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SN children

Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on special needs.

A good blog post by SN Jungle.

3 replies

StarlightMcKenzie · 24/07/2013 09:50

specialneedsjungle.com/2013/07/24/is-parental-co-production-just-smoke-and-mirrors/

OP posts:
inappropriatelyemployed · 24/07/2013 10:00

Yes. It is good to say these things but there are two issues I really disagree with.

Firstly, the idea that you can't change cultures with laws.You can but only by enforcing laws. That is what has been lacking in the system to date. Implementation of legal protection. I think it is really naiive to think you can change cultural attitudes by any other way. The system is so rotten that it has to be by forcing LA staff to do their job properly and that leads me to the second point;

Secondly, this is about resources at the core of it all and a lack of oversight over many, many years and about the law not being enforced or enforceable so that LAs act with impunity. The only language reclacitrant LA staff understand is the force of legal action. So we need:

(a) a good clear law
(b) quality oversight
(c) access to justice through legal aid etc

This all has very little to with winning hearts and minds.

StarlightMcKenzie · 24/07/2013 10:04

Yes.

Bloody simple solution. Instead we have a bloody circus of pathfiners, meetings, tea drinking, budget codes with anonymous, random things against them.

One recently used up all their money on 'purchased services'. WTF?

OP posts:
inappropriatelyemployed · 24/07/2013 10:15

It is just not the way Gov works with local Gov to suggest they could tell LAs to threaten to fire people.

And rightly so: imagine it in a situation where Govs wanted to implement pernicious austerity reforms and wanted people on message under threat of the sack? What powers would they have to do that? None at all.

I also think it is ridiculously naiveto think that the Gov would ever tell the very people who set up and run and manage these systemically rotten systems to tell the very staff they have trained to indulge in these kind of money saving practices to 'change your ways or leave'.

Even on the face of it, the C&FB doesn't herald a new era. There are no provisions in it which compel (a) greater transparency (b) increased protection for children's rights (c) improved access to justice.

So the law, per se, as it is won't change the system without clearer provision for all of the above. That is what should be being said, not pleas to soften hearts.

This is particuarly so in an environment of 'austerity' as I believe these reforms are now about saving money and shifting kids off statements with EHCPs etc. This can be seen from the pilots.

This is what Timpson and co need to tackle but they won't because the reforms are not supposed to do what they say on the tin.

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