Children and Families Bill

Baroness Wilkins Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s intention to reform the special educational needs system in England. However, I share the disability sector’s concerns, echoed by many noble Lords, that the Bill still requires major improvement if it is to deliver better outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities. Worryingly, in some areas the Bill does not protect existing rights and risks making matters worse. I will not repeat the points made by many other noble Lords. I will concentrate on the further action needed to address the challenges and difficulties faced by children with sensory impairments.

We sometimes talk about children with special educational needs as if they were a single entity to which we can apply single, catch-all solutions. That is clearly not the case, as is demonstrated by children with sensory impairments. Sensory impairment is a low-incidence need. Most mainstream professionals are unlikely to have regular contact with such children with which to build up expertise on how to meet their needs. Instead, this expertise is likely to be centred in relatively small, specialist support services and teachers.

It is not clear to me that the department’s proposals on SEN reform fully recognise the importance of specialist SEN support services. Further action is badly needed to ensure that these services are able to do their job—ensuring that every child with a sensory impairment is able to fulfil their potential. We first need to look at the funding of these vital services. The National Deaf Children’s Society has established that in this year alone 29% of local authorities are making cuts to specialist education services for deaf children. RNIB and Sense believe that similar cuts are taking place in other sensory impairment services. These cuts are having a devastating impact. Distressed parents who have fought so hard for their child to get the support they need are now seeing support being taken away. They talk of their children’s futures being stolen.

Last year, just 37% of deaf children achieved five good GCSEs, compared to 61% of children with no identified special educational need. That is a massive attainment gap. It is painfully unnecessary when you consider that deafness is not a learning disability and that deaf children should be doing as well as other children. Deaf children and other children with sensory impairments need more support, not less. When this was raised during the passage of the Bill in the other place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families indicated that his department would not intervene and that it was for local communities to challenge any such cuts. This is shamefully complacent. The department has made a commitment that funding for these services will be protected and yet seems unperturbed that 29% of local authorities are not doing so in relation to deaf children.

What assurances can the Minister give on the success of the Bill, knowing that there is a clear risk that in many areas funding cuts will fatally undermine its ambitions and result in children getting less support? Where are the specialist teachers to advise on a child’s education, health and care plan going to come from unless there is action to protect these services? Who will provide early intervention services? What will families buy with their personal budgets? Without adequate funding to provide these services and staff, it is extremely difficult to see how SEN reform can be made a success. Parents of children with sensory impairments deserve better than this complacency when it comes to their futures. They need the department to take action, not pass the buck to local authorities and communities.

That brings us to accountability. Many of these measures place the burden of holding local authorities to account almost entirely on the shoulders of parents. Not all parents will be able to, or necessarily want to, take this role. The vast majority were not knowledgeable about the world of special educational needs and disability, and are desperately feeling their way, trying to discover what will best help their child. They are busy being parents to all their children, and the parents of children with special educational needs have plenty to do already.

I am surprised to learn how little information is available to parents or professionals on the quality of SEN support services in their area and how little the Bill does to address this. There is no specific requirement to publish information about local authority SEN support services, despite the importance of these services to children with sensory impairments. It does not appear that local authorities would have to publish information by type of need, and they might therefore simply publish generic information about SEN. Nor does it appear that the Government will require the local offer to follow a set format—most importantly with clear expectations for minimum provision—which will make it harder for parents to compare provision in different areas. I understand that the department has been considering representations that Ofsted should inspect specialist SEN support services. I hope that the Minister will be able to update us on the department’s considerations on these concerns and that progress can be made before we further discuss this Bill.

Crucially, will the Minister ensure that the department does much more to ensure that children with sensory impairments get the help that they need from specialist SEN support services? These are the issues that he must address if he wishes us to have confidence that the Bill will make a positive difference to all children, including those with sensory impairments.