Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Touhig and Lord Addington

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, on Amendment 155 and it is to that cause that I wish to speak. If there is one thing where I find myself at one with the Government, it is in our shared ambition to encourage young disabled people to have the highest aspirations for their lives and to be self-assured and confident about their future. More and more disabled youngsters are liberating themselves, to the extent of refusing to accept their disability as a barrier. They are self-assured, confident and determined to have a full life.

For many, the pathway to that full life is through a university education but higher education facilities are currently excluded from the new framework created by the Bill. Given that I share with the Government this ambition that disabled youngsters should have the highest aspirations, I am mystified why they should be excluded. Indeed, I am sure that I am not alone in this Committee in thinking that. Many universities already meet the educational needs of disabled young people. Surely we want to feed and encourage this.

All too often, unfortunately, disabled students, even when given first-class support at universities, find it hard to access other services that they need. A report by the Trailblazers group found that 30% of young disabled people felt that the number of places where they could study was limited because of their concerns about an all-round care package. One student named Zoe, who was at Oxford, told Trailblazers:

“My local council had never sent a disabled person away to university before. They were quite insistent that I should stay and study at my local university (ranked at 119th as opposed to Oxford, ranked first), and do a course that I had absolutely no interest in. My decision to move away was treated with complete bewilderment; there was no understanding of how my care package would be accommodated, and the idea that agency care was more expensive in the new local authority caused real problems when negotiating”.

Lauren, who graduated from Manchester in 2012 and is now doing a master’s degree at Leeds, recalled:

“My local authority would not give me the required hours straight off. We had to appeal. Luckily we started the process a year before so had enough time to do this”.

Katy, who studies at Bedford, said:

“After an argument my home county agreed to pay for my personal care but I nearly didn’t qualify for funding as their criteria for supporting people was for those whose needs were ‘substantial or severe’”.

Finally, Rupert, who is at Canterbury Christchurch, added:

“First of all, I was living in Lewisham and Lewisham Council didn’t want to tell us that they were responsible for providing and funding the care themselves. They knew they had to but didn’t inform me. We found out through other sources, so they eventually paid up”.

Disability discrimination legislation has been in force since 1995, yet disabled people still have to struggle for equal access in many areas of our national life. Young people with a disability face challenges and hurdles enough that the rest of us do not face. Amendment 155 is a step in the right direction. It is one more step in creating a level playing field for all our citizens, able-bodied and disabled, thus ensuring that all can use their talents to the full and have a full life.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Sometimes higher education provides better support than further education. I must declare that I have commercial interests in a firm that enables it to be done through the DSA. The transition between the two bits of education is probably unnecessarily complex. Making sure there is a smoother connection and an exchange of education from higher to further and the other way around would enhance the system and would probably allow people to study better in both places. I am interested to hear what my noble friend has to say on this matter. This is a recognised problem of transition and has been around a long time. It will be interesting to hear the Government’s thinking on this matter.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Touhig and Lord Addington

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 77 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford and to Amendments 82, 83, 84 and 85 in my name. Before doing so, I add my support to Amendment 70A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. For me, this amendment represents an important first step in reforming the exclusion policy in schools so far as people with special educational needs are concerned. Some 70% of children excluded from school in England are SEN. That is telling us something: it is a real challenge for us to tackle, and the noble Lord’s amendment at least goes some way to start looking at that. I know from family support workers in south Wales that in some of our cities they are concerned about what they call “soft exclusions”, whereby a child is told, “We don’t want to see you for the next 10 days”, or, “It’s half term next week; we don’t want to see you till we come back after half term”. There is no record kept. This is illegal but it happens, and I fear that young people with learning difficulties are much involved.

In evidence given to the All-Party Group on Autism’s commission on special educational needs, one mother said that she had not been called into school about the behaviour of her autistic son for some considerable time because his teacher was someone who had an autistic child herself and understood the problem. I fear that youngsters with special educational needs are, probably unintentionally, the victims of school exclusion policies, and that is not what we want. I hope that the Minister is minded to welcome this amendment.

I now turn to Amendment 77, which seeks to address the issue of early identification. I know that I am not alone in the Committee in believing that identifying and supporting children with special educational needs as early as possible is the most important factor in improving outcomes. Clause 22 requires local authorities to seek to identify children and young people in their areas who may have special educational needs. Amendment 77 would insert the words “as early as possible”, which most people would believe is common sense—after all, why would we not do that? Why would we not seek this information as early as possible?

The professionals who work with children have a crucial role to play: they are the first educators that the children come into contact with. A number of issues, such as speech and communication problems, developmental delays and behavioural and literacy issues can be better addressed by a good quality early years provider. This means that children start school in a much better position than they would otherwise, and fewer resources are required in later years.

There is evidence, though, to show that the early years workforce is typically the least qualified in the education sector. Reductions in local council budgets have meant that they have cut their training spend for early years staff by 40% in the past three years. This has resulted in many cutting back on early years area SENCOs that they have previously employed to provide advice and training in early years settings. However, the support that they provide is needed now more than ever. A recent Communications Trust project, Talk of the Town, evidenced that across a federation of schools, children and young people’s speech, language and communication needs were under-identified by an average of 40%. The Communications Trust said it,

“remains concerned over how the Bill will ensure that the mechanisms for identification will work in practice across all educational phases and also on local authorities’ ability to identify needs as early as possible, and to respond to these needs”.

The National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense are also concerned that overall proposals do not place sufficient emphasis on the importance of early years support for children with sensory impairments and their families.

The Opposition tabled this amendment in the Commons and in response the Minister said:

“One of the things we will consider is whether, and if so how, some of the good practice on the area SENCO role can be reflected in the code of practice”.—[Official Report, Commons, Children and Families Bill, 19/3/13; col. 369.]

I have had a look at the redrafted code of practice, and I cannot see where this is taken forward. Perhaps the Minister, who has considered this in much more detail than I have, can update us on this issue.

I have added my name to Amendment 80, which was tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Walmsley and Lady Howarth of Breckland, but, in view of the time, I do not propose to speak to it.

Amendments 82, 83, 84 and 85 would ensure that Clause 24 placed a duty on health services to inform the relevant local authority if a child under compulsory school age may have SEN. These amendments would extend this duty to apply to all children or young people who may have special educational needs, regardless of age. It is important that children do not fall through the net and go unidentified early simply because they do not fall within the specific age group set out in the Bill. Having spent 20 years as a councillor, I remember taking up problems on behalf of constituents, often only to be told, “Sorry, councillor, he or she falls through the net”. Who created the net? We did. We, the legislators, the makers of the rules, want to make sure that in this case the net helps and protects people.

In the other place, the Minister referred to single integrated checks and sought to assure Members that the provisions in the Bill would support the identification of children’s SEN and make the these amendments unnecessary. If that remains the Government’s view, will the Minister rehearse for our benefit the argument that the four amendments are not needed and set out clearly where in the Bill the objectives that these amendments are seeking to realise are covered and catered for?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. For anyone who knows anything about the system, even in passing, it is brilliantly obvious that we should have had something like Amendment 70A in the Bill. If a child has been excluded twice, it is statistically almost inevitable that there will be a problem, and he or she should be assessed so that the problem can be identified accurately.

We all carry a degree of history with us in this Room. Mine is of dyslexia. The standard way you identify dyslexia is by the difference between spoken and written language. If you cannot speak correctly, the chances of identifying that person as dyslexic go down. We know there is comorbidity. You have to get into the system and look in the round. It is very important.

I have interests to declare. I have used voice recognition technology for years. It requires a degree of use of language verbally to have a way of dealing with that problem. We should thank the noble Lord for bringing to our attention the fact that everything about communication levels starts to come together in the spoken word or the written word. The way these things hang together is always complicated and difficult. It gets more difficult to deal with them the later they are identified.

To say thank you to the Government, I think that Clause 22 is the most radical and brave thing I have seen in a Bill for a while—saying that we will go out and identify those with special educational needs. Most of the special educational needs lobby has been about saying to the educational establishment, “Oi! There’s a problem. Come over here and give us a hand”. I have lost track of the number of times I have had conversations with Members of both Houses of Parliament about dyslexic children and grandchildren: “How do you get the help?”, “Who do you go through?”, “What’s the matter?” and “Do we tell them they have a problem or not?”. Identification here is very important. Making that a stronger duty, despite the fact that it might be difficult, will make the rest of it easier. You cannot help someone if you do not know what the problem is. I very much support this amendment and the sentiment behind it.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Touhig and Lord Addington

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

The amendment on which mine is the lead name also refers to the autistic spectrum. When the noble Baroness is in the Chamber with us, I always feel as though you are definitely on the end of the passing movement, as opposed to being the play-maker. The noble Baroness knows exactly what she is talking about. At my conference, someone who was talking in a meeting about autism said, “You must understand that autism is a three-dimensional spectrum”. Does that phrase not start to explain why the diversity of people and their reactions are incredibly difficult to understand and always will be? I wish I had thought of that expression myself. The great diversity of needs and different types of behaviour mean that you must have some specific training.

When I was approached to put down this amendment, I had a conversation with the NAS. I want to use it as an example of the fact that you always need a certain degree of knowledge to make this type of assessment. I remember that, in years gone by, when the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, spoke for the then Government, our exchanges on the subject of the initial interview process went on and on and developed almost into a ritual dance. “Can we have specific knowledge?”, we would ask the Government. “No, but we will give them lots of training”, they would reply. We have got better, because we always do, but it remains the case that unless you have someone who actually understands the condition which they are assessing and reporting on, they will make mistakes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has already pointed out that mistakes cost “blood and gold” for everybody concerned. You burn up time; you burn up money; you cause suffering. Getting more expertise into assessment, either by taking a better history, or by making sure you have the right person there at the right time, will make life a lot easier and will probably save money in the long term or, indeed, in the medium term. The Minister has been moving forward, although he is pushing water uphill with certain concerns here. I stress that I am looking for clarification on where he is moving to and his thoughts on where this expertise is going to be dragged in. If you have a problem, empower people to say that there is a problem and that someone who understands it needs to be brought in. If you can do that, you will take huge steps forward. You will not get it right all the time but you will get it right more often.

If the Minister can give us some encouragement and some firm guidelines about what is going to happen to encourage people to get it right—not just to get the numbers through—I will be a very much happier man at the end of this.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House long, because Amendments 50B, 50C and 50D were debated at some length in Committee. I attempted to withdraw Amendment 50A yesterday, but the gremlins crept in and the only thing that has been withdrawn is my name—the amendment still appears on the Marshalled List.

With Amendment 50B, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has once again made a very powerful case in support of the need for properly trained assessors. In particular, all assessors should have an understanding of and training in autism if they are to recognise and understand the complex cases they will have to deal with. It has been said a number of times—I make no apology for repeating it here, because it is important—that when you have seen one person with autism, you have seen one person with autism. This is why the training is so important. A knowledge of autism and possessing the right skills to assess the needs of an autistic person are essential in making any decision about the appropriate level of financial support that that person might need. I believe that the Minister accepts this point of view.

Following the Committee stage, a number of other noble Lords and I had a very useful meeting with the Minister and his colleague Maria Miller MP, and we are grateful for that opportunity to exchange views in a less formal situation. One point from that discussion, which was touched on today by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, did concern me—the point about the qualifications of the person carrying out the initial assessment. One of the Minister’s officials told us at that meeting that the initial assessments would be carried out by an occupational therapist. Will this be the case? That seems a very narrow skill base from which to draw the expertise for any kind of wider assessment, and it leaves me, for one, with the impression that the assessment is aimed primarily at getting people into work and not at trying to understand and support them if they are not able to work. Such a situation would fly in the face of the well-argued case that assessors should have specific training in all mental, intellectual and cognitive disorders, as advocated by the amendment. I hope the Minister can allay my fears.

I turn to Amendments 50C and 50D, in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Healy of Primrose Hill and Lord Wigley. The amendments concern face-to-face assessment and would, if accepted, exempt certain categories of people from the process of continuous reassessment where sufficient medical and other expert evidence existed to demonstrate that their condition would not improve. I return again to my concerns about people with autism. Autism can be summed up in this way: autism is for life. Any reassessment must accept this fact before progress can be made. The Minister made it clear, at Second Reading and in Committee, that the Government did not believe that a face-to-face assessment would be the right course to follow in all cases.

At our meeting, both the Minister and his colleague, Maria Miller MP, gave a strong impression that the Government would support a tiered approach to assessment in such cases, as advocated by the National Autistic Society and others. In practice, this tiered approach would allow for written assessment from professionals to be considered and a decision to be made, on that basis, about whether a face-to-face assessment was appropriate or necessary. I will not test the patience of the House any longer. I look forward to the Minister’s response and hope he will have something positive to say about a tiered assessment.