Education

Debate between Edward Timpson and Mark Tami

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Special Educational Needs (Personal Budgets) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 9 April, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.

The regulations are the first to be laid under section 49 and—it gives me great pleasure to say—under part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014. As I think we can all agree across the House, the 2014 Act has the potential to make a massive improvement to the lives of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

The regulations will introduce the option of a personal budget for education, health and care plan holders from September 2014. The SEN pathfinders have shown that personal budgets can make a real difference to children and young people; indeed, according to some parents on the pathfinder programme, they can be life-changing. However, the introduction of personal budgets is complex, and hon. Members may want some reassurances about their introduction in September, especially in relation to the testing of direct payments for SEN provision.

If personal budgets are to work, parents must be given clear, up-front information about their availability, as well as advice and support on requesting, taking up and managing a personal budget, including on direct payments. Personal budgets must be embedded in the education, health and care planning process, rather than seen simply as an addition to the system. Their introduction from September, as part of the wider reforms, means that councils are developing personal budgets as a coherent element of the system, rather than just a mere bolt-on. I must stress that, building on the experience of the pathfinders, our approach to implementation will be one of evolution, rather than the proverbial revolution.

The draft code of practice, which was laid before Parliament on 11 June and is subject to debate in its own right, is abundantly clear on that important underlying principle of successful implementation. Subject to the will of Parliament, the code of practice will, along with regulations covering the local offer and EHC plans, set out a flexible framework for implementation, while providing a clear expectation of what councils must have in place in September 2014 and of how it should evolve over time as joint commissioning arrangements and local offers mature.

To turn to the substance of the regulations, they contain many of the provisions that we have previously debated as part of the pilot scheme for direct payments for SEN provision. They give parents and young people the right to ask for a personal budget when an EHC plan is being prepared, or during a statutory review of an existing plan. Parents must be given up-front information about personal budgets, including the information that will be required in, and consulted on as part of the local offer.

We have maintained the considerations in relation to value for money and the impact on other service users—an issue that has been of concern in debates in this House and the other place. We have repeated the requirement for the permission of a school or college and added early-years settings where a direct payment is being used on their premises. I understand that there are concerns that that could be a get-out clause and a barrier to inclusion, especially in further education. However, we have seen no such evidence from the pathfinders. It is only right that institutions have the final say on who can work on their premises. I can, however, reassure hon. Members that we will keep a careful eye on that aspect of our reforms.

Finally, I want to return to my earlier theme of the complexity of implementation. I draw the House’s attention to the comprehensive package of support that is in place to help councils meet this important challenge. An ever-increasing array of materials, including practical advice, case studies, checklists and frameworks for implementation, is available on the SEN pathfinder website. All those materials have been developed with expert support from local authorities, their partners, and voluntary and community sector groups that work in the area, including those that represent parents.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Last year, the Minister kindly met me and representatives of CLIC Sargent to consider the position of children who suffer from cancer. Will he assure Members that there will be the necessary flexibility—this is the key issue—to deal with children with varying abilities and concerns?

[Mr Timpson]

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman absolutely on that point. The meeting that we had last year informed not only the legislation, but the underlying code of practice, which is now in draft form. The whole point of personal budgets is to embed flexibility and personalisation in the support that is available to parents, and to put them much more in control of the choices to ensure that they and their children get the relevant support when they need it. I hope that he will take time to look at the code of practice. I know that CLIC Sargent, which works closely with the Department, has done so. I am grateful for the work that he and that charity have done.

Our SEN advisers are visiting councils the length and breadth of the country to establish what more local areas may need and, when necessary, are making referrals to our pathfinder champion support team and the newly appointed national champions for personal budgets.

That package will be complemented by a thematic evaluation of personal budgets and integrated resourcing, which will be undertaken by SQW, the evaluator of the pathfinder programme, and will be published this summer. The research will re-examine the progress that has been made by pathfinder and non-pathfinder areas to identify good practice and lessons learned to inform the development of less advanced areas.

To conclude, with the framework for implementation set out in the regulations, the code of practice and the support that we are providing with our partners, I am confident that we have an approach that will, in the coming years, make a huge difference to the lives of children and young people. I hope that hon. Members will give it their support.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Edward Timpson and Mark Tami

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

Part 3 of the Bill introduces a much stronger framework for supporting children and young people with special educational needs. These reforms have been widely welcomed, and I am grateful to Members in all parts of the House for their interest in and support for them. We can be sure in the knowledge that the Bill has been significantly strengthened since draft clauses were published last autumn.

We have all met constituents who have had to battle to get the special educational support that their child needs. These reforms are ambitious; they aim to ensure that in future, children, young people and their parents are at the heart of the system, and that special educational provision builds around them, instead of asking them to adjust to the system. It will not always work perfectly in every case, but the pathfinders that I have visited have convinced me that we have a really exciting reform under way—one that challenges local authorities to design a system around those who use it, rather than conform to existing structures and processes. The reforms are also ambitious as regards personal aspirations. The new system will support young people through further education and training, up to the age of 25 for those who need it, and focus much more strongly on independent living and helping them to find paid employment. The provisions extend support to younger years as well, so that children are supported as soon as their needs are identified, from birth onwards, instead of having to wait until they reach school to be assessed.

The reforms provide the foundation for a system in which children and young people’s needs are picked up early; parents know what services they can reasonably expect their local schools, colleges, local authority, and health and social care services to provide, without having to fight for the information; those with more severe or complex needs have a co-ordinated assessment built around them and a single education, health and care plan from birth to 25; and parents and young people have greater control over their support. I believe these ambitions are shared across the House.

We had a wide-ranging, constructive debate on Second Reading, and the Committee sittings were passionate, knowledgeable and helpful. I hope that today we can build on the broad consensus that has characterised the debate to date.

We have also listened carefully to the views expressed by Members of the House, parents and young people, and many of the organisations supporting them, and we have acted to improve the SEN provisions following pre-legislative scrutiny and as the Bill has made its way through the House.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The Minister may recall that he kindly met me to discuss my particular concerns about children who had suffered from cancer and perhaps missed quite a large amount of school but did not fit in with the SEN criteria. What level of support could they expect under these proposals?

[Mr Timpson]

I recall the constructive meeting that I had with the hon. Gentleman and he will remember that I gave a commitment then to work with him and with organisations with which he has been working with great astuteness to see what more we can do through the code of practice and other means to provide the additional support that we all want to see so that no child, particularly a child with cancer, misses out on the opportunity to fulfil their potential, and I will continue to work with him to achieve that.

Following the Education Committee’s thorough and well-argued report—another one—in December, we amended the Bill in several ways. By virtue of clause 19, we introduced a requirement for local authorities when exercising a function under part 3 to have regard to the views, wishes and feelings of a child and his or her parent, or of the young person, and the importance of them participating as fully as possible in decisions, and being provided with information and support to enable them to do so—an important set of transcending principles.

We have clearly specified the right of parents and young people themselves to request an assessment for special educational needs, to remove any uncertainty. We have ensured that young people on apprenticeships can receive support through an education, health and care plan. We have enabled independent special schools and specialist colleges to apply to be on a list of institutions for which parents and young people with education, health and care plans could express a preference. We have changed our approach to mediation so that parents and young people must consider mediation but do not have to take it up and can go straight to appeal to the tribunal if they wish without prejudicing their position.

To ensure that services are responsive to families’ needs we added a requirement for local authorities to involve children, young people and parents in reviewing the local offer and to publish their comments about the local offer and what action they will take to respond, and we made provision for the SEN code of practice to be approved by Parliament by way of negative resolution.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Edward Timpson and Mark Tami

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

My right hon. Friend knows from his astute chairmanship of the Justice Committee that the intention of these changes to the law is to remove the adversarial, winner-takes-all nature of many of these proceedings and the perception among many parents that they are entering an arena that is about their personal battles, rather than what is in the best interests of the child. The changes will do that not in isolation, but as part of a wider package of measures including MIAMs and the enforcement of the orders.

Nobody would argue that both parents should not be involved in a child’s life if it is safe and in the child’s best interests. We believe that these measures will make it crystal clear to parents who are thinking about their post-separation arrangements or, further down the field, about taking these matters before the court, that the court will judge not the parents’ dispute, but what is in the best interests of the child. The presumption will be that having both parents involved in the child’s life is the right course where it is safe and in the child’s best interests. That is particularly important given the huge number of children who no longer have any contact with one parent after a separation. We need to try to bring that number down and I believe that these measures will help do that.

The message about focusing on children’s needs is reinforced by the replacement of contact and residence orders with the new child arrangements order. That will set out in one place who a child lives with, spends time with or has any other type of contact with, and when. It will move us away from the perception of a hierarchy that is present in contact and residence orders, where the resident parent is seen as the winner or the more important parent.

I will now turn to the special educational needs reforms. I am conscious of the time and apologise to hon. Members who I know will be desperate to get in on this issue. I will take one or two interventions, but then I must press on. These are the most significant reforms in the area for more than 30 years. At the outset, I want to acknowledge the committed work of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who was brave enough to push forward these reforms. I am also grateful to the many parents and young people I have met as children’s Minister in Coventry, Bromley, East Sussex and elsewhere, who have so graciously and generously shared their experiences with me.

When one hears stories of young people with needs and extra challenges that they did not ask for bravely battling a system that can be complex and unwieldy and is often a cause for frustration, it underlines the vital importance of making things better. It continues to be the case that children and young people with special educational needs do less well than their peers at school and college, and are twice as likely to be out of education, training and employment at 18.

The Bill builds on the Green Paper initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central to put the interests of children and young people first. It will bring up to date a terribly outdated system and keep the rights and protections that families value. It will give children and young people with special educational needs and their families better co-ordinated support, and more choice and control over how that support is provided. It will provide, for the first time, one system from birth to 25, promoting earlier identification of children’s needs and extending comparable rights and protections to all young people over 16, whether they choose to continue their education in school or in further education.

The Bill also sets out a number of measures to tackle some deep-seated problems. It requires local authorities and local health bodies to work together to plan and commission services for children and young people with SEN. That will make the best use of available resources and deliver integrated support, and it will bring a real commitment across agencies to ensuring that the services required to meet local needs are available. Families should no longer find themselves caught between different parts of the system, waiting for a particular service.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The Minister may be aware that CLIC Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, has raised concerns about the educational support that is available now, let alone in future, to children who have missed out on school as a result of cancer. Will he meet CLIC Sargent and myself—I have written to him today about that—to see whether we can have a more flexible approach to ensure that such children get the education and support that they need?

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue, and I thank him for alerting me to it prior to the debate. I am of course happy to meet him and discuss the implications of the reforms for him and his constituents as the Bill moves through both Houses of Parliament.

The Bill requires local authorities to publish a local offer giving parents and young people clear, accessible information about the support that is available to them from education, health and social care bodies. The local offer will outline how they can get an assessment for an education, health and care plan and where they can get information, advice and support. Local agencies will be required to co-operate in developing that offer. We will set out in regulations a common framework for the local offer and give further guidance in the new birth to 25 special educational needs code of practice.

Many hon. Members will know from their constituency surgeries that it is a common occurrence for children and young people who need support to have to tell the same story over and over again to myriad different professionals. The measures in the Bill will lead to better, more co-ordinated assessments across education, health and care that involve children, young people and parents from the very start and focus on their goals and aspirations. Along with a new approach to assessment, we are introducing education, health and care plans.