Children and Families Bill

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this high-quality debate today on a Bill that we on the Opposition Benches broadly support, albeit that key improvements and changes need to be made. In the short time available, I wish to concentrate my comments on the SEN provisions.

I recently held an Adjournment debate on the SEN provisions in the Bill, and while I welcome some of the improvements made on the draft Bill, such as including academies and free schools in the provisions, unfortunately it seems that in many other areas the Government are still not moving far enough, despite what I am sure is an attempt to do the right thing with this legislative opportunity.

I remind colleagues that this is not a marginal issue. There are some 700,000 disabled children in England and some 1.7 million children are said to have special educational needs. However, far too many of these families feel they live close to crisis point, and MPs are all too familiar with the cases of parents who are forced to fight through a seemingly endless bureaucratic nightmare in order to get the support they so desperately need for their children.

At the heart of the struggle faced by families with disabled children and those with SEN is the unacceptable lack of support for these families close to home. Recently, a report by Scope found that the biggest issue facing families with disabled children is a lack of local support services. More than six in 10 parents of disabled children say they are not able to get the services that they and their child need in their local area. Child care, respite care and therapeutic services, such as speech and language therapy, are often just not readily available. This lack of local accessible services can have a devastating impact on a family’s quality of life. Research has found 80% of families with disabled children who cannot access the services they need locally report feeling anxious and stressed, and more than half said they missed out on doing family activities together as a result.

This situation is getting worse, not better, with local authorities now facing cuts of up to 30% of their budgets. Many councils are therefore being forced to cut services for disabled people, making an already bad situation worse. For example, more than half of councils have cut spending on respite breaks for families, and 77% of local authorities are either making cuts or efficiency savings in services for people with a learning disability. The fundamental question underlying today’s debate is where the money will come from to make the improvements promised by the Bill.

The Government have said that that their reforms to SEN provision will reduce the adversarial nature of the system, putting an end to the frustration of parents having to fight to get the support their children need. I welcome the Bill’s intentions, particularly the requirement for local authorities to publish a “local offer”, to better enable families to find the education, health and care support they need. I also welcome the duty on local agencies to jointly plan and commission services for disabled children—something long overdue in a system that tends to compartmentalise children and their families. But I cannot help but feel that while the Government’s proposed reforms are well intentioned, they very much lack the ambition to truly improve the support available for families with disabled children.

Clause 30, for instance, requires a local authority only to produce information on the education, health and care services “it expects” to be available locally. Many organisations in the field do not believe that this will reduce the battle that families face in getting the support they need. Unfortunately, the local offer stands as little more than a directory of services, with no legal compulsion on the part of local agencies to actually provide what is set out in the offer. Furthermore, if the local offer is to work, it is vital that families with disabled children and children with SEN are able to hold local agencies to account for the delivery of the services contained in that offer. Without that accountability, families with disabled children will have no way of ensuring that the services they need are available. However, the Bill is totally inadequate in this respect, with local authorities being required only to publish comments by parents and young people on the local offer. That will not be enough for parents to hold local agencies to account, nor will local agencies be under any obligation to improve the services contained in the offer, and the chances are that parents will continue to battle with local authorities as they have in the past.

It is even more important for the local offer to be strengthened if Parliament consents to the clauses that abolish the school action and school action plus programmes, as children under those categories will be totally reliant on the services contained in the local offer. Currently, almost 1.4 million children with SEN do not have a statement and will not qualify for the plan under the proposed reforms—87% of the total number of children with SEN. Those children are currently supported under the school action and school action plus programmes. Often they have distinct needs, such as speech and language difficulties, which will have to be met solely by services contained in the local offer. If that offer is weak and unaccountable, those children could miss out on the support they currently receive or will need in the future.

Unfortunately, the Government have not listened to experts in the field, nor have they properly considered the views of the Education Committee, which said in its pre-legislative report:

“The importance of getting the Local Offer right cannot be overstated.”

The Committee recommended that the Bill should establish a national framework for the local offer, together with improved accountability measures by which they could be evaluated. Unfortunately, the Government have so far chosen to ignore that advice, but it is not too late.

I do not oppose the Bill, which I see as an opportunity, but the Government need to respond—to listen to the experts and to make the improvements necessary as it goes through Parliament. Only then will the House be seen to legislate in a way that is truly meaningful to the lives of children with SEN and their families.