Children and Families Bill

Lord Condon Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I have a grandson who has special educational needs. He is statemented by his local authority and yesterday I was at a review meeting to consider his transition to senior school. My focus today will therefore be on the provisions in the Bill dealing with special educational needs.

I broadly welcome the Bill. It builds well on the Green Paper, Support and Aspiration. I think that it was strengthened by pre-legislative scrutiny and its passage through the other place and, based on the speeches of noble Lords today, I am confident that it will be further improved during its passage through your Lordships’ House.

My concerns prior to the Bill—I have articulated them in your Lordships’ House on other occasions—and the test that I will apply to the Bill fall into two broad categories. First, will the framework provided in the Bill simplify and strengthen the procedures for diagnosis, recognition and support for children with special educational needs and their families? Secondly, will the Bill improve the likelihood of the actual delivery of improved services and support for these children and their families? The Government’s very good young person’s guide to this Bill states:

“We want to put children and young people right at the centre. We want things to work out right for children. We want services to meet children’s needs, not professionals’ needs. We want children to get the help they need without lots of delays. And we want the new law to improve children’s rights in this country”.

If the Bill delivers on these aspirations, it will transform for the better the lives of so many young people and their families.

I particularly welcome Clause 19, which will improve the likelihood of local authorities having more regard to the views of parents, with the intention of achieving the best possible educational and other outcomes. I also broadly support Clauses 36 to 49, which create the education, health and care plans to replace the statementing process, and I am delighted that where appropriate they will last until the age of 25, for the reasons that other noble Lords have articulated

The experience of too many families with children with special educational needs is a constant, debilitating, bewildering and adversarial struggle to get the best for their child. Assessment can be fragmented, disjointed and endlessly repetitive, and the delivery of promised support is often disappointing, under-resourced, uncoordinated and, sadly, non-existent in many cases. These are systemic failures and should not be taken as criticism of the dedicated professionals up and down the country, most of whom do a good job in difficult circumstances. My grandson is in a wonderful primary school, where he receives outstanding love and support and where he is developing very well.

My enthusiastic support for this Bill is tempered to some extent by my real anxiety that implementation of the new education, health and care plans will be jeopardised by the resource constraints on local authorities and others; again, these concerns have been articulated so well by other noble Lords. These resource constraints may well challenge the likely success of the implementation of these new provisions.

As the Bill passes through all its stages in your Lordships’ House, I will be looking for confirmation that the improved theoretical model of education, health and care plans is reinforced with provisions to ensure the delivery, monitoring and assessment of services in a consistent way, so that the admirable promises made in the young person’s guide to the Bill that I quoted earlier become a reality.