Lord Storey (LD)
We all want the same thing, and on Report I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say. I have current examples of young people who have gone to university, a young girl with cerebral palsy being one. My personal experience is that they have been very well supported by the universities, and all credit to them for giving that tremendous support. If we have established an education, health and care plan post-higher education, it just seems sensible to me, in my innocent way, if the requirements in that plan are carried through for the student when they go into higher education. I can appreciate that there might be slight delays because of the timescale of applying and getting to know and getting to grips with the university, but it seems common sense that if a young person has special needs, whatever they are, and they are contained in the plan, then the plan should be carried forward with them and continued into higher education. That seems simple and it would help the student a great deal.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this stimulating and important debate, and I thank my noble friend Lord Lingfield for initiating it. We all very much agree on what we are trying to do here, and I am very grateful to him for emphasising that these are probing amendments, testing why we are doing things as we suggest here.
We share his ambition and that of other noble Lords that there should indeed be a seamless transition of support between school and higher education. We share noble Lords’ ambition that young people with SEN and disabilities should reach their full potential, including securing a place at university where that is an agreed goal and is appropriate. However, we do not believe that bringing higher education institutions into the framework of this Bill will help us to further that ambition. My noble friend Lady Brinton very much touched on that when she emphasised that this is about the local offer. Exactly how this would be applied as far as higher education is concerned is slightly different.
Higher education institutions are independent and autonomous organisations, responsible for all decisions on student admissions. When young people take up a place in higher education, they start a new phase of education—one in which they will be expected to develop a different approach to learning. Universities, not local authorities, are therefore best placed to support young people through this transition. However, I shall come back to the transition point in a minute.
Higher education courses will vary greatly in terms of content, delivery and assessment across institutions and subjects. Local authorities have no part in providing or commissioning higher education, and are unlikely to have the skills or experience to write a plan to suit the specific nature of the course being studied or the approach of the university.
As Universities UK says in its briefing on these amendments:
“The level of specialist knowledge required in assessing support needs for students on particular degree courses can be extensive, and is best carried out within the institutions delivering those courses. Universities UK would not want to see this system supplanted or duplicated by a local authority-based system”.
Of course, higher education institutions come under the Equality Act, like everything else. They are responsible for complying with the law in promoting disability equality and for making reasonable adjustments for disabled people. Universities take these duties very seriously. A recent report published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the publication of equality objectives by English public authorities shows that higher education institutions are the best performing bodies in the public sector in publishing policy objectives on disability. Institutions are expected to have in place arrangements that can proactively meet the needs of disabled students and can be adapted to individual circumstances.
Baroness Brinton
I was very pleased to hear the Minister’s response about the revised code of practice. I just wondered whether discussions had been taking place between the department and the LGA with Student Finance England, whose website is woefully inadequate on SEN; it is all about applying for finance. There is nothing on the front page that comes up and hits you. The problem is that students who have SEN statements do not know where to go to get into the system early.
Baroness Northover
My noble friend highlights a very important problem that we keep coming back to. It is one thing having arrangements in place; it is another thing making absolutely sure that those who need to benefit from them know about them. I shall carry that back and make sure that my noble friend’s recommendations, suggestions and points are fed in.
The Earl of Listowel
I welcome what the Minister said about the Government’s care-leaver strategy. I have been following it with interest and warmly welcome it. I thank her for the response to the question that I put to her. From what she said in response to the debate, I am reminded that on many occasions when I have spoken with families who have children with disabilities, they have raised an important practical point: the change in adult advocate just before the child reaches majority often undermines the transition into adult services, whether they are education or other services. This may well have already been raised in Committee but I should be interested to hear whether the Minister recognises that as a problem. Can she say whether there is any progress in ensuring more continuity in the professional relationship between social workers and families to minimise this stumbling block in the transition from child to adult services?
Baroness Northover
I thank the noble Earl for his comments—and for his thanks to me. Again, we are all very concerned, in this and other areas, that the transition of a child becoming a young person and into adulthood is supported as effectively as possible, especially for the more vulnerable of our young people. Again, I will make sure that the point the noble Earl made is fed in. It would help if he looked at the draft code of practice to see whether he feels reassured by that.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I am sorry but I missed a little of what the noble Baroness said in response to me. Was the reference she made to the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, about something in the Care Bill?
Baroness Northover
Yes. As I listened to the noble Lord, it struck me that some of the concerns he had would be addressed by the way that the care of a particular individual moving from one area to another should be looked after. He highlighted cases of students who wished to move from home to study at particular universities—just like all other young people who had those ambitions—but their personal situation stood in their way. We clearly need to ensure that that is not the case. The Care Bill should help in that regard because of the responsibilities there in terms of social care, outside the responsibilities I also mentioned in terms of education support.
Lord Touhig
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and I work quite closely on these matters.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, what my noble friend said about that is very encouraging but it is not always a pre-existing condition. In particular at university, mental conditions can become apparent that were not before because the environment is that much more challenging. I am sure there are many occasions when it works, but certainly on occasion universities find that getting provision for a student who clearly demonstrates the need for mental-health assistance can be extremely difficult where the local authority and clinical commissioning group feel they have other priorities for their permanent residents. This would not be a transfer. It is getting help within the context of a university for a student, rather than having to send them home—which misses the point of supporting them at university.
Baroness Northover
I am sorry I did not address the points from my noble friend Lord Lucas, who wished to “keep me company” in discussing this Bill. I am very happy to keep his company—and that of any other noble Lords or Baronesses, should they wish. He is absolutely right: supporting students with mental health challenges is a vital area. I hope that he will be reassured that in the National Health Service now there is parity of esteem between mental health and physical health. We know that good mental health underpins better physical health. The challenges that students face when they leave home and are at university under all sorts of pressures are something we are acutely aware of, as are the higher education institutions. If there are instances where students are not being looked after within those institutions and health services locally, that is obviously a cause for concern.
Lord Lingfield
I thank the Minister for her reassurance. As she and my noble friend Lady Brinton will be glad to know, these were simply probing amendments aimed at debating this terribly important subject. As my noble kinsman Lord Addington said, the move from school into higher education is terribly important. Other noble Lords underlined that. Higher education is terribly important for these young people, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, illustrated with the statistics that he brought to us.
One point that my noble friend Lady Brinton made concerned the fact that while, of course, a young person can start early in their application to Student Finance England, most young people know only late in August, when they get their A-level results, which university they will go to. That leaves about a month and a bit to get all this straightened out. As the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the report that he commented on have shown, sometimes first-class accommodation that is entirely suitable for young people of this kind is provided. I am afraid that other universities do not have it. Neither I nor any of the young persons or their parents who have spoken to me are concerned as to which silo the funding for this should come from. All one is concerned about is that the provision should be as seamless as possible and that, unlike at the moment, the new plan should at the very least be taken into account when consideration is given to funding a young person who is going into university. Perhaps, along with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I should keep the noble Baroness company in order to discuss this further.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, before I respond to the amendments in this group, I should like to say a few words about the intention of the local offer. The Lamb inquiry into special educational needs and parental confidence highlighted how,
“good, honest and open communication … underpinned by written, publicly available information”,
was key to the development of positive working relationships. It emphasised the need for parents to be able to access the information they need, when they need it and in ways that are convenient to them. The Bill responds to that need. The local offer, introduced by Clause 30, has two fundamental purposes: first, to provide clear, comprehensive and accessible information on provision available to support children and young people with SEN and their parents; and, secondly, to help make provision more responsive to local needs. Paragraph 5.1 of the draft SEN code of practice makes this crystal clear.
To be effective, the local offer must be a collaborative venture. We are requiring local authorities and schools, colleges and others providing services to work together in developing it through the duty in Clause 28. Crucially, we are requiring local authorities to involve local parents of children with SEN, and children and young people with SEN, in developing and reviewing the local offer. The local offer should enable local people to see what services are available, how they can be accessed, who provides them and where to go if things do not work out. It will also improve local accountability by making services more transparent and more responsive. I have to say that my discussions with pathfinders have been encouraging in this regard.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, raised the question of disabled children in the local offer. We had a full and helpful debate on disabled children without special educational needs and I gave an undertaking to consider the issue with help from noble Lords. I would be delighted to discuss this further with the noble Lord before Report.
Many noble Lords have spoken to the amendment and Amendment 102, both of which are in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Sharp. I would like to address both amendments together. I can assure noble Lords that the local offer will not be a speculative document or wish list—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, an opportunity to be “slippery”. It will not be about what the local authority would like to be available. It will be what the local authority expects will actually be available.
The local authority does not have control of all the services set out in the local offer and can therefore set out only what it expects to be available from these services. This will be based on consultation and collaboration with providers, including schools, post-16 institutions and health providers. If the local offer includes only the support that is currently available, families will not be informed about what provision the local authority expects to become available in the near future, possibly from new innovative practices. We want parents and young people to have confidence in the information in the local offer. We intend the local offer to be robust and effective, and I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Storey for his positive remarks in this regard.
My noble friend Lady Brinton made a passionate case for a strong national framework for the local offer in order to provide constancy. The local offer regulations set out in chapter 5 of the draft code of practice provide that framework in some detail, and we will return to this point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about minimum standards and setting out duties for the provision of services in the local offer. We will return to these issues later and I will not speak about them now.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, made the point about provision outside a local authority’s area. I agree with him that the local offer should include details on such provision. Clause 30(1)(b) delivers this by requiring a local offer to include provision outside the local authority’s area for children for whom it is responsible.
I am not clear why the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, thinks that the detail being in the code and regulations makes it harder for parents to challenge it. The code is recognised as the Bible for the system—as my noble friend Lord Storey said—and having the information and guidance clearly explained in there will be more accessible to parents than the legal language of the Bill.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, for tabling Amendment 104. The Government currently publish information on local authority expenditure on special educational needs services under Section 251 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 but, as the local offer will include services from a wide range of public, voluntary and private agencies across education, health and social care, it would mean a substantial additional bureaucratic burden for local authorities to collect this funding information. I hope noble Lords will agree that the focus of the local offer should be on the services provided and whether they are responsive to local need. We want that to be the focus of local authorities’ efforts, rather than gathering funding information from a range of other agencies.
Amendment 107—tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Sharp—highlights the importance of ensuring that parents and young people who want support in managing a personal budget know where to find it. I can provide reassurance on the important issue of personal budgets—a key feature of our reforms. Clause 49(7) on personal budgets and Clause 36(9) on assessment would require local authorities to provide information, advice and support in relation to the management of direct payments and the education, health and care assessment plans. Clause 30(1) makes clear that local authorities must include in their local offer sources of information, advice and support for children and young people with SEN and their parents. The code of practice clarifies that this should include information on,
“the option of having a personal budget, who is eligible, how to ask for one and what information, advice and support is available for securing and managing a personal budget”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked about support for families in managing personal budgets. Personal budgets can include provision for support in managing them. This can, where needed, include personal assistance and key worker support. Some families in our pathfinder areas report their satisfaction with this aspect of personal budgets. I have a quote here: through a personal budget someone’s 11 year-old son,
“has been able to swim and have a PA to attend social activities … with his classmates, doing things that ordinary”,
11 year-olds “take for granted”. I had a conversation with a pathfinder on this issue, the help they were getting from a PA and how that had changed substantially the mother’s life.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made the point about including education for life. Of course, we expect the local offer to include information about educational provision in the broadest sense. The code specifies that this must include information about support in preparing for adulthood and other transitions, as well as the support provided by schools and the universal and specialist services.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for tabling Amendment 110. The local offer covers a wide range of public, private and voluntary organisations. These will vary from area to area. Subjecting these agencies to a legal duty may inhibit their involvement when we want the local offer to be as comprehensive as possible and include the full range of services that can support children and young people with SEN and their parents. The local offer will improve accountability of local services in three key ways: first, children and young people with SEN and their parents will be directly involved in developing and reviewing it; secondly, it will make clear how and where they complain or appeal where they are unhappy with their support; and thirdly, regulations will require local authorities to publish comments from children and young people with SEN and their parents on the local offer, including comments on the quality of the provision available and its response to them. These requirements will give a strong impetus to local authorities and those providing support to respond to local needs. In view of this, I do not believe further duties are necessary.
I hope I have reassured noble Lords that these amendments are not necessary and that noble Lords feel able to withdraw them.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken and to the Minister for his comprehensive reply. This is the first of a number of groups of amendments that deal with the local offer. It is clear that the concept of the local offer has given rise to a good deal of concern on the part of parents and professionals. Noble Lords have already had a lot of points to make about it, and clearly there will be a lot more. I do not propose to say much more about it now, because there is a good deal of this debate still to go, and I imagine that we may well want to come back to something more focused on Report.
I just note one observation that the Minister made. I was glad to hear him say that he would be happy to meet us on the question of whether local offers could extend to disabled children as well as those with special educational needs. That is a welcome sign of movement on the part of the Government and holds out the hope that we may be able to get closer together on that issue. I very much welcome that and appreciate the Minister’s having said it. He will not find us at all unready to take up that offer.
In order that we get on to the debates which are to ensue on later groups, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I will speak to this group of amendments on home education tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas. I would like to reassure him that, despite any possible minor imperfections in the drafting, we do know exactly what he is about and we are fully aware of the role that my noble friend plays in the All-Party Group on Home Education. I thank him for raising this important issue.
Noble Lords will be aware that parents have the right to educate their children at home and there is nothing in this Bill that infringes that right in any way. Nor does the Bill increase the responsibility of local authorities for home-educated children or increase their powers to interfere in the way that parents home educate.
Parents of children with special educational needs who home educate do so for different reasons and therefore will look for different levels and types of support from the state, if any. Some home educate because it would always be their choice to do so. Others, however, have begun home education out of desperation, as they have not been able to get the support that they feel that their child needs, or have been let down by the very services which should be supporting them. While I continue to support parents’ right to choose home education, I sincerely hope that our reforms will mean that parents no longer feel that they have to turn to home education as a last resort.
In broad terms, the Bill seeks to keep the same legal position for children with SEN who are home educated as now, but it does so within the important wider context of the Bill including a much greater focus on the views, wishes and feelings of parents as set out in Clause 19 and throughout Part 3 and the code of practice. Where a child or young person has an EHC assessment and the outcome of that assessment is that a plan is needed, the local authority is under a duty to prepare such a plan. If the local authority considers that home education is the right provision for the child or young person, that will be specified in the plan. It will then be under a duty to secure the special educational provision specified in the plan, with the home educator providing the core education provision. Likewise health commissioners will be under a duty to provide the health provision specified.
Amendments 152ZA and 157ZA seek to strengthen parents’ right to request that a plan specifies home education. They would mean that local authorities would have to treat such a request in the same way as a request for a particular school or institution. I think that there is a delicate balance to be struck here. Parents can already make representations for home education and will continue to be able to do so under Clause 38(2(b)(i). Moreover, the principles set out in Clause 19 mean that local authorities must give more weight to parents’ wishes, and as a result we may see local authorities naming home education more often. However, the choice to home educate is a choice to opt out of the state-supported system and is therefore not the same as the choice of a particular school or institution. Therefore these amendments would shift the balance too far.
Where a local authority makes a plan that does not specify home education, this does not prevent parents from home educating. In such circumstances the local authority can only absolve itself of its duty to secure SEN provision in the plan and ensure that the child’s SEN needs are met if it is satisfied that the parents’ provision is suitable for the child’s SEN. I know from the debate on Report in the other place that there are differences of view on this legal point, and these amendments aim to shift the balance of responsibilities between local authorities and parents. However, our view is that not only do local authorities have this duty but it is right that they do.
I should emphasise here that local authorities do not have draconian powers available to them to make this check. For instance, they have no right to enter the parental home to check the provision that is being made. They can enter the home only at the parents’ invitation. The check on the suitability of the parents’ provision could be made through the parents providing a description of that provision or by the parents passing on examples of the child’s work. Neither should they define “suitable” as necessarily being the same as the provisions specified in the plan.
Once a local authority has assured itself that the provision being made is suitable, it is no longer under a duty to make any provision. However, it retains the power to make provision in the home where this will help parents make suitable provision for their children and where parents are willing to receive this help. We encourage local authorities to make such provision and we have made this clear in the code. The same applies to the provisions to support home-educated children who have special educational needs but do not have a plan.
As to Amendment 101A, I can assure my noble friend that the local authority will include provision that would be available to home-educated children.
I hope that what I have said will reassure my noble friend that we continue to support parents’ right to home educate. There is nothing in the Bill that will threaten that right and the greater focus on parental wishes in the new system will mean a better deal for home educators. The code of practice includes a specific section on home education. Following a recent meeting with my noble friend, officials have undertaken to work with representatives of home educators to develop it further during the consultation period. On that basis I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendments.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I listened to the Minister’s response with particular interest as my sister home educated her children for some time.
Perhaps I may raise a tenuously related but important question. It arises from previous debates and is relevant to this clause: how will the local offer help parents to help children in their learning? It is good to see in the code the great pains that the Government are taking to ensure that parents and young people are consulted about what is on offer to them, but we know from all the evidence that family learning is tremendously important to children’s outcomes. In my experience of fostering, helping foster parents to gain the confidence to sit with their children on a regular basis over a period of time, and teaching them the techniques of paired reading with their children, is immensely beneficial for the literacy of those children. Anecdotally at least, it strengthens the relationships of the foster carers and the children.
I have been a follower and supporter of the charity Volunteer Reading Help—now Beanstalk—which works in more than 1,000 primary schools using a paired-reading technique. It works with vulnerable children, particularly; volunteers make a commitment of at least one year and turn up regularly to support the children, with the result that the children make great strides in their literacy.
My question to the Minister is whether it is quite clear how local authorities will offer help to parents to help their children in their learning. Might it be helpful to have guidance somewhere that this is a good approach to take? I am talking particularly about paired reading but it could help with numeracy. I confess to ignorance about the specifics of special educational needs but I appeal to those with expertise in the area to consider the models of good practice there already are of paired reading and parents being assisted to help their children with their numeracy.
In her recent report, Family Learning Works, my noble friend Lady Howarth highlighted that family learning can improve children’s educational outcomes by between 10% and 15%. Therefore, I should like to see this approach adopted as widely as possible in supporting families who have children with special educational needs.
Lord Nash
I think I can assure the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that local authorities will be able to include provision such as paired-reading schemes in their local offers. We want to see extensive and helpful local offers that include the full range of provisions to support children and young people with SEN, including support for parents and carers. We are happy to look at the guidance and the code in more detail to ensure that that is absolutely clarified.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I will read it with care but I cannot, at first listening, think of anything else that I could possibly ask him for. As he is right to say, Clause 19 is a great advance in terms of responsiveness to parents. He is also right to say how immensely helpful his department has been. The all-party parliamentary group has been extraordinarily successful and most productive. It is the parliamentary group that I have attended that has made the most difference to the way that things work in the world. That has been largely due to the help that my noble friend’s department has given it and the interest it has taken in it. As he correctly said, we had a very productive meeting with officials. In particular, I thank Stephen Kingdom, who has been helpful before, but he is by no means alone in that. It has been a very rewarding experience to work with his department on this over the past few years. As I said, I am grateful for what my noble friend has said and I have pleasure in begging leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I should like to say a few words about Amendment 109. I welcome Clause 30(3) because it outlines the provision to assist young people in preparation for adulthood. This preparation includes, among other things, assistance in finding employment. This is welcome but I am not sure that it goes far enough, and that is why I think that Amendment 109 would take us that step further.
The amendment would help to prepare young people to stay in work or to access any benefits that they need or are entitled to. The inclusion would also form part of a genuinely supported transition to adulthood. In addition to finding employment, many skills are involved in retaining it. Support in this area would surely aid young people in making the proper transition that the clause commendably strives to achieve. Similarly, in difficult economic times, with high youth unemployment, it is important that young people are aware of the benefits support they can get in order to progress into employment.
In the other place, the Minister referred to the code of practice. He said that,
“the local offer must include information about, for example, job coaches, who can support people who are already in employment, supported internships, apprenticeships, traineeships and support from employment agencies”.
He continued:
“The code also says that local authorities should provide some signposting about where young people can obtain advice and information about the financial support they can have not only when they seek employment, but after they are employed”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children and Families Bill Committee, 21/3/13; col. 435.]
Clearly, Ministers are aware of the vital importance of aiding young people to retain employment and access the benefits support that they need at appropriate times. This is necessary to ensure positive outcomes and real transitions for young people into adulthood.
In the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, sent to noble Lords following the Second Reading, he said:
“Local authorities should ensure that early transition planning is in place for all young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan, focusing on positive outcomes and how to achieve them … When a young person is anticipated to be leaving education within two years, reviews of EHC Plans must plan for phased transition into the key life outcomes listed, with a greater emphasis on pathways to independent living, higher education and paid employment”.
These statements from Ministers are most welcome but remain a little vague. More specific skills training and support could be set out in the Bill, thereby placing within the legislation a real commitment properly to prepare young people for adulthood. That would be making considerable progress.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, the amendments in this group seek in different ways to put more detailed information in the Bill regarding the local offer. Let me deal with the issues that noble Lords have raised.
Amendment 103 of the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, seeks to ensure that the local offer includes specialist provision made in the independent sector, in particular that made by institutions covered by Clause 41. I thank the noble Baroness for acknowledging that this issue is in fact covered in the draft code of practice. I think she said that.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
Perhaps I may clarify for the noble Baroness that I acknowledge that there is a reference to the issue in the code of practice. However, as it requires the local offer only to contain information about where to see the list, that is not the same as including the provisions in the local offer. Can she clarify whether the code of practice does include them?
Baroness Northover
Indeed. We agree that such provision plays a valuable role in supporting children and young people with SEN. This is reflected in Clause 30 and the associated regulations. The noble Baroness said she recognised that the provisions were mentioned in the draft code of practice in terms of the information to be published, and she pushed for further details about that.
Schedule 1 of the regulations made under Clause 30 will require local authorities, as the noble Baroness noted, to publish information about the services they expect to be available for children and young people with special educational needs for whom they are responsible. I can assure her that this specifically includes provision by institutions approved under Clause 41 both within and outside its area. This is also made clear in chapter 5 of the draft code of practice. I hope that this provides the necessary clarification that she asked me for. Parents can request that independent and non-maintained schools be included in the list produced under Clause 41, and we make that clear in chapter 7 of the draft code at page 111. I hope that that reassures her on that point.
I turn to Amendment 106 from my noble friend Lady Sharp, which was also spoken to by my noble friend Lady Brinton. Schools play a vital part in making special educational provision and have a clear responsibility for ensuring that children with and without education, health and care plans receive appropriate and effective support. It is right that information relating to training, the sharing of good practice and local authority support is made available. We believe that this detail is best placed in the regulations and the SEN code of practice. We believe that Clause 30, the associated regulations and the guidance in the SEN code of practice provide a common framework for the local offer that is sufficiently robust and clear.
Schedule 1 of the local offer regulations states that local offers must include information on
“the special educational provision secured by the local authority in mainstream schools, mainstream post-16 institutions, pupil referral units and alternative provision Academies”,
and,
“how expertise in supporting children and young people with special educational needs is secured for teaching staff and others working with those children and young people”.
The draft SEN code of practice elaborates on this by making clear that the local offer should include information on,
“local arrangements for collaboration between institutions to support those with SEN (for example, cluster or partnership working between post-16 institutions or shared services between schools)”.
Noble Lords will know that there is a lot more detail in the code of practice, and I hope it will be of assistance to them.
Lord Addington
I thank my noble friend for that offer. However, before we do that, will she consider how the whole chain needs to be put together, including the examining bodies, providers, teachers and so on? This comes from experience of a breakdown in this area.
Baroness Northover
I am very happy for us to look right across the board. We need to focus on the individual child or young person and their experience throughout the system.
Coming to Amendment 109, we can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that the term, “finding employment” in the Bill goes wider than providing support for young people in looking for jobs—important though that obviously is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, noted, the draft code of practice refers to the local offer including information about support available for job coaches, for example, who can support young people when they are working, and the financial support available, including accessing any benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, both when looking for work and when employed.
Noble Lords pressed harder about support to stay in employment, which is extremely important. I assure them that we are well aware of that. Preparing for adulthood is an important element in the SEN reforms. Clause 30(2) requires local authorities to include in the local offer,
“provision to assist in preparing children and young people for adulthood and independent living”.
That term is defined in subsection (3) as,
“finding employment … obtaining accommodation … participation in society”.
Support for preparing for adulthood would include the kind of support that young people can expect when they are in employment. I hope that noble Lords find that reassuring as a very important point is being made there.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said that he was pressing the case again, rightly, on speech and language communication, and the provision for children and young people. No doubt we will continue to discuss this as it is a very important area. We recognise the importance of this, and the Government are supporting the work of the Communication Trust—I expect he knows that—including through a grant of £550,000 over two years to pilot an online speech, language and communication qualification for early years practitioners. That shows our commitment. We are also providing £1.5 million to the trust to identify gaps in provision and services, which will no doubt spark more amendments from the noble Lord, to promote and extend the What Works database of evidence-based interventions and to implement the reforms in Part 3. I hope that that is an indication of the seriousness with which we treat this.
Regulation 10 of Schedule 1 to the draft local offer regulations sets out the requirement to include:
“Speech and language and other therapies, including any criteria that must be satisfied before this provision can be provided”.
The noble Lord makes a very important point about how practitioners, from health visitors to those supporting children in school, need to work together. That is one of the reasons for the local offer: to try to bring all this together so that support for these children is delivered in a much more effective way.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked about child development and is expecting a letter from my noble friend Lord Nash. I think that that is in train, if it has not already come out. If it has not come out, I am sure that it will speed along.
Lord Ramsbotham
Perhaps I should explain to the Minister that there has indeed been a reply from the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I was saying that I am not wholly reassured by what he said. In the letter, he talks about assessments and judgments, but there is no confirmation that child development is on the syllabus of every teacher training course. That is what I want to discover.
Baroness Northover
I will refer that to the department for it to look at further. The department will know, as do I, how determined the noble Lord is, so I am sure that it will look at that very seriously.
I remember the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, dealing with Amendment 117. I assure him that Clause 27 already requires the local authority to keep its education and social care provision under review. I believe that we talked about that in earlier groups, but if I have not addressed the noble Lord’s questions adequately, or he wants more information, I am very happy to add to that. I am sure that we will be coming back to that in due course, by the looks of the groupings.
I hope that I have addressed most of the issues that noble Lords raised and that the noble Baroness will be happy to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to the various and important points of detail that Members of the Committee raised in relation to Clause 30.
I will make two comments. First, I thank the Minister particularly for the clarification in respect of Amendment 103. That is now written into the record. Although she said that it is made clear on page 111 of the draft code of practice that parents can request a school in that sector, I think that Chapter 5 could be clearer. However, I am glad that she has put that on the record.
Secondly, the Minister said that Amendment 106B, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, would be taken back and considered in the round in the context of the longer debate that we had about inclusion of all disabled children. That is welcome. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has raised some important points in the publication that most people will have received in the last day or so on aligning the Children and Families Bill with the reasonable adjustment duty in the Equality Act. I believe that was the main point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. That is another angle from which to come to this issue about the inclusion of disabled children, and we will consider it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging, constructive, informed and thoughtful debate. There has been a focus in these amendments on the accountability of the local offer; they consider the issue of inspection; and some of them seek to place in the Bill requirements for minimum standards in the local offer. The noble Lord, Lord Low, referred to accountability, consistency and quality, and those themes ran through the debate.
On Amendment 111, the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Ramsbotham, raised the issue of whether the local offer should be inspected by the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, indicated that he was thinking widely around this area, as did other noble Lords. We certainly believe that accountability to parents and young people will be improved by the transparency which the local offer will bring, with the direct involvement of children and young people with SEN and their parents in shaping and reviewing it.
We recognise the importance of joint working between clinical commissioning groups and local authorities in developing the services in the local offer. We understand the views that have been expressed about the value of external inspection in relation to accountability, a major theme of the debate. I would point out that the democratic accountability that local authorities must face is one element of the issue. We have heard what noble Lords have said and I hope that they will be pleased that we have asked Ofsted to study and report on how best to identify best practice in preparing for SEN reforms—a fact picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—and to consider particularly whether there is a need for an inspection framework to drive improvements. Ofsted will link with the CQC in this work and I hope that noble Lords will welcome that. We will flag this debate to those organisations because it will help to focus minds and inform them.
I hope noble Lords will agree that, at this point, we should not place a requirement to inspect on either the CQC or Ofsted until we have the findings of that study. Once the survey is complete, I assure noble Lords that we will reflect upon its implications and on whether an inspection regime is necessary.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, and others are right to say that we would not wish to be over-prescriptive. There was a wide-ranging debate about the pros and cons of that approach. We want the local offer to encourage local authorities to be innovative, develop a sense of partnership with local children, young people and families, and reflect local need. I thank my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for their understanding and support on that perspective. I certainly found very encouraging the reports that we heard the other day from the pathfinders on the different, imaginative approaches they take to this area. I hope that noble Lords who were not at that meeting will have an opportunity to hear more about that.
Some noble Lords referred to minimum standards. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that indeed we feel that minimum standards could weaken parents’ and young people’s ability to influence their local authority and provide local accountability. As other noble Lords indicated, local authorities could simply point to the fact that they have met the minimum standard and that would be that. There could indeed be a race to the bottom, which we must avoid. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that we want a race to the top.
On Amendment 113, I recognise the good intentions of my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Walmsley in terms of the format of the local offer in the Bill. Again, I stress that transparency and accessibility are key themes of the local offer and we agree that a level of consistency will help with that. The local offer regulations and chapter 5 of the code of practice, in our view, provide a common framework to secure consistency. I know that noble Lords recognise that and debated whether it was really the case but we feel it provides a common framework so that families have the information they need to make comparisons between local authorities. Noble Lords may wish to look specifically at page 44 of the new code of practice, which lists what a local offer must include. However, we deliberately did not require a specific format for the local offer because we want to see local people shape each one, including the format it should take. We have already seen this happening on the ground, as illustrated in what the pathfinders said.
On the review that my noble friend Lady Brinton referred to, I point her to page 57 of the code of practice, which says:
“Local authorities must publish their response to those comments in the local offer alongside an explanation of what action they are taking to respond”.
That rather puts them on the spot in terms of criticisms made of them and how they deal with those. Bearing in mind that they are locally accountable to the electorate, it will obviously act as a pressure upon them.
There is clearly widespread agreement that the local offer is a major step forward. We welcome that and thank noble Lords for their emphasis of that. We hear what noble Lords said about how this is best delivered and the variation in approach to how it might be done. I hope that I have reassured the noble Lord and that he will be content at this stage to withdraw his amendment, noting the study that I referred to in my opening remarks.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
When does the Minister expect the study to be completed, so that we have a timeframe? For example, I am not sure whether it would be before or after Report.
Baroness Northover
It would be a more in-depth study than delivering it before Report would allow. We expect it to report in the spring. However, I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness with more particulars and to copy that to other noble Lords who participated in that issue. There is always a balance between trying to deliver something in the timetable of a Bill—as she will know only too well—and getting something thorough and right. As I say, I will write to her with further details about that.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Can the noble Baroness reassure us also that if this legislative opportunity is lost but the report recommended some sort of framework, it would be possible to enact that quickly? I cannot remember or work out whether primary legislation would be needed for that. If it was required, we could end up waiting for years.
Baroness Northover
I understand that primary legislation would not be needed. We seem to be busy legislating all the time, but it could be done through secondary legislation.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
I am sorry about that, too. While I am on my feet, I should say that I have a great deal of sympathy with the other amendments in this group. In particular, I sympathise with the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Low. In some ways, my preference would be for Amendment 124 because it seems to me that there are occasions when perhaps a special school is appropriate. The wording of Amendment 124 makes it absolutely clear that, when it is in the interests of,
“the specific needs of the child or young person”,
this might be the case. That is why I think that that amendment has some merit. I also very much support the amendments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, concerning the Equality Act. I think that it is very important that we make it quite clear that this Bill in no sense overrides the responsibilities of local authorities under the Equality Act.
Lord Nash
I thank noble Lords for their amendments on inclusive provision. This is the second debate that we have had on the principle of inclusion. Today’s debate has focused on how decisions are made about where individual children and young people with EHC plans are taught. As I said in responding to our earlier debate, our aim with this Bill is to build on what has gone before and to create a new framework that improves both support for children and young people so that they achieve better outcomes and choice for parents and young people.
I will take Amendments 123A and 124, from the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, together, as they both relate to the factors that local authorities should take into account when naming an education setting in a child or young person’s EHC plan, where no request has been made for a particular institution or the parent or young person’s request for one has not been met. The statutory provisions in the Bill are designed to ensure that a mainstream place is considered thoroughly and properly, recognising that, with the right support, children and young people with special educational needs are successfully supported in mainstream settings. They also recognise that there will be occasions where a child’s inclusion in a mainstream setting would significantly impact on the education of others, whose interests should also be safeguarded. This could occur, for example, when the extremely challenging and disruptive behaviour of a child or young person could not be managed. The provision for local authorities to consider the efficient education of others is important in this respect.
I understand concerns about this condition being used indiscriminately. Clause 33(3) and (4) guard against this. A local authority can only rely on it if there are no reasonable steps that could be taken to prevent the placement of the child or young person being incompatible with the efficient education of others. In section 7.11 of the draft SEN code of practice, we set out a number of examples of reasonable steps that can be taken to support inclusion. I believe that provision on meeting the specific needs of the child should not be the preserve of a single clause. It is at the heart of Part 3 and is reflected in Clause 19 on general principles, Clause 36 on assessments and EHC plans, Clause 42 on duties to secure provision in EHC plans and Clause 62 on the duty on schools to use their best endeavours to meet children’s needs.
Regarding the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Low, that the Bill gives FE colleges a get-out clause by allowing them to refuse entry to disabled students that they previously would have accepted in line with their duties under the Equality Act, I can assure noble Lords that the Equality Act 2010 will continue to apply in full to colleges, and that they must continue to make reasonable adjustments to support the participation of disabled young people. Nothing in this Bill overrides these very important duties imposed by the Equality Act.
We believe that the principle behind Clause 33 is the right one. Young people with EHC plans should have the right to be educated in a mainstream setting if that is what they want. This Bill, for the first time, gives young people the right to say where they want to study, by requesting that a particular school or college is named in their EHC plan.
I understand the motivation for Amendments 124A and 126A from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. During our helpful debate on disabled children and young people last Wednesday, I made it clear that we had drawn attention to the Equality Act duties in the SEN code of practice, in Chapters 1 and 6, and referred to other relevant guidance on those duties. We recognise the importance of making appropriate links between SEN and the Equality Act duties in the code of practice, and in last Wednesday’s debate I undertook to look again at the scope for improving the draft code of practice on this. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness, Lady Howe.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, the Committee stands adjourned.