SEND and Alternative Provision

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for everything he has done on children’s policy in his time in government. He is absolutely right that we must make sure the health sector is also held accountable. One thing we have done is to change the area inspection framework, as I mentioned, which means that for the first time we will have a social care inspector looking at the health element. The Health and Care Act 2022 requires every integrated care board to have a named person accountable for SEND, which will take on the statutory responsibilities from clinical commissioning groups.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The implementation plan will not work if the workforce is not in place. As we know, to be able to achieve an EHCP, the workforce needs to be in place and it takes many years to train. Those professionals are not there currently, so how will the Minister ensure that the workforce is in place not just in the health pathway but in the school? The experience I am seeing in a particular multi-academy trust in York is that it is laying off the staff who would take responsibility for those children, as opposed to providing the therapeutic environment that children so need.

[Claire Coutinho]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that specialist support is really important. We are working with the Department of Health and Social Care on specialist health support, whether that is occupational therapists or speech and language therapists, but we are also training educational psychologists and changing the special educational needs co-ordinator training. More importantly, we want all teachers to be trained in SEN. That is why we are looking at initial teacher training and the early careers framework. A huge proportion of the school population now has an SEN and we need everybody to be trained in it.