Children’s Services

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have secured this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, and to have the opportunity to discuss this very important topic in such a timely manner. I believe that it provides the Minister with a last chance to allay the concerns about reform of special educational needs provision before the children and families Bill enters Parliament.

I remind colleagues that this is not a marginal issue. There are about 700,000 disabled children in England. One in 15 families with dependent children has at least one disabled child and more than one fifth of children—about 1.7 million—are said to have special educational needs. Far too many of those families feel close to crisis point. I know of no MP whose casework file does not include countless calls for help from parents of disabled children and children with SEN. Parents are forced to fight their way over seemingly endless bureaucratic hurdles to get the support they desperately need for their children. Parents come to me, and have done for many years, exhausted and demoralised, unable to understand why it is such a battle even to get their children’s needs recognised, let alone be given adequate support.

At the heart of the battle that families with disabled children and children with SEN face is the unacceptable lack of support close to home. Scope’s recent report, “Keep Us Close”, found that the biggest issue facing families with disabled children was a lack of local support services.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

When we first come into this place, we all think that it is just an individual problem, but I see from the Scope report the scale of the problem. The average distance travelled is more than 4,300 miles a year. That is staggering. When someone has to travel, it is always a fight to get funding from the local authority to cover even that.

[Angela Smith]

I empathise and agree with the point my hon. Friend makes. I will refer to that issue later in my speech. It is about not only distance, but cost, which in the case of low-income families can be an incredibly difficult burden to bear.

More than six in 10 parents of disabled children say that they cannot get the services they and their child need in their local area. A measly one in 10 parents told Scope that the process of getting local services was simple. Families with disabled children and children with SEN want to use the services that many families simply take for granted: child care, so that parents can work; short breaks, which enable families to rest and a disabled child to enjoy a leisure activity; therapeutic services, to support development such as speech and language; and, of course, the right educational setting, so a child can learn and reach their potential.

A lack of local, accessible services can have a devastating impact on a family’s quality of life. Recent research by Scope found that 80% of the families with disabled children who cannot access the services they need locally report feeling anxious and stressed, and more than half said that as a consequence they missed out on doing family activities together, such as days out or celebrating birthdays.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, families with disabled children travel on average more than 4,300 miles a year —84 miles a week—to access the services they need. The logistics and complicated arrangements necessary to get them to appointments, school and activities on time are vast. Travelling long distances is extremely demanding, particularly for children who tire easily or become distressed if they are contained for long periods. For disabled children and children with SEN, such journeys can be even more stressful. As one mother of a disabled child put it:

“Not being able to access the fun things for my child has left us isolated and almost housebound for most of the month. It is difficult to access things as we don’t drive and no thought is put in to the placement of services for disabled families who need to use public transport. It is always assumed we drive. Therefore public transport costs a fortune and takes at least twice as long. Services are a distance away, so if you don’t drive it means you just don’t go to services at all, which means being housebound and being further isolated.”

In some cases, the immense financial burden placed on families can literally tear them apart, which is the important point my hon. Friend made earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on securing this important and timely debate. I know that she speaks from personal experience, and that she gives support to people in her constituency. I believe that she will be doing that on 1 February when she attends an employment fair for individuals with autism in the city of Sheffield. I hope the fair goes well. She has a strong and sustained interest in the issue and I am delighted that she has taken the time to look carefully at the Green Paper that was brought out by my predecessor and subsequently at the draft clauses that were subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee.

I will endeavour to cover as many points as possible in the short time that is left. In the usual way, I will be happy to write to the hon. Lady to provide full answers to any outstanding points; all her points carry weight and deserve a full response. Let me deal with the specific points that she raised at the outset. In relation to the local offer and where it will sit in the future provision of services for children with special educational needs and disability, clearly the purpose of the local offer is to have, for the first time, a single source of information, which is transparent and which sets out all the services in the local area and beyond. Clearly, there are not provisions for some low-instance conditions in every local area, but it is important that parents and young people know where they can access them if they fall outside their local authority area. Parents need to know how to access all the services in their local area and what support is available to enable them to do that. Where the support is not provided, parents need to know how they can redress that.

The approach of the Scope campaign has been constructive. It has supported many elements of the Bill that we, hopefully, will be introducing shortly. To allay some of its concerns over the veracity of the local offer and over how parents and young people will be able to review the services that are on offer to ensure that they match the need within the local area, it needs to be involved in the consultative stage of the local offer; I will come on to that in relation to the point that the hon. Lady raised about the framework and where it will sit as a national model. I do not see the local offer as a static document. It is important that it is an evolving piece of information and guidance for local people who have the opportunity to review, monitor and influence it to ensure that it reflects everything that is required by all young people with a special educational need or disability within the local authority area. I want to have local people as involved as possible in the whole process, and that is something that I hope to take forward in the Bill, which will deal with many of the issues that Scope has raised.

What will the local offer look like? What we have found from the 20 pathfinders across 31 local authorities is that close involvement of parents and young people in the development of the local offer, through the parent carer forums funded by the Department, is a much more powerful way of ensuring that the services that local authorities will provide match the local need. To drive up national consistency, the code of practice, which is not in primary legislation, will set out a common framework that shows what should be in the local offer. We do not want it to require local authorities to provide only what is in that framework; it must not be a race to the bottom. It will set some parameters so that both local authorities and other agencies and services know their responsibilities and their duty to co-operate and to provide information for the local offer. Parents and young people need an explicit assurance that they will have that information available to them.

[John McDonnell]

That is really helpful. Our concern is that some local authorities will simply re-badge what they have already, and they will not drive up standards. A key role is to ensure that parents and local groups work with the local authority to raise those standards.

[Mr Timpson]

That is a sensible approach and one that we share. As is illustrated in the Green Paper, the redrafted Bill following the Select Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny, and the subsequent regulations in the code of practice, the whole purpose behind many of these reforms is to put parents and young people at the heart of the whole process—before the assessment and through the assessment, the delivery of service and any redress that follows. That can be done on an individual basis and also with the help of professionals. It can also be done through existing groups such as parent carer forums, which can be a powerful voice for parents in their local area.

The Bill will strengthen the role of young people in the system, which is hugely important. We will move to a single system for those aged nought to 25 with a more co-ordinated assessment and joint commissioning, and increase the opportunities for young people over the current age requirement to take their own case to tribunal where their request for an assessment has been refused. We will also pilot a scheme for children to take forward an appeal if they feel that they have not been provided with everything that they require. That is a huge advance in ensuring that this system moves away from the huge barriers which the hon. Lady rightly referred to in her speech. Too many parents are still finding obstacles in their way, too much duplication of information and that they are having to retell their story again and again. We need to get away from that and have a system that has parents and young people at its heart from the start, rather than when it is too late and when there is too much division between them and the services that should be there to support children.