Draft SEN legislation - worrying!

[AgnesDiPesto]

SOSSEN views on draft legislation here

If you have views you can submit them to Ambitious About Autism by 11 October here although probably other routes too.

SOSSEN urging everyone to complain to their MP about removing parental rights.

The rumour is there will be no legal aid for lawyers - legal aid will be axed to just a 'helpline' - that is a rumour though!

Legal aid is due to be cut down drastically to three firms only on a telephone advice line basis, to take effect from next April. Those are the only firms that will be able to do court work under legal aid certificates, for instance judicial reviews, and the number of cases they will be allowed to take on will be drastically reduced. That is partly because they will be limited to work related to SEN and disability - they will no longer be able to do work such as non SEN related school admissions and exclusions. It's a real worry that the emphasis will be on price and not quality, and that the reality is that those responsible for the new system have no idea what the issues are.

There's quite an interesting blog post here - www.lawgazette.co.uk/blogs/blogs/news-blogs/legal-aid-naivety-display

God thats frightening

'those responsible for the new system have no idea what the issues are.'

My worry is that they do know exactly and it is very deliberate. 1. Cut council budgets for SEN and social care. 2. Change the SEN law. 3. Rip up years of case law so its all obsolete 4. make sure no-one can afford to challenge any of the new law / cuts by hiring a barrister.

The smart lawyers out there will be looking for a test case to show that its a breach of human rights for a disabled child not to be legally represented. Its only a matter of time before the right case comes along.

Its a complete breach of natural justice for councils like mine to be hiring specialist external SEN lawyers to draft refusal to assess letters, let alone represent them at tribunal, using public funds and then deny the parent any legal aid.

I went along last night to hear Melinda, very interesting, over 100 people there.
The situation is very concerning and needs to be discussed further. Does anyone know if Melinda is giving any other talks anywhere, as I would really like to hear more.

I would suggest hearing other people rather than more of the same, so as to get a reasonable balance. The information on IPSEA's website and blog looks pretty useful.

I'm not certain that all lawyers 'advising' on this subject come without their own bias. I think we have to be careful.

The Education Select Committee are hearing evidence tomorrow on the draft SEN Bill. It will be broadcast on Parliament TV
www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Live.aspx

If anyone has the time to watch it!

Parents are very under represented there iirc

I agree, no one from IPSEA or similar either....doesn't bode well...

I agree with Starlight. Given the fairly blatant mistakes made by Melinda Nettleton on this previously (identified earlier in this thread) I would want to go elsewhere for information about this.

Star - I have worked for a select committee and they have very limited time to take evidence.

The parental under-representation may be because:

(a) those who sort out the witness lists may think the charities speak for the parents (this is in fact what the charities will claim) and so they are including parents by way of charity representation;

(b) the parental evidence will from many disparate sources and may be in wildly different forms. It may say very different things.

I am surprised to see no IPSEA but they will no doubt have been asked if they submitted on time as the committee would doubtless have wanted to hear from them. Whether they then decided to send someone to attend is a different matter.

As I mentioned before, speaking with one voice where possible is key otherwise it is divide and rule and we are just a lot of disgruntled individuals.

If people want to campaign on this, we should organise a one.

I see inappropriately. I guess I was surprised that they majority were from LAs and Education providers rather than receivers.

There were only two charities when I looked

I'm all for campaigning btw, and advocating. I suppose one of the main reasons so much shite is got away with is because it is incredibly difficult to organise this kind of action. I'm not certain I can envisage it.

Hothead - I don't think that it is available on iplayer, but you can watch it again on the website at
www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Live.aspx

I find that the problem is that I am so busy being a parent of a child with SN, all the meetings, phone calls, appointments, chasing up of people, research, putting together a case for the support that she needs.....that I have very little time left for anything else!

I can't remember what the witness list was but it was only a morning's worth of evidence I think (2 hours). The clerks on these bodies are entirely separate from the MPs and usually try hard to get a reasonable spread of evidence.

I think, in terms of campaigning, direct communication between those who want to organise a campaign is a first step. I think it is hard to do that by a thread.

I think very clear and a very few short-term goals could be established which take minimum effort if spread between a group who are prepared to do something - little steps.

That's just my opinion.

I've gone through that IPSEA response I posted a while back over and over again, compared it with other docs etc and come to the conclusion:-

We are in the process of being well and truly shafted

I'm dyslexic & just don't have the sort of careful, legal type brain to do much clever stuff on this. But I am prepared to put my shoulders behind those of you who do have the skills to try and fight this.

Could we set up a google group as a starting point?

google docs allows multiple brains to work on a document simultanteously which coudl be really handy. I've used it in the past to run geographically disparate projects. I'm also quite happy to coach anyone who is not familiar with it.

Being able to take the fruits of your your collective brains and turn them into sensible documents to fire off to tptb seems like a sensible thing to do in order to campaign iykwim.

We did try something once before, but I had to pull out because my DF was diagnosed as terminally ill, the LA removed all tribunal won provision at the annual review, I was reported to the benefits office for fraud, and we were moving house. Yes March 2011 I'm talking about YOU!!!!!

But with the exception of a few little blips, like having a baby, moving house again, negotiating another appeal with a new LA etc. things are hugely improved. However, I still have the motivating anger necessary. I'll need direction though, because at the moment, it all just seems so HUGE a problem that I wouldn't know where to start.

I think it would be better to improve the existing legislation than to go for this bill, because passing a new Act is fairly pointless since they took out anything useful in terms of enforceable social care provision. If we keep the existing provisions there would be less risk of losing the important current safeguards such as the requirement to specify and detail support, and for the Code of Practice to be properly scrutinised by Parliament before it is issued.

I think it is near nigh impossible to run a campaign through a mumsnet thread!Organising things by committee is tricky, organising things through a website even more so I think.

I think we should organise an email group (there is a yahoo one set up) and just get to work there identifying key objectives.

We can then use google docs or post here to allow those who want to get involved to join us.

I do have experience lobbying. I am a human rights lawyer. I was working for the House of Commons until recently. I am happy to start the ball rolling.

Okay. Need a reminder for the yahoo group. Is it the one the bloke set up?

I know nothing about lobbying, but really want to do this. Just need someone to take charge and tell me how / give me a job to do...AE??? We all constantly have other competing priorities but there must be a way of sharing the work around.

Agnes, haven't you got an especially trying week?

Yes. That's what I need. Someone to tell me what to do, what to research or what to compile.

Ds is safe (for now) and I've taken up a bit of cleaning and baking and we have a family life at last but I'm still so bloody cross about what is happening.