Education and Training: People with Hidden Disabilities

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for initiating this debate today. He has an impressive track record of campaigning on these issues and both he and a number of noble Lords have given some very well informed and passionate contributions this afternoon. I really appreciated the opportunity to listen and learn. I would also like to place on record my thanks to all the people—both the individuals and the organisations—who wrote to us with some very constructive solutions for the way forward, but also with some harrowing accounts of some of the problems we face with these issues.

I begin by reiterating the point acknowledged by my noble friend Lord Morris, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and others in the debate, that while dyslexia and autism represent a proportion of the problem, there is a bigger challenge of hidden disabilities. For example, to give some other statistics, more than 3 million people have asthma in the UK, one in 200 people had epilepsy and one in four people will experience mental health problems—or should I say mental well-being problems—with an increasing number of young people in this category. Overall, it is estimated that around 70% of people with a disability in this country have a hidden disability. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, rightly suggested, there is much to commend a united strategy to tackle these issues although there are individual elements to each of the disability issues, as we know and as we have rehearsed this afternoon.

The truth is that we have improved our medical skills in diagnosis and treatment, but these have not been matched by the ongoing learning and support guarantees necessary to enable young people to lead enriched lives and fulfil their potential or—as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, put it—to enable us to find the treasure within them. Despite the progress resulting from the Equality Act, we are still confronting levels of both overt and covert prejudice, institutionally and socially. These are lifelong challenges with very different solutions needed at every stage.

As we have heard, for young people with hidden disabilities in particular, even once a diagnosis has been made there is a subsequent fear of being adversely judged and labelled, or alternatively being disbelieved. At the same time, young people do not want to draw attention to their disability and appear to be different, either because they are embarrassed or, as we have heard this afternoon, because they fear bullying in a school or social environment. As a result they do not always access the funding and resources to which they are entitled.

While the original SEN programme played an important part in moving disability and special needs towards centre stage in the design and provision of local authority, school and personalised support—I thank the noble Lords who paid tribute to the previous Government’s efforts in this regard—it had undoubtedly become too bureaucratic and formulaic in its execution. There were too many agencies involved, no incentives for joined-up services and a degree of piecemeal funding.

Therefore, we welcome many of the aspirations in the Government’s special educational needs Green Paper and their response to the consultation. We support the concept of a single, simpler birth-to-age-25 assessment process and care plan with the right to a personalised budget for parents and young people to buy in support services. Parents tell us that these proposals match their aspirations for their children’s ongoing care. We welcome the requirement for earlier testing and intervention—another point made by noble Lords this afternoon.

We welcome the emphasis on providing an education that will help young people with disabilities into meaningful employment. But given the complexities of the new arrangements, and the need for parents to be reassured that there will be an improvement in the support given to their children, we would caution against rushing into legislation before the outcome of the 20 pilots, which are currently experimenting with the new proposals, have been properly evaluated.

The Minister will know that the interim report on the pathfinder pilots published this week is already flagging up some worrying concerns. For example, it is proving difficult to get agencies to work effectively together; assessments are being duplicated, not streamlined, as was the original intention; and the higher costs are judged not to be sustainable. More importantly, there are increasing criticisms that, contrary to their stated and well received objectives, the pathfinders are failing to involve young people themselves in the shaping of the new services. I raised this matter in Questions earlier in the week, and I once again urge the Minister to confirm that the full conclusions of the pathfinders will be evaluated before the Children and Families Bill is published. I would be grateful for his comments on this.

We would also expect the Government to set out clearly how the funding for these new, improved services will be guaranteed at a time when specialist posts are being lost due to deep cuts to council budgets and to health and welfare budgets. Could the Minister explain how the transition from separate budget heads in education, health and social care to an integrated, personalised provision will work in practice? Will they be expected at a local level to transfer funds into a separate pot, and it will it be ring-fenced?

As the Green Paper acknowledges, and a number of noble Lords around the Chamber this afternoon have said, education and training are central to addressing the needs of young people with hidden disabilities. As has been mentioned, it starts with initial teacher training courses and the need for compulsory modules on identifying, understanding and providing for children across the full spectrum of disabilities. It needs to be supplemented by specialist teachers trained in supporting young people in the classroom. It also requires sufficient teaching assistants, properly funded and trained to support the individual learning needs of specific children in the classroom. Those points were echoed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Browning and Lady Walmsley.

It also requires top-class careers provision in schools, which can give disabled young people specific advice about further and higher education courses and the employment options available to them. The Minister knows our continued concern about the quality of advice being provided by the new schools-based careers service, and we have a specific worry that children with specialist support needs will not get individual face-to-face advice to aim their skills at achievable ambitions. Perhaps the Minister could comment on this. Surely it should be a fundamental right of all children throughout the education system to have the same rights. Can the Minister clarify the legal position with regard to SEN children having access to academy places, and their rights once admitted? Would he agree to review the legislation if it is found to discriminate against statemented or SEN children?

While no one would pretend that the provision in schools is perfect, the message from many disability groups and individuals is that it is the transition from school to higher or further education and ultimately into meaningful employment that remains the biggest challenge. Parents who have seen their child have good support at school can be shocked when they view the adult options available when their child reaches the age of 16 or 18, with specialist adult facilities dominated by much older attendees, often with complex needs, or when they are faced with an FE syllabus that does not provide courses on a full-time basis, leaving parents struggling to provide home care at other times of the week when courses are not being provided. This is why FE colleges need to be centrally involved in pathfinders and why it is essential that they have a statutory duty to be involved in the transition planning for individual young people at a very early stage in their education so that appropriate provision can be laid on in the FE colleges to meet their needs sufficiently in advance.

Finally, as several noble Lords have highlighted, the real challenge highlighted in this debate is about those with hidden disabilities finding and keeping meaningful work. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, identified, the statistics are, quite frankly, depressing. Disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-disabled people. Some 22% of young people with a disability were not in any form of education, employment or training when they reached the age of 18—twice the level of their peers. The Labour Force Survey showed that, in 2011, 41 per cent of men and 43 per cent of women designated longer-term disabled were also unemployed. The result, as we have heard, is too many young, capable people trapped at home with increasingly elderly parents.

The Sayce report for the Department for Work and Pensions identified a number of solutions with which we concur, particularly the personalised approach and the expansion of the Access to Work scheme, which they describe as the Government’s best kept secret. This helped 37,000 disabled people into work in 2009-10. However, it needs to be better funded and more focused on helping those with hidden disabilities into work. The Government also need to focus on those with mental disabilities rather than seeing their role as just providing practical adaptations and support. Much greater emphasis should be placed on helping people access mainstream apprenticeships rather than separate, short-term internships, as seems to be the trend at the moment.

These are challenging issues—particularly challenging against a backdrop of central and local government cuts and welfare reform—that might face any Government. This Government have set out ambitious solutions for helping those with disabilities access quality education and jobs. However, with reducing budgets, the practical implementation may well elude them, leaving parents and young people frustrated and disappointed. In this context, I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response to this debate to reassure us.