Children with Special Educational Needs

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am pleased to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). He is a compassionate Conservative, and he has demonstrated that today. I was astonished at the level of expertise he displayed, and I learned a lot from his speech.

As a candidate and now as a Member of Parliament, I have been very pleased to speak to Harlow parents whose children have special needs. I am a supporter of the Harlow Parents of Autistic Children Together, or PACT, and I have often met its chair, Sam Fancett, and vice-chair, Wendy Merry, and others. They are very IT friendly, and we usually speak via Blackberry messenger. I want to raise on their behalf some problems that are sometimes thought to be little things, but actually make a big difference.

First, parents believe that it would be helpful if more special schools could specialise—for example, in autism therapy—instead of being just an alternative to mainstream schools when children can no longer cope. If that is impossible, more mainstream schools could develop a specialised autism unit on site, or a unit could be shared between several schools. At present, I understand that, if a parent chooses a school that is more suited to their child’s needs, but is outside their catchment area, they must provide their own transport, and sign a disclaimer saying that they will never request transport in future. We all know that funds are limited, but there should not be a postcode lottery in such cases. As the free school reforms come through, I urge the Government to look at home-to-school transport and access to expert special education.

Secondly, why are parents of children on the autistic spectrum, especially those with severe difficulties, unable to get a blue badge to park their car? Parents of those children struggle daily, sometimes in extremely difficult situations. They have told me that parking a car when a child is having a meltdown can be highly dangerous. The Government are cracking down on people who abuse blue badges, but will the Minister do what she can to nudge local authorities to make blue badges more available to those with autistic children or children with significant special needs? It is worth taking much stronger action against those who wrongly park in bays for disabled drivers, because that causes incredible difficulties for those with severe disabilities.

Thirdly, on special educational needs, there is a question about arbitrary limits. A constituent of mine, Jackie Stedman, has suffered a constant battle to get a good education for her two children. Again and again, she has run up against problems due to random limits on financial support, which are tied to age rather than to need, or to children’s potential to learn. I accept, of course, the overall need to cut the deficit, and to be careful with our finances, but the sums involved are not significant in the context of the overall budget—in this case, that of Essex county council.

The context is that the council pays for home-to-school transport for Jackie’s two children, who both travel in the same car to the same school, but the council is now saying that, according to the rules, it can pay for one child, and not the other, even though the car will have to make the journey anyway. The absurdity is extraordinary. That is unaffordable for the family, and it feels like a “Little Britain” sketch, when “the computer says no”, just because one of her children is now 16.

I understand the need for local government to set criteria, but the rules sometimes seem arbitrary, and hurt decent families who simply want a good education for their children. A similar problem is seen with therapies offered by local primary care trusts. Sam Fancett gives the example that not all children are offered sensory integration therapy or auditory integration therapy. It depends on their PCT, but those therapies can transform children’s lives, and drastically improve behaviour at an early age. She also queries why speech therapy seems to finish at the end of year 7. Again, that seems to be an arbitrary limit, which does not relate to children’s needs or potential.

A potential casualty of the difficult economy was going to be a Thursday evening session of respite care in a Harlow community centre called Sam’s Place. Thankfully, the council worked hard to rescue it, and I congratulate the leader of Harlow council, Andrew Johnson, Councillor Joel Charles and council officers on their hard work in achieving a solution. One of the lessons that came out of that was that most parents are happy to take on the responsibility of running services for their children, but we cannot ask them to take on legal liabilities, compliance duties and other red tape. Parents with children with special needs have enough to worry about without having to do all that. I know that the Government are looking at such matters in the context of the big society reviews, and I would be grateful if the issue could be specifically considered.

As I have suggested, the solution must involve the big society. At the moment, if someone with an autistic child wants to talk to the local education authority or PCT, it is like trying to get through to a mobile phone company with instructions to press 1, press 2 and so on. Parents need a much more personal service. That may cost a lot of money, but a reduction in the number of appeals and complaints might save money in the long run. Essex county council has been moving towards that, but the results are patchy, and I urge it to use its back-office savings to hire more, dedicated, proper relationship managers—human beings—who would understand the issues and liaise directly with families such as those in the Harlow PACT.

Another problem is that the computer always seems to say no. Why should it say no to parents who are struggling against the odds? Decisions are arbitrary or tied to arbitrary age limits and catchment areas, which are largely random or created for bureaucratic convenience.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is making some extremely important points about the arbitrary limits. My understanding is that the legislation does not provide for such arbitrary limits. We need to provide for the child, but local authorities use the system to prevent a child from gaining access. If a parent battles through the maze of the statementing process, they may win, but bearing in mind the delays to which I referred, very few, sadly, have the resources or the capacity to do that.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. My point is that given what parents must face, and their difficulties with special needs children, why should they have to battle? Mrs Jackie Stedman has spent years battling with the courts and relevant authorities to try to obtain proper treatment for her children. She has often been successful, but why should she have to go through that in the first place? To borrow a phrase, our public services need to speak “human”, and that means looking at each individual case on its merits, and talking to the parents and children involved.

[Mr Mark Williams]

Perhaps I should have declared an interest earlier, Mr Brady, as a former teacher and still a member of the NASUWT. Does my hon. Friend agree that schools find themselves in the middle of a conundrum? Teachers may see the problem of children on the autistic spectrum or with dyslexia and make a diagnosis, but they are frustrated because the resources and support that parents rightly demand are also lacking for teachers. They want to get on with the job. They may have identified the problem and know the direction of travel, but LEAs are often lacking resources.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is right. If the teacher is well placed to understand and diagnose the problem, the matter should be sorted out from there. However, they often have to wade through relentless bureaucracy. It does not matter which local authority is involved, it is always “rule this, regulation that.” That is what makes lives difficult.

Parents are used to fighting to get a fair deal for their children, but we must not burden them with tons of forms, legal liabilities and compliance. We have to make it easier. I know that the Minister is looking into the matter, and I would be grateful if she reassured my constituents about the direction of Government policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

Unfortunately, I am not in control of what the media write. Ofsted said that too many children are diagnosed with special educational needs; it said the number could be as high as one in four. Let me repeat that we are not setting a target for the number of children we want off the SEN register.

We have changed the school action and school action plus criteria because schools said that they were bureaucratic and not very helpful. At the start of this debate, there was an exchange about whether there is a financial incentive for schools to use school action and school action plus. There is no financial incentive, because in most cases the funds are already delegated to schools. We have got rid of contextual value added, which Ofsted said was an incentive, in terms of league tables. The issue is much more complex. Teachers will sometimes label children as having SEN because they think that that is the right thing to do; we should not always assume malicious motives. Teachers believe that the right thing to do is to label a child as having SEN, whereas what they probably need to do is work closely with that child, raise their attainment, and work out what the barriers are that are preventing them from moving forward.

It is important to identify need at an early stage. This morning, Dame Clare Tickell launched her report on the review of the early years foundation stage. It will take us some time to go through the detail of her recommendations, but one of the things that she has picked up—this was also picked up in our Green Paper and by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) in his review a few months ago—was whether we could make better use of the two-and-a-half-year-old check and link it with the early years foundation stage, so that we pick up need at an early age. That is particularly important for speech and language issues. Dame Clare has recommended that the new foundation building blocks of the EYFS be focused particularly on communication needs, personal, emotional and social development, and physical development. I hope that the suggestion will help improve the system for professionals working in early years.

[Robert Halfon]

I realise that there is very little time left. Will the Minister comment on my remarks about the blue badge issue?

[Sarah Teather]

I was concerned to hear the hon. Gentleman’s point about the particular difficulties that families with autism face. Families with a disabled child face complicated and diverse barriers to living a normal life, and that is an issue that should not be addressed by the Department for Education alone. I will take up his point with the Department for Communities and Local Government.

In the last couple of minutes that I have left, let me pick up on as many points as I can. The Department of Health is considering the future training and development of speech and language therapists as part of its wider consultation on the work force.

Exclusions were referred to by a number of hon. Members. The proposals laid out in the Education Bill and in the schools White Paper will substantially improve the situation for vulnerable young people because it will make schools responsible for what happens to them after they leave that school. The other proposal that we have put in our Green Paper is that if a child’s behaviour is not responding to normal behavioural management techniques, or if they are being repeatedly excluded on a short-term basis, schools should, as a matter of course, do some kind of multi-agency assessment, which could be done through the common assessment framework. They should use their local multi-agency assessment process as a system for questioning why a child’s behaviour is out of control. I hope that will reduce the number of children who end up being excluded. More importantly, we need to ensure that we put in place the right kind of support for a child, whether it is helping with a situation in their family, or with a mental health problem.

I thought that I would have loads of time to cover all the points, but that is clearly not the case. There is a long consultation period now of four months, and a long period of implementation. I am grateful to hon. Members for their points and I will ensure that they are fed into our formal consultation process. I encourage hon. Members to engage with their local parents’ forums and groups to ensure that, when we respond to the consultation, we really take into account what families and children want. It is important that we get this right because the care of those children really matters.