Baroness Barran
Main Page: Baroness Barran (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Barran's debates with the Department for Education
(4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point about the experience of looked-after children, which I also discussed in an Oral Question earlier this week in response to the noble Lord, Lord Laming. We have to get to a system where there are fewer bureaucratic processes to enable children and young people to get the support that they need. The point about moving from authority to authority is very important, and I will certainly take it back to my colleagues in the department. This strikes me as an additional piece of bureaucracy. While it is obviously important that, in every context, children’s needs are properly understood—and that provision through an EHCP, for example, is properly put in place—that should not be a bureaucratic process that prevents children getting the support they need when they need it.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister confirm whether the Government are committed to continuing the reforms that the previous Government set out in the SEND and AP plan to set national standards and to digitise the process, so that EHCPs are much clearer and speedier, removing a lot of stress for parents and their children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The Government are committed to doing everything we can to ensure that the process of going through an education, health and care plan—even now, only 50% of parents get them within 20 weeks of applying for them—is made much easier. I am sure that there are ways that we can build on work from the previous Government to ensure that that happens. Fundamentally, the problem with the system, which we also inherited from the previous Government, is that too many parents feel the need to go through this arduous process alone, because they do not have the support in the rest of the school system and do not get identification early enough. That is what, more fundamentally, we need to put right, and that is what the Government are committed to doing.