Special Educational Needs and Disabilities: Specialist Workforce

Peter Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on securing this important debate. This issue is of concern to many of my constituents in Darlington. Indeed, 77 people from my constituency signed the e-petitions relating to the debate. I welcome the announcement last week of a new school in Darlington and thank Councillors Jonathan Dulston and Jon Clarke for their work on that. This additional provision of 48 places for SEN children in Darlington is much needed.

However, Darlington faces serious problems with CAMHS. The delays in getting people assessed are significant. It impacts my case load and delays access to services for young people in my constituency. It is hugely important for Darlington parents and children that we speed up the woefully inadequate waiting times for CAMHS assessments by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. As Ministers are aware, we cannot overestimate the challenging circumstances that TEWV service users and their families face. More than 300 under-18s in Darlington are awaiting an autism assessment, and more than 20% of them have been waiting almost three years. That is just not good enough. In the absence of a diagnosis, these families’ lives are on hold, and these children’s lives are not progressing as they should.

I continue to engage regularly with TEWV and the families of special educational needs children in Darlington, including through my autism forum on Facebook, to ensure that their voices are heard and to push for us to take more action to reduce these backlogs, which are so damaging. I do, however, welcome the recent announcement that Darlington has secured additional funding of £6.19 million for special educational needs provision in the town, to address the growing needs in our community and tackle the high cost of out-of-town provision. I also warmly welcome the recent SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, which commits to increase spending on children and young people with such needs by more than 50% to over £10 billion by 2023-24.

I have tabled several written questions to the Department for Education in the past about its records for SEN training among teaching staff, and I was disappointed to learn that it does not keep records of the extent of such training. However, the recent news of expanded training for staff in early years provision, with special educational needs co-ordinators and educational psychologists, will, I hope, go some way to addressing that gap.

This is a personal issue for me. Like many people across the country, I have family members with special educational needs, and I have seen directly the work that parents must put in to secure the necessary support. It cannot be right that the most vocal parents or those who know the system are the ones who secure the right provision for their child. I have seen parents in my constituency surgery who have been pinging from local authority to CAMHS to schools to healthcare providers, which makes them frustrated, angry and bewildered. We really need to do so much better.

In conclusion, the SEND and additional provision improvement plans are good steps on the way, but we must ensure that the actions that are set out in them are delivered, and we must make the systems absolutely centred on the child—not just paying lip service to that idea, but really breaking down the silos in health, education and Government to truly deliver, end the excessive waits, and give the kids a chance.