Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND
Debate between Jen Craft and Tim Farron(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Jen Craft
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is unacceptable that disabled families are faced with choices about their children’s education that parents of children who are not disabled are not.
During the election campaign, I spoke to another woman, Julia, and had the pleasure of meeting her 18-year-old son Oscar, who has cerebral palsy, which affects his right side, and epilepsy. For 10 years, he had received free home-to-school transport, but now his parents have to make the case every year for why he should continue to receive that support to reach his sixth form. Thanks to the new costs, his mum has had to withdraw Oscar from one of his sessions at his weekend care provision, because she cannot afford both. Despite the new charges, there is still no guarantee that their application will be approved. She said that life is hard enough without this discrimination and pressure.
Another mother, in Thurrock, told me about her ongoing fight to secure transport for her daughter. Twice her daughter was refused passenger transport to the education setting she attended and twice the family successfully appealed. That mother said:
“As parents to children with SEND we have to fight for every single step, for their existence. Fighting for what is right, what our children are entitled to.”
This is the reality for thousands of families across the country. This disruption at such a vital point in education can be devastating, with serious impacts on a young person’s mental health and development. Let us be clear: this places a financial barrier to education in the way of disabled children and their families that other families simply do not have to face.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Does the hon. Member acknowledge that lots of local authorities, and indeed lots of schools, seek to do the right thing? Councils in Cumbria have more than doubled their spending on SEND transport in the last five years, but is it not the worst thing about it, from a local authority perspective, that councils and schools that do the right thing get penalised? Is it not right that we instead support all local authorities and schools to support special educational needs children without disadvantaging them or their families?
Jen Craft
As I have said previously, the important thing is to see a long-term goal where disabled children are truly able to receive a mainstream, inclusive education, so that we get out of this cycle of families having to pay to transport their children miles and miles from where they live.