Just been made aware of this new funding initiative

[Perchkin]

Thought you'd all be interested.

New £30 million fund for more than 1,800 independent supporters to help parents navigate the new special educational needs process:

www.gov.uk/government/news/30-million-for-new-special-educational-needs-champions

So they have committed £30m to something that is yet undefined?

What a waste of public money? What are their expected outcomes? How do they know this is the most effective way of getting them? How do they know that what they want to achieve can't be done for £10m, or whether £30m won't be enough and will therefore not be worth it?

There's obviously been some 'behind doors' discussions between the major charities and Gov. But how on earth can they all start saying it is a positive move when none of them seem to be able to explain what IS are, what they will do or add, who will be responsible for them, who will get access to them etc?

So far, as well as CDC, Ambitious about Autism and Mencap have tweeted welcoming them without any explanation save for the CDC's bizarre 'building resilience' crap.

It's just a £30m PR stunt.

As predicted there was a huge bit in the House of Lords reading yesterday 'we announced just today this solution to any of you who doubt'.

I think we should write and ask them to spell it all out - the DfE and every charity who has put their name to supporting it. We could write to all their directors/chief execs

Hear, hear zzz

1800 working hard to convince families they don't need help and/or you can't get SLT in this county anyway so don't bother trying or persuading them they don't really need an EHCP as it's for 'really complex' kids or worst of all - telling them it's their fault

Exactly zzzz there was a huge deal made at the original select committees about how the new reforms should make the system accessible even for children without parents / in care to navigate without help. Now even the adults need an army of supporters, brokers, parent forums, mediators and parent partnership officers and a directory of services (local offer) to tell us what we should have (and not a penny more!). We will need a helper to signpost us to the right helper soon!

Our local offer is a list of council departments and LA schools. Thats it. None of the harder to find out about gatekeeped services are mentioned, no LD nurse, LD dentist, private providers etc. Nothing about eligibility criteria. Just lots of links to different parts of the Council's own website. Its taken months of engagement meetings and Pathfinder money to come up with this apparently.

Looking at the figures I don't think the IS can be paid. I think they must be volunteers and the money will go to the charities who train them (like NAS / IPSEA advice volunteers).

How can they know where they will sit! They don't even know which local organisation will tender yet or who will get the tender. If its anything like the last lot of money CDC gave out it was lots of obscure small charities no-one had ever heard of.

The Council for Disabled Children is delighted to announce that we have awarded 20 local voluntary and community sector organisations a total of over £180,000 as part of our Innovation and Sustainability Programme.The Innovation and Sustainability Programme is part of our work as Strategic Reform Partner and funded by the Department for Education. The programme is intended to support the development of capacity building across the voluntary and community sector as well as the implementation of the government’s proposed SEN and disability reforms, as outlined in the Children and Families Bill. At the final count CDC received over 200 applications featuring a wide range of creative ideas linking to the SEN and disability reforms and leading to more sustainable ways of working. The bids were of a very high standard and highlighted the great work going on across England in support of disabled children, young people with SEN and their families.The successful 20 projects were selected as they were particularly innovative, clearly demonstrated how they will increase the organisation's sustainability and had a focus on the participation of disabled young people and those with SEN and families within their work.The selected organisations range from Decipha based in North London who will be running a leadership programme for young people 19-25 with life-limiting conditions; to Sign Hi Say Hi! in Blackpool who are running workshops for young people to engage them in development of their local offer. A full list of grant recipients, and information on their projects, can be found at www.councilfordisabledchildren.org.uk/innovationsustainabilityprogramme.Both CDC and the Department for Education are delighted to have the opportunity to support so many great projects.

Anyone know what on earth that £180k was for??? Answers on a postcard...

Totally agree zzzz. 30 million might actually provide some useful support for some of our children in schools - the last thing we need is yet another professional listening to our life story, giving us a "caring carrot" and then doing B* all. The role sounds the same as parent partnership so are they being abandoned?

And excuse me for pointing out the elephant in the room but apart from a few young adults being allowed to possibly stay in education until 25, there is nothing very new in the Bill anyway! Its a lot of money to keep the system effectively the same (but probably with fewer children eligible for help).

Exactly. Couldn't agree more. Everyone is fighting to put in amendments to stop rights being reduced rather than improving things so what is supposed to be so dramatically different that we can't find our way around!?

LAs will still be refusing support, schools will still be clueless, LAs will be under a greater duty to work with the NHS (no doubt against parents) and no one wants to offer DPs so what is changing that needs 30m quids worth of independent supporters?

Dumping kids off statements and remodeling SEN as bad behaviour and saying families need therapy etc to stop problems at home surfacing at school (as Timpson has put it) - I fear that's the way we are heading

I fear we are going full cycle, blame the parents - label them as troublesome, segregate disabled folks from their peers. These are all features of the history of how disability was perceived and we are heading back there or so it seems to me. There will be large institutions again next.

It is disgraceful. I just wonder if they will be used against families as another layer of bureaucracy like insisting on a CAF before you can access services or insisting kids are seen by CAMHS or parents undergo parenting courses. Punting it away from education in some way wherever they can.

I fear that it is how it will be used IE a bit like the troubled families teams which currently target the hardest to reach families. I wonder if it will also be used to create further inbuilt delay to what are already time wasting com

complaints processes.

I'd like to see figures for DIRECT child focussed help rather than process as %. We should be aiming to have a maximum of 10% spent on administration with the remaining funds going to direct educational and theraputic interventions.

It's not unusual for a SALT or OT to have 500+ kids on their case load, with 80% of their time spent in adult meetings. The current priorities need turning on their head. How much better would it have been to direct that 30 million towards teacher training? Can you imagine how much better children's outcomes would be if your average mainstream teacher had even heard of sensory processing issues or had done an introductory course on precision teaching, or was aware of assistive technologies?

These are really excellent points and I am intending to draft something to write for answers to those charities supporting this.

This is an industry and there are too many people making money out of our kids with no discernible benefit to them.

It's another layer of bureaucracy and it is frankly very poor to tout initiatives like this without thinking through the detail. It shouldn't be 'make it up as you go along'. Our children are too important for that.

If charities stick their name on this, they should be able to produce clear evidence of the value of the project. I am getting very cynical but I fear there is a certain type of person that works in policy etc at wealthy charities and that they may never have met a disabled child save on the photo opps they have arranged.

Absolutely.

£30mill would pay for a hellova a lot of training for TAs and front-line workers in evidence-based practice and basic ways to engage with a child with SEN.

That's what I'd like to see - 30 million spent on training for evidence based practice (not a politicians latest wet dream) at the coal face.