Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, I think we are all agreed that this is a very important Bill, interacting as it does with so many pieces of legislation that have only recently been through your Lordships’ scrutiny. Thankfully, we have the summer vacation to study the many reports that are the result of the pre-legislative scrutiny that has already been undertaken, so when we reach Committee in October, we shall be better equipped. There are many areas of the Bill that one is interested in. It is my belief that strengthening the role of the Children’s Commissioner for England is crucial, as indeed is the voice of the child on every single issue, but I shall leave those two matters to one side.

Like other noble Lords, I will concentrate my remarks on the area of special needs. I warmly congratulate the Government on making these reforms the key priority in order to improve the lives of children and families in the UK. It is estimated that one in eight families in England has a child with special educational needs, which equates to 1.7 million children. Given these significant numbers and, one must stress, a likely growth in them as the years go on, it is of the utmost importance that we get these reforms right. We have heard about the problems faced by those with special needs in the health area. It is clear that the current legislation—the Equality Act, education legislation and so on—is not sufficient. There must be a duty on schools to take the necessary action. I am sure that we will come back to this point.

At the heart of the issue is something that Members in the other place argued for vigorously: the need to reduce the battles that families face in getting the support that they need. Indeed, I am pleased that the Government have stated that the explicit aim of the Bill is to end the unacceptable situation where “thousands of families” are forced to go from “pillar to post” and face,

“agonising delays and bureaucracy to get the support, therapy and equipment that they need”.

The success of this Bill will be measured on the extent to which these battles are removed.

The Keep Us Close campaign of the disability charity Scope, whose report was published last year, found that too many families with disabled children and special educational needs were being pushed to crisis point. Almost two-thirds of families said that they were not able to access the services that they and their child needed in their local area. If they have the energy and tenacity to do so, parents are being forced to fight for every last bit of support, be it in schooling, childcare, therapy or leisure services. The impact that this lack of support has on families’ quality of life should not be underestimated; 80% of those families said that that caused them stress and anxiety, and half said that they struggled to hold down full-time jobs as a result of a lack of support in their local area.

The key way in which the Government aim to resolve that is through the introduction of the local offer—the services on which the vast majority of children with SEN, the 87% who do not have a statement, will be reliant. The local offer will require local authorities to publish information on the support available for families with disabled children and children with SEN in their local area, thereby injecting some much-needed transparency into the SEN system. Improving access to information is of course a vital tool in enabling families to find the support and help that they need. I am delighted that the Government are committed to introducing that. However, although the Government’s intention with regard to the local offer is welcome, I fear that in practice it will not bring about the transformation in support for families that has been promised.

The right access to information is vital, but not a panacea. In order to ensure that services are truly responsive to needs on the ground, there must be strong accountability. I seem to recognise that word “accountability” from my noble friend, who I think is sitting behind me, because he requires it on everything to do with children in custody, but it is also relevant in plenty of other areas.

Currently, parents too often feel that nobody is listening to them and that the only way they can get the right support for their child is to go through the formal process of getting a statement, or even going to a tribunal. That is an extremely arduous and complex process and is only for those who have the knowledge and know-how to do so. Moreover, can that really be the most efficient use of time and resources for local authorities that are suffering large cuts to their budgets? As the Green Paper on SEN, published in 2011, states:

“Resources that could be spent on support and teaching are diverted into bureaucracy”.

All that does is create a climate where local authorities and parents are constantly at loggerheads, resulting in damaging delays to children getting the support that they need.

I also echo the comments of the chairman of the Education Select Committee on Report in the other place when he said that he hoped that there would be fewer people having the new education, health and care plans, which replace statements,

“because local offers meet so many of the needs of parents and young people that there is not a requirement for the bureaucratic involvement”.—[Official Report, 11/6/13; col. 205.]

At least one way to do that is to bring about a cultural change whereby parents are seen as partners in the commissioning process, not adversaries.

The Government are committed to ensuring that local authorities publish comments from parents on the local offer. However, I would like to see a duty on the authorities so that when reviewing a local offer, parents and children are not just consulted but their views properly are taken into account. There is another problem, though, pointed out by Keystone Consulting. Around 100,000 children cannot access mainstream education due to sickness, disability, exclusion or being moved around as looked-after children, or because they are in custody. By no means do all the excluded not want to learn; a BIS research paper in January found that more than nine out of 10 NEET young people were motivated to learn but felt that there were barriers.

As Keystone Consulting points out, education provision can be supplied by individual organisations that have created innovative ways to help those who are currently excluded. However, the snag is that the money assigned per student while inside the mainstream system does not follow a young person once they are no longer on the school roll, meaning that it is financially difficult for students to pay for the alternative education that would help them. Online and blended education mixes visual with auditory, verbal and kinaesthetic modes of teaching and ensures that children can focus on learning without being bogged down by external influences that they might struggle to deal with.

My time is more than up so I will not go on further. I simply stress that having small pockets of good practice is not good enough. We must be able to transform support for all disabled children. There must be a legal duty to ensure that local authorities and health agencies consider disability at every stage, be it planning, designing, commissioning, funding, delivering or evaluating local services.

I emphasise the importance of these reforms in meeting the needs of all children with SEN, not just those with the most complex needs. We must seize this opportunity and ensure that the Bill truly transforms support for all SEN children. This is a message that is coming from many other people too. A strong, relevant local offer is an excellent way to do this. Parents all over the country are watching this debate and we must not let them down.