SEND Provision: Derbyshire

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I want to thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth), for securing this important debate for us tonight, because whether you are young or old in Derbyshire, it feels like you have a county council that is not on your side. SEND makes up a big amount of my postbag, as does the decision to consider closing the Ada Belfield care home in my constituency, which is greatly valued across the community for its quality and safety, and for its kind, compassionate, person-centred care. That is a concern to many local people as well. We have a widespread selection of issues in Derbyshire for which the county council is responsible.

I read with interest, although not surprise, the Ofsted report that was published just before Christmas. As colleagues have said, it identified widespread and systemic failings in the SEND provision in Derbyshire, and I have to say that it was not a surprise to read that report. That is what local people had been telling me for quite some time, but I think the report gave them a sense of vindication. Up to that point, they were almost feeling that maybe it was them, maybe they did not understand or appreciate the situation, or maybe they were the only one. But that report gave local people a sense that they were not alone. There are many people in Mid Derbyshire and right across the county who are held back by the situation with our special educational needs provision in the county.

I spent a little time thinking about how we got here. Colleagues have rightly said that the council made strategic choices—political choices—that meant the service it was providing was not effective enough. We have heard that the council did not spend £16 million of the money it had to support our children and young people with special educational needs, and I find that level of incompetence absolutely staggering.

I am conscious that councils across the country, not just Derbyshire county council, have faced a decade and a half of the most appalling funding cuts. Derbyshire county council’s budget was around £1 billion a year in 2010, which is around £1.5 billion in today’s money. I understand that today its budget is £780 million, so around half of what it was in real terms.

We know from the SEND report that there probably has not been enough integration between the NHS and the county council on this issue. One good thing the last Government did was to set up the integrated care boards, as well as the integrated care partnerships that oversee those boards. I was proud to sit on the Derby and Derbyshire integrated care partnership prior to my election to this place. Some good work came through, but understandably, given the state of the NHS, primary and acute care took up most of the body’s time.

I would like the integrated care board and the integrated care partnership to spend more time on the wider determinants of people’s health, particularly people with disabilities and long-term conditions. As the Government’s plan for change is implemented, I hope we will see acute and primary care restored to where they should be, so that local NHS leaders have more time to support SEND provision.

The Government are making a significant investment in local authorities, and I was pleased to learn earlier this month that we will be providing more than £69 billion of funding to councils, which represents a 6.8% cash terms increase in core spending powers. We also have £2.3 billion coming for schools, including £1 billion for SEND. Aspects of the autumn Budget were truly remarkable and laid the foundations for rebuilding public services and giving our children and young people opportunities in life.

I am sorry to say that some have used our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to talk about another sinister issue in society, but that Bill will give a real boost to children and young people in Derbyshire’s schools, particularly through the breakfast clubs. I ask the Minister to make sure that children who benefit from home-to-school transport are able to attend and participate in those breakfast clubs.

I did not want to come to this debate just to outline a situation that our residents know about, and that we all know about from our constituency postbags; I also wanted to outline solutions for the council. This Government are responding to councils’ needs and investing money in our children and young people, and now we need Derbyshire county council’s leaders to take that forward. If they cannot, they will have to step aside at the next election and allow a new leadership to do so.

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) on securing an Adjournment debate on this important subject, and on her powerful and heartfelt speech. I know that she, like all Labour Members here today, has a real interest in and passion for supporting families in her constituency who are navigating the special educational needs and disabilities system, and all the challenges that clearly presents.

I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby), for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson), for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack) and for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for their interventions, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for High Peak (Jon Pearce), for Erewash (Adam Thompson), for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet), for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) and for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) for their powerful speeches. Hon. Members have spoken incredibly powerfully for their constituents, and they are very much heard.

As hon. Members recognise, improving the special educational needs and disabilities system across the country is a priority for the Government. We want all children to receive the right support to succeed in their education, and to lead happy, healthy and productive adult lives. Every child, regardless of their individual needs, deserves the opportunity to achieve, thrive and succeed. At the moment, we know far too many children are not being given that chance, and far too many families have been let down, year on year, by a system that is not meeting those needs.

Over 1.6 million children and young people in England have special educational needs, a figure that is increasing year on year, with more children requiring SEND support, and even more children and young people being identified as having a specific need that requires an education, health and care plan. As the Education Secretary mentioned in her keynote speech at the Centre for Social Justice just last week, the recognition of those additional needs and the debate around how we support children with SEND is a sign of progress, but clearly there is much more to do.

[Jonathan Davies]

One of the reasons the county council has got into this mess is because it was around a decade since Ofsted’s previous inspection of its SEND provision. When I approached Ofsted, officials said the reason is that that was what Ofsted had been contracted to do by the Government. We need more agile regulation, as we discussed on the Second Reading of the Data (Use and Access) Bill today, but does the Minister have plans to look at Ofsted’s regulatory model and the frequency with which it inspects? If the provision in Derbyshire had been inspected earlier, we might have less of a problem to deal with now.

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We are looking across the system at how to reform it to make it better for families and for children who experience the need for additional support, and to improve outcomes. To assess all those issues, we need an inspection and accountability framework that drives improvements. I will come to the specific issues raised in the inspection of Derbyshire county council. It was inspected under a new inspection framework that threw significant light on the current situation, as exemplified by the various heartbreaking stories hon. Members have shared today.

Improving the SEND system is a vital part of the Government’s opportunity mission. We are determined to break the unfair link between background and opportunity by giving every child with SEND, along with all other children, the best start in life. We are prioritising early intervention and inclusive provision in mainstream settings, as we know that early intervention prevents unmet needs from escalating. That will support all children and young people to achieve their goals alongside their peers.

We know it takes a vast workforce, from teachers to teaching assistants, early years educators to allied health professionals, to help all children to achieve and thrive. We are investing in each of those areas to improve outcomes and experiences across the country. We are committed to working with the sector and our partners to ensure that our approach is fully planned and delivered in partnership.

We have already begun the work by appointing a strategic adviser on SEND to engage with sector leaders, practitioners, children and families. We have established an expert advisory group for inclusion, to improve the mainstream education outcomes and experiences for those with SEND, and we have set up a neurodivergence task-and-finish group to provide a shared understanding of what provision and support in mainstream educational settings should look like for neurodivergent children and young people within an inclusive system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley understandably raised concerns about education health and care plan timelines. The plans have significantly increased in number, year on year, since their introduction in 2014, with nearly 600,000 children and young people with an EHCP as of January last year. Over time, flaws and a lack of capacity in the system to meet lower-level need have added additional strain on specialist services, and that has had a detrimental impact on the experience of those accessing the EHCP process. There has been late identification of need and intervention, low parental confidence in the ability of mainstream settings to meet that need, inefficient allocation of resources across the system, and inconsistency in practice and provision based on location. Hon. Members have expressed the particular challenges in Derbyshire that have clearly manifested over many years. Those have all contributed to pushing up costs and have created an increasingly unsustainable system.

The latest data shows that in 2023, just 50.3% of EHCPs were issued within the 20-week statutory timeframe. That is leaving young people and their families without appropriate and adequate support. The Government want to ensure that EHC needs assessments are progressed promptly and plans are issued so that children and young people get the support they need to help them achieve positive outcomes. We know that local authorities have been struggling to meet the increased demand for EHCPs, so we are constantly working with them to improve those response times.

The Government are acutely aware of the challenges that families face in accessing the support their children need—and actually, of how adversarial the EHCP process can be. Independently commissioned insights that we published last year showed that if we can get those extensive improvements to the system, if we can use early intervention better and if we can better resource mainstream schools, that will have a significant impact. More children will have their needs met without having to even go through an education, health and care plan process, because their needs will be met in a mainstream setting with their peers. We are listening to parents, local authority colleagues and partners right across education and, as hon. Members have rightly identified, across health and social care, because we need to work out how to address and improve the experience of the EHCP process for families, and reflect on how we can roll out practice that will be more consistent nationally.

Every child and young person should have access to high-quality services to set them up for life, for work and for the future, and local authorities and their partners are key to ensuring that children can access the support they need. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission jointly inspected Derbyshire in September 2024 and found widespread and systemic failings. That led to significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with SEND across the county of Derbyshire. The published report made it clear that the local area partnership, which consists of the local authority and the integrated care board, must address those concerns urgently and identified six areas for priority action. As a result of the inspection, His Majesty’s chief inspector required the local area partnership to prepare and submit a priority action plan to address the identified areas.

A team has been put in place to track those outcomes against the action plan. Progress is being monitored and the Department for Education has appointed a SEND adviser to work collaboratively with an NHS England adviser to challenge, support and work with Derbyshire county council and the integrated care board to drive those improvements. I am sure that that is good news for hon. Members to hear, but clearly that progress needs to be made as quickly as possible, because as hon. Members rightly set out, families cannot wait any longer for the support they need.

We absolutely want more children and young people to receive the support they need, and ideally to thrive in their local mainstream settings with their peers, so that they do not need to travel long distances to find specialist places that can accommodate them and they can have their needs met with their friends in their local school. We know that many mainstream settings already go above and beyond to deliver that specialist provision locally through resource provision and SEN units, and we know as well that there will always be a place for special schools and colleges for children and young people who have the most complex needs. It is vital that we see the investment that is needed to create the new places in mainstream and special schools and in specialist settings. That is why we have announced £740 million of high needs capital for 2025-26. We will set out those allocations to local authorities in due course.

Hon. Members have raised concerns about the underspend in Derbyshire county council and we really need to see that money invested in those specialist places, whether in mainstream or special schools, to make sure that places are available with the support that children need. The Government are absolutely committed to working with Derbyshire county council, and with school leaders and sector partners locally and nationally, to develop and improve the inclusive education within mainstream settings that every child deserves.