter the legal basis of short breaks provision such that it comes under a different part of the children act but I think this is due to wanting to remove the statutory responsibility to review such arrangements under looked after children processes (section 20 covers looked after arrangements). In terms of health I am unsure what group of children would have significant health needs but not educaiton needs, am I missing something?

I really must look at the green paper again, I had thought that the provision would be that which would currently be included in a statement and not those additional services provided for under different legislation.

Well at the moment anyway the Children Act still exists and most of the legal obligations for social care come under Children Act. It is one of the main criticisms of the Green Paper that it appears to have been written without considering how existing legislation and case law will apply. Or are we going to rip up 30 years of legal precedents and start over - which is going to be good news for lawyers but no-one else.

My concern with banding is that my son would never be put in the band necessary to pay for what he gets now. He gets a fully funded ABA programme for ASD but he has no health and few social care needs (none of the social care needs are met by the State anyway). His IQ is average. So his chance of being put in the top band for independent provision is zilch. Yet the tribunal ordered it because he had lost 18 months being failed with poor provision, and because he has a lot of potential to improve. So we won 5 times the cost of the provision he was originally getting for what we all hope will be a period of 2-4 years intensive intervention and reintegration into mainstream. If banding is on severity of disability children who need expensive intervention for a short period will not be eligible.

They cannot put my son in the top band because all the other similar children locally whose parents have not done ABA and gone to Tribunal are still only getting 1/5th of what DS is.

Well, I'm thinking for instance of a child with an illness as much as a disability - childhood MS, perhaps; something that means they need hospital care or home nursing during flare-ups, which means they need lots of physio and OT and adaptations in the home - but they are cognitively and behaviourally unaffected and though they may miss school from time to time, while they are in school they don't need much additional support beyond wheelchair access etc. Or a child who gets Social Care support because of home circumstances - their own learning disability may be relatively mild but perhaps they are fostered or in care and though they might not be assessed as having severe educational needs, the amount of support they need overall is high because of a combination of the learning disability and their social and emotional problems.

It's all very well to say: "oh well, they're covered by the children's act" and yes, they are covered by the children's act at present, in the same way that SEN is covered by the relevant education laws at present. That's precisely what is on the table at the moment - we're seeing educational side, partly because that's what most of us deal with day-to-day and partly because that's what the govt most obviously has the hatchets out for first of all. But remember that the coalition are asking LAs atm in parallel with the green paper which laws are the most burdensome and expensive with a view to ripping up as many as possible. Doesn't sound like a co-incidence to me.

Well as I understand it it is an SEN green paper. If a child has health need or in care and they do not also have SEN presumably will not qualify for the plan - in the same way they would not currently qualify for a statement. The health and social care parts are not going to have any statutory duty anyway as far as I can see. So such a child would be in the same situation as now for health or social care needs.

I don't think they will be bringing extra children into the plan / statement - more likely limiting it to children with high level SEN (with or without medical / care needs)

Agree I would expect big chunks of ''red tape" or legislation to disappear

SEN is (currently at least!) defined in Education Act 1996

A child has ?special educational needs? for the purposes of this Act if he has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for him.

A child has a ?learning difficulty? for the purposes of this Act if?

(a)he has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of his age,

(b)he has a disability which either prevents or hinders him from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for children of his age in schools within the area of the local education authority

So if a child does not fit (a) or (b) they will not have SEN.

Banding on what basis? My DS is academically average but needs support to work at all. Scary.

Banding is really scary because there are no egs in the Green Paper yet its being piloted from Sept. If this is where they want to go why are there pages of padding and interviews about SALT and wheelchairs but nothing said about banding.

It is the SEN and disablity green paper, it defines disability within the plan in detail. My ds is covered by current SN legislation, every child matters and EQ Act 2010, and he should be covered by the new green paper according to the introduction, b ut he is not as he does not have a statement. My ds has a medical condition which causes him disability, he lives in constant debliitating pain, and he is at constant risk of quadriplegic paralysis and death. He gets fully funded ne to one support at present, he is in and out of hospital, has phsyio, ot support, pdss support, but he is above average academically and so does not have a statement, he is the very child that r3dhd3 is describing (thank you r3dhd3) and according to this he will lose everything he needs.

How on earth does that fit into banding, currently he is half funded by pct and half by la, had to ring it out of them though, they were just waiting for him to die so they didn't have to worry about doing anything.....can see this new paper changing that!

I think it's as simple as banding is to be used as a method of cutting costs - nothing else. r3dh3d I do hope that when you stated "

It's all very well to say: "oh well, they're covered by the children's act"

that you didn't think that is my view, it isn't. I was simply trying to establish in my post if I had missed something and was wondering if there was any suggestion that things would change for children currently catered for (not adequately) under different legislation.

I think the current agenda is to save costs, remove rights of children and families whilst at the same time trying to convince them that the changes are in their best interests. There is a real lack of consultation in my view and a number of subtle changes already being made to the legislation without even the pretence of consultation, such as the changes to the section of the act where short breaks sit. For some families not having their child's short break package reviewed may be a good thing but what if something goes wrong and what if the package is cut, where is the forum to challeenge this? There was no consultation to allow this discussion but there is new documentation which appears to indicate a change in the legal basis of short breaks. How many more protective measures aimed at monitoring the quality and provision to vulnerable disabled children will be cut in this manner?

Funding being devolved to schools for all children on bands A-E means IMO that a lot of children will not have provision dedicated to them, I can only see this as a bad thing for lots of children. I may be wrong but I had thought that banding existed previously and was removed because of problems in indivisual children's needs being met. It was not removed from the system in the lA were I live, although not referred to in statements but was stated in letters sent to settings which are not copied to parents. Transparency eh! As a parent you would not know what band your child was placed within or what the criteria for the different bands is and so how could you challenge this?

These are just my views, I may be wrong but this is how I see things and I am worried for disabled children and their families because I think things are far from ideal currently but I think they will get worse and that families will find it increasingly hard to challenge decisions made. I think there will be less transparency not more.