Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Bolton and Lord Ramsbotham

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I am very grateful to the Minister, but I am extremely concerned about that because this group introduces very serious issues to do with speech, language and communication needs. I cannot promise to be short over this because there is a number of things to say, and I know that a number of noble Lords wish to speak. I am concerned that we should rise and continue when we resume because, as I say, I have serious timing problems.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, it may help the Committee if I say that it is possible under certain circumstances to finish part way though a group and then resume on the next Committee day. I hope that will not happen, but should we get to 7.45 pm, that may assist.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, slightly unusually, I shall speak to Amendments 76 and 78 before I speak to Amendment 70A, because Amendment 70A, as it were, is an issue connected with some of the things that I am going to say. I have already mentioned my concern that we are looking at all children and not just the 2.8% who have special educational needs. In saying that, though, I presume that the Government’s aim is to continue the Education Act 1996 and what was said in it. After all, that is where the statements stem from that are now being turned into EHC plans. The Education Act 1996 says:

“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”.

In recent years, a number of us have set out to raise the profile of speech, language and communication needs as a 21st-century scourge. They have crept up on us increasingly because of the lifestyle that is lived in the 21st century—the electronic lifestyle, the parental neglect lifestyle, the lack of communication in families lifestyle, the lack of communication between people lifestyle—and the fact that there are simply appalling figures about people who are identified as having speech, language and communication needs when they start school. I found, for example, when going to do an experiment with speech and language therapists in two young offender institutions, funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, that 67% of the young offenders had some form of identifiable speech, language and communication need. They had reached the age of 15 before this was discovered, hence the fact that the conclusion from our studies was that if only that had been identified early, they might not have been in the young offender institution because they would have been able to complete their education. Think of the waste of the numbers who had been excluded or evicted, quite apart from those who had truanted, because of their inability to connect with the education system.

In recent years, we have learnt that successive Governments have made considerable movement on this. I am particularly glad about the early years foundation stage scheme, which has every child assessed at the age of two to see whether there are difficulties and disabilities. During the study that I have already mentioned to the Committee, we were very pleased to take evidence from Northern Ireland, where speech and language therapists are involved in the training of health visitors before they go to carry out that assessment to make certain that those particular needs are identified.

The purpose of Amendments 76 and 78 is to draw attention to the need for such early intervention. If the general intent that I mentioned earlier is what I saw behind Clause 19, particularly Clause 19(d)—namely, that every child should be enabled to be educated to the best of their ability—while early identification is the key to improving the educational outcomes for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs, some of whom will also have other needs, such as physical needs, I would have thought that the educational need to involve themselves in and engage with education should be at the heart of an education Bill, which is what this is.

The speech, language and communication needs can be easily missed or misinterpreted. In fact, it is said that almost 90% of the children who have them also have some degree of literacy difficulty; a high proportion of them end up being excluded. The trouble is that this has gone unidentified, very often for far too long. You even find people getting to secondary school who cannot communicate there, having failed to communicate during primary school. If we are talking about 0 to 25 pathways, we are presumably thinking about the transition from education into employment. I have been very interested to see the identification by employers and others of the problems of speech, language and communication needs with potential employees. So I am very keen to see that speech, language and communication needs are included in the Bill as special educational needs, because without the language and communication you will not have the education anyway.

On the subject of special educational needs, we have been talking a lot about disabilities and other things that impact on people’s educational abilities, but we are talking about education abilities. It was said in the other place that 33% of children arrive at school without the requisite communication and language skills to take part in education. That is a terrible figure, and I suspect that it could be an underestimate. There are factors such as learning delays, and so on, to be taken into account; 1 million, or 10% of all the children in the country, have identified speech, language and communication problems that are not caused by neglect, having English as an additional language or other external factors. In other words, it is an endemic problem. As I say, it is the scourge of the 21st century.

Amendments 76 and 78 would seek to strengthen the words in the legislation. I was horrified to hear my noble friend Lord Low question the term,

“to use its best endeavours to identify”,

which was given to me by the Communication Trust. I am more than happy, after we have had this discussion in Committee, to consider other words that might be more appropriate, but I do not think that it is good enough to have a Bill of this magnitude, and the opportunity that it presents to do something of real significance, and put at risk the opportunity to put speech, language and communication needs at the very heart of everything that is done with all our young people. That means spelling out in detail what local authorities’ responsibilities must be; it is not good enough to leave it with a phrase such as “with a view to”. I do not think that that is nearly strong enough.

That covers Amendments 76 and 78. I now come back to Amendment 70A, which refers to a very particular condition—attention deficit disorder. It is phrased as it is because, at present, ADHD is picked up only when a child has been excluded for the second time. People have quite rightly mentioned the marvellous report that my noble friend Lady Warnock produced all those years ago in which she listed some of the conditions that were to be examined. ADHD was not on the horizon at that time. I contend that a large number of conditions have developed since then which ought to be looked at and included. I mentioned earlier the definition of neurodisability. We talk about learning disability and learning difficulty, but let me describe what neurodisability means in childhood terms. Childhood neurodisability is,

“occasioned when there is a compromise of the central or peripheral nervous system due to genetic, pre-birth, birth trauma, and/or injury or illness in childhood. Such a disability may therefore affect the brain, spinal cord, cranial or peripheral nerves, or muscles, with common symptoms”,

including learning difficulties, specific learning difficulties, lack of inhibition regarding inappropriate behaviour, difficulties related to speech, language and auditory processing, and cognitive delays. It is said that they incorporate autistic spectrum disorders, acquired traumatic brain injuries, epilepsy, learning difficulties, specific learning difficulties, communication disorders and ADHD.