Special Educational Needs and Disabilities: Specialist Workforce

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered a specialist workforce for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

It is a great pleasure and privilege to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Sharma. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on speech and language difficulties, which is supported by the Royal College of Speech and Language. I first pay tribute to Lord Ramsbotham, who did so much for the group over so many years, after an illustrious career in the Army and then the Prison Service. He certainly added great value.

Something like 50% of poorer children arrive at school with a speech delay, and in an average-sized class, which is 30 across Britain, something like two or three children have a speech delay of two to four years. Obviously, we are here to talk about the wider totality of special educational needs, not just speech and language, but it is worth mentioning that early intervention on speech and language would massively improve school performance, and thereby increase future tax revenues and reduce social costs, prison costs, justice costs and so on, so we really should think about that. In the wider totality, early intervention is a very good idea.

This debate, which I commissioned, comes partly on the back of a letter that I wrote to the Minister on behalf of 16 all-party groups, calling for the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care to work in collaboration on special educational needs. We have now had the special educational needs review, and I was very pleased that in January the Minister agreed to speak to me. I am looking forward to confirming that date for a meeting with her and representatives from the all-party groups on autism, on cerebral palsy, on childcare and early education, on children who need palliative care, on disability, on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties, on eye health and visual impairment, on muscular dystrophy, on oracy, on penal affairs, for the prevention of childhood trauma, on psychology, on social mobility, for special educational needs and disabilities, on speech and language difficulties, and on stroke. A very wide range of MPs is interested in this issue in one way or another.

On top of that, the SEND in The Specialists coalition, with which the Minister will be familiar, sent a letter in parallel to ours with the support of 114 organisations— I will not read them out—which has now grown to 128. The debate also comes on the back of a number of written questions I have tabled on specialist workforce, and another letter from 22 all-party groups about funding for speech and language therapy.

The Government have announced the plan for special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision for England, and I hope the Minister will set out a bit more detail on that in this debate. I know there is a steering group planned for 2023, which aims to complete by 2025. As far as parents and people engaged with this issue are concerned, the sooner, the better.

The Minister will be aware that there have also been three petitions. One is about mandatory training for all teaching staff engaged with special educational needs, again to ensure identification and early intervention.

As for parliamentary activity, I am very pleased that the Chamber Engagement Team got in touch with me about this debate and asked people to send in their experiences. I was more than pleased that 1,800 responses were received from parents, practitioners, and other adults who have engaged with the system, wherever they live, and faced similar challenges across the piece. Those challenges generally included huge waiting lists for support for their children. Obviously, the longer the delay, the more it costs to get people back on track and the greater the struggles in adulthood and the impact on life chances.

There is a second issue about the threshold for getting support: how ill is someone, or are they ill enough, as it were? “Ill” is probably the wrong word here, but is someone’s condition sufficient to satisfy the criteria for early intervention? A lot of parents feel neglected, unsupported and not understood. They probably think there is some sort of differential diagnosis; I do not know.

There is also an issue about fighting for diagnosis itself to start with, and often when there is a plan ready to go, the support is not in place to deliver it. Clearly, many people have to resort to going private, which sometimes means worse provision, but obviously at a cost, as they have to pay for it.

There is a special issue, which the Minister will be aware of, for girls and young women, who might be misdiagnosed as having mental health problems. Good plans are put in place, but are not followed through, or people are deprived of their plan owing to changes being made, perhaps to resources, so the vital education to give them the platform they need to succeed in later life is not provided.

People can also be ping-ponged between different services, which causes confusion, delay and uncertainty, and sometimes there are issues over sharing information from specialists with the school. The information has to go through the parents, rather than the school, and if a second language is involved, effective delivery can be impeded.

There is also an issue about coming up with feasible plans, which are not optimal plans owing to lack of resources, where people say, “We would like to do this, but we can’t, so we will do that. It’s not quite what is needed, but it’s all we can afford.”

Obviously, there were also a lot of positive replies, because there is a galaxy of excellent people out there doing their best to provide an excellent service to meet these needs. However, they are finding it difficult to cope. I do not want in any way to criticise the people in the special educational needs service who are doing such a fine job and need our support, but there is postcode lottery, because where someone lives determines how good a service they receive, according to resources and the availability of skilled staff. In some places, there are good networks where people have a good experience of different specialisms working together optimally to deliver excellent outputs for those in need; in other places, the experience is not so good.

I will not go through a list of specific examples, but the people who wrote to me were clearly saying, “We need funding, early intervention, a joined-up system, training for teachers and an evidence-based approach, particularly in relation to behaviours that appear in girls and young women.” Early intervention is of primary concern for the economy, but also with respect to releasing parents who often cannot work because they are looking after their children owing to the fact that the service is not there to deliver for the child. That means parents staying at home who could be at work. We are thinking about growth and how we manage the economy, so that is another consideration.

Let me turn to the reaction to the special educational needs and alternative provision plan. Various sectors have criticised the plan’s lack of urgency and ambition. Nobody is saying that what is in the plan is not commendable, but a crisis has been building for many years and we need to get on with addressing it. Therefore, this is another opportunity for the Government to listen to our concerns and to build the support to drive forward with greater speed.

Many people have commented that they have been waiting years for the Government to act to fix the broken special educational needs system. They are now saying, “Well is this all it is? We need more sooner.” That includes the SEND in The Specialists coalition of 128 organisations that I have mentioned. They are talking about the number of specialists, rising demand, and the new demands after covid. Certainly, the Royal College of Speech and Language and the surveys that we have commissioned have found that, interestingly, middle-class parents who had children with speech and language difficulties often saw an improvement in their child’s performance. That is because the parents would be at home, working from laptops, and spending quality time with the children. There is an issue there about having more flexible working more generally in the economy, as it would help productivity, and perhaps reduce costs and encourage better targeting.

In contrast, of course, the poorer children did not fare so well. Perhaps they had a single parent who was on a zero-hours contract, who did not have much time to spend with the child, and who did not have proper internet access that they could afford—there is an issue there about universal wi-fi clouds that the Government might want to think about. During covid, poorer children fared a lot worse in general; and specifically, those with speech and language difficulties deteriorated quite quickly. It is certainly worth considering that differential output. Perhaps I will send this research to the Minister.

This debate is about just one aspect of the plan, which is the specialist workforce. We welcome the Government’s commitment to work in a collegiate way alongside children, young people, families and other providers in the SEND system. The Departments for Education and of Health and Social Care set out a clear timetable for SEND workforce planning. We have a steering group that will move forward by 2023.

Wearing my speech and language hat, let me welcome the Early Language and Support for Every Child pathfinders, and the early identification and support for children with speech and language difficulties. The royal college is pleased that it was involved with the NHS and the Department for Education in that scoping, and I hope that it will continue to be involved in the Department in the future through the alternative provision specialist taskforce.

Let me lay out the main commitments that I am looking for from the Minister. First, we want a commitment to have the meeting with the signatories of the 16 all-party groups that has been promised and also a commitment by the Government to speak to the all-party group on speech and language difficulties in a separate meeting about what is happening, so that they can be quizzed by those in the industry. Secondly, we want a commitment to give the SEND in The Specialists coalition a place on the SEND workforce steering group, as it is important that the industry is engaged with the civil service and the Departments to get the best, most practicable plan possible.

Thirdly, we want the Government to commit to come up with a plan on how they will improve access to the specialist workforce for children, young people and families right now. We have talked about the 2023 and 2025 milestones, but, obviously, children grow up very quickly and they need that support now. Perhaps the Minister can elaborate on precisely what is happening in the meantime to bring forward tailored support. We want to see a broad approach—a holistic approach—to the definition of the SEND specialist workforce, because there are quite variety of people involved. Then there is the issue of recruitment and retention, on which the Minister may wish to touch. There is an issue about people leaving the service from the NHS and from the profession generally. We need not only to recruit and train enough people to build a force, but to stop people leaving by providing them with acceptable and enjoyable working conditions.

Finally, on behalf of the 1,800 people who have written in, I wish to question the Minister about funding and the Government response to our funding letter of 2021, which I mentioned earlier. The Government then said that the right funding was fundamental to accessing speech and language therapy. Will the Minister elaborate on what she thinks will be sufficient funding for a SEND workforce plan, to ensure that the speech and language therapy workforce is trained, developed, retained, supervised and supported to develop the necessary clinical specialisms and leadership roles? Will she mention something about student numbers coming into the workforce, and also address some of the reasons why people are leaving the workforce?

Perhaps the Minister could also say what her expectations are for accountability and local systems coming together on joint provision. How do we ensure accountability and make sure the resources are there to enable all children and young people with special educational needs and speech, language and communication needs and/or swallowing needs get timely access to the speech and language therapy they require? That would include provision for children and young people who need special educational needs support, as well as those with education, health and care plans.

I am glad to see a large number of Members here who want to get involved in the debate, so I will end my comments there. I look forward to a response from the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Coutinho]

I will happily go away and look at that, but I would also make a point on the additional funding we have put into the mainstream sector so that it can cope with all sorts of rises in demands and costs.

As well as setting out best practice guides, we are training 5,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators to help with early identification. One thing I have found from early-years settings is that there is a real desire to know more about this area. That is very welcome.

A couple of Members mentioned the transition stage into adulthood. I have visited some excellent places recently, including Weston College, which is a centre for excellence, and the Orpheus Centre in my own constituency, which is trying to build that sense of independence in our young people as they reach adulthood. We have also heard mention of teachers of the deaf, and I am really delighted that we have been working with the National Deaf Children’s Society to deliver that apprenticeship, which will be very helpful, particularly because it attracts levy funding.

I would like to turn briefly to mental health, which has been a real challenge. We have been working very closely with the NHS on this. It is investing a lot of money for hundreds of thousands of extra children. We know this is a difficult area, which is why one of our first best-practice guides will be on this topic. We will also roll out mental health support teams in schools.

[Geraint Davies]

In mental health diagnosis, it is often thought that someone has a mental health problem when, in fact, they have a speech and language problem. Will the Minister think about ensuring that, when these assessments are made, particularly when people are actually incarcerated, speech and language therapists are on hand to ensure that there is no misdiagnosis?

[Claire Coutinho]

I will happily look at that, and raise it in my conversations with Health. That is quite right. There are lots of other issues as well, particularly autism in girls. A mental health challenge is often diagnosed when, actually, if the underlying autism were addressed, outcomes for young people would be improved.

I will close on this, so that the hon. Member for Swansea West has enough time. I am sure he will want to say quite a lot. Improving access to the right professionals, whether they are teachers, teaching assistants or the specialists we have talked a lot about today is a key part of our plans for reform. I thank everyone who has brought this matter forward for their detailed stories.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies]

I have a surprising amount of time, but I will not take all of it. First, I would like to thank everybody who took part in the debate, with consensus about this massively important issue, which affects 1.5 million people across Britain. We welcome the Minister’s sentiments. The point has been made that we need to speed up and deliver for the people who are seeing their children’s life chances ebbing away in many cases, as we speak.

[John McDonnell]

Since my hon. Friend has a couple of minutes, one issue raised by the Minister was the role of the voluntary sector. I know he was speaking on behalf of a coalition of groups, but one issue we have not examined is the funding of those individual organisations. Many of us have concerns about the drying-up of funding from local government to the voluntary sector. We might now need to put that back on the agenda in discussions with the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies]

We all know money is tight. As has been said, core funding to local authorities has been cut. It may be that many members of that coalition could do a lot more with additional funding, so that it would go further than it would by giving to it to other organisations. Clearly, that is not a perfect situation. We also heard about the importance of teaching assistants. It is a failure of budget management to reduce the amount of support for teaching assistants, who are on the frontline.

Coming back to the point about timing, voluntary organisations, teaching assistants and existing provision need to be supported now, as we support a strategy to move forward on training a specialist workforce. We are looking at designing what we hope will be a very good system as we move forward in the next couple of years. In the meantime, we need to deliver on the ground. I pay tribute to the 1,800 people who contributed to this debate. There would have been thousands more, if they had known about it. They want to tell us about their child. Everybody looking at their child’s needs is frustrated, saying that Jane, John or whoever, has needs that are not being addressed, and the deterioration is clear.

We have heard examples of cases where the lack of early intervention meant greater intervention at higher cost later. As we have discussed, downstream we end up with lower life chances, lower tax revenues and higher social costs, a lot of which is avoidable. We need to work together to speed up the system. The people in this room and beyond would be happy to lobby Government about priorities and timing, to support the Minister to bring forward more ambitious and quicker action. That would support so many people and make such a difference to their lives. Thank you all.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered a specialist workforce for children with special educational needs and disabilities.