Education, Health and Care Plans

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do not have that information to hand but I will write to my noble friend to deal with it specifically.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, autism is the special educational need that most often features in SEND appeals. Many of the cases are the result of local authorities having refused an education, health and care plan needs assessment, yet the majority of such appeals are won by parents. I very much take on board the point made by my noble friend Lord Blunkett about bringing local authorities together. But does the Minister accept that where a child has an autism diagnosis that fits in with the SEND code of practice, it should not be permissible for a local authority to deny that child’s family a needs assessment?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is right that autism accounts for the highest proportion of all claims at about 43% of appeals. We are very much focusing on this as an area of concern. In December last year we announced a number of measures to help deal with this, including joining up the healthcare and education services to address autistic children’s needs holistically, developing diagnostics services to diagnose autism earlier, improving the transition between children and adult services so that no young people miss out, and improving the understanding of autism and all its profiles, including recently identified forms such as pathological demand avoidance.