Children and Families Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 223, to which my name is attached. I will be brief, because most of what I would have said has already been said well by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.

I particularly support the emphasis that he put on the need for teachers to have the right training to deal with children with medical conditions. Without that training, it is likely that any guidance issued will be completely defunct. The NHS, local authorities and schools need to work co-operatively to ensure that training is provided and accessible to teachers.

I welcome the government amendment most sincerely. I am glad that the Minister has tabled it at this stage. My only problem is that, without seeing the draft guidance, we have no way to comment on whether its breadth and depth will be adequate to meet the needs of children with medical conditions. I therefore hope that the Minister can make a commitment to bring forward the draft guidance before Report, so that we can improve it—not criticise it, but help to improve it.

I also want to ensure the inclusion of medical conditions not already mentioned—the list is exhaustive— such as diabetes, epilepsy, asthma and allergies, but also cancers. It is often thought that children with cancers have short lives. Some, unfortunately, do, but most childhood cancers are now long-term conditions and should be treated more as chronic diseases, not short-term ones. I hope that the Minister will include dealing with cancers in the guidance.

The guidance must recognise both the social and emotional needs of young people with long-term medical conditions, and the fact that a health condition can impact on a child or young person’s ability to learn. Another important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, was the need to involve the parents and children to ensure that the school understands their condition and its emergency needs. A child having a hypoglycaemic attack requires immediate treatment. A child having an allergic attack requires immediate treatment. A child with a migraine needs to be treated with compassion, because they may lose their vision and hearing. Putting them in a corner or a quiet room does not solve the problem. Those are some of the things that children with a medical condition suffer on a daily basis in schools. If we cannot get things right for children in the Bill, we fail them.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, with the permission of the Grand Committee, I would like to speak sitting down. I have added my name to Amendments 67 and 68, and I will not repeat the points that my noble friend Lord Storey has already covered, although I completely agree with them.

I, too, want to focus on children with medical conditions. We have had a lot of information, but I have met three or four children with differing conditions. The problem is when schools do not recognise a medical condition. A young man aged 18 with ME had a statement, but it was for his behaviour, not for his medical condition. Even after the consultant wrote to the school, the school refused to believe that the condition existed. A girl with a congenital heart condition was taking an exam. The invigilator had not been informed about the technical equipment she had to wear, and she was pulled out of the exam. Cancer has already been mentioned. There have certainly been some serious educational support issues. I met one young lady who, in the year she had off from formal schooling, had one supportive teacher who kept in touch academically and socially. None of the others did. Home tuition via the local authority was extremely patchy and had not linked up with the school, and nor had the hospital school. As a result, the year was, in her phrase, “entirely haphazard”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of Amendments 65D and 219. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, Amendment 65D was a recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am very grateful to him for moving it so ably. There are really no more arguments to put, because he put all the key arguments. Does the Minister accept that the amendment avoids the crude binary distinction between inclusion and specialism that the Government understandably wish to avoid? If he does, will he accept the recommendation? If he does not accept it, is there some other wording that he would accept that would enable the principle of inclusion to be put in the Bill? As the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, it is an important principle.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights also gave its support to Amendment 219. It is a broader amendment than the amendment recommended by the Joint Committee. UNICEF’s The State of the World’s Children 2013: Children with Disabilities report emphasises that an accessible environment is essential if children with disabilities are to enjoy their right to participate in the community. The right to participate in the community is fundamental to citizenship. I am sure every noble Lord in this Room believes in the equal and full citizenship of disabled children. Therefore, I hope the Government will be able to accept this amendment.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF. I, too, am delighted to be speaking in favour of Amendment 219, which can bring about the transformation of education—much of our emphasis today has been on education—and, importantly, health and social care services, which is needed to make them truly inclusive for families with disabled children.

I strongly believe that the starting point for looking at the reforms to SEN in this Bill should be that a disabled child has just as much right as every other child to be involved in their community, to be visible in their own community and to have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. Despite some very welcome reforms to support for disabled children and children with SEN in the Bill, I fear that the right of disabled children to participate in their community will not be sufficiently realised through the Bill. This concern is shared by UNICEF and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, noted.

There is compelling evidence that families with disabled children currently encounter huge difficulties in accessing support in their community. Indeed, Scope’s recent Keep Us Close report found that a mere 14% of families with disabled children said they could get all the support they needed in their local community. Therefore families which already face immense challenges on a daily basis more often than not encounter a closed door when it comes to ensuring that their children enjoy the same opportunities as other children.

The Government previously stated in Committee on the Bill in the other place that there are already duties in place to ensure that appropriate provision is made for children and young people with special educational needs and disabled children and their families. However, such duties are clearly failing to achieve their intended purpose. Although the Equality Act 2010 requires organisations to be proactive and responsive in ensuring that the public services that they provide are inclusive and accessible, the reality is that services for disabled children are often developed, planned and commissioned separately from other community services, and consequently miss more strategic opportunities to create joined-up support and a more inclusive society. Parents are confronted with local activities and services that are inaccessible or a lack of support services to enable disabled children to join in with local activities such as youth groups or even simply playing in the park with their peers.

The Government need to set out a clear strategic direction and create a strong imperative for local authorities to focus on accessibility of local services, and that is exactly what the amendment would do. Although a number of local authorities undertake excellent work alongside families with disabled children to ensure that their needs are met by mainstream services—notably Suffolk, Leeds and Blackpool—not all local authorities are as progressive. Many local authorities and voluntary organisations want to provide more inclusive and accessible services, and the amendment would help to give them a chance to do that.

Such a duty on local authorities and NHS bodies would not have to be burdensome. Disabled children and those with SEN more often than not do not need hugely different or specialist services. With small changes to an existing service, we can make them accessible and inclusive for disabled children. It is not about providing more and separate services, but, rather, targeting current provision in the most effective way.

Indeed, making services accessible and inclusive for disabled children is just as much about changing attitudes as it is about making physical adjustments. It is about breaking down many of the fears and misconceptions about what inclusion means and ensuring that services see children simply as the individuals who they are—forcing services to think more creatively about how they can meet the needs of families with disabled children and allow the 1.7 million disabled children and children with SEN to reach their potential.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

Briefly, I support my noble friends Lady Howe and Lord Low on Amendment 219. I commend to the Minister, in forming the regulations, an enormous number of examples of good practice around the country which should be taken note of, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. Some of them were drawn to attention in the report of my committee on the links between social disadvantage and speech, language and communication needs. We were fascinated that, for example, in Walsall, assessments were made of children in secondary schools. Nowhere else in the country could we find that being done in the same way. In Stoke, they were training lollipop men and dinner ladies to identify conditions in children which they might bring to the attention of the authorities so that they could be followed up, based on the fact that no longer is child development a requirement in teacher education, which I find an extraordinary state of affairs.

I speak here on behalf of a coalition called the Communication Trust, which would be more than happy to share all that it has learnt with the Minister and the officials responsible for drawing up the regulations to make certain that they incorporate as much as possible of what is already known.