SEND Provision and Funding

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Fantastic —thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) on securing the debate. We have heard many excellent speeches from across the House, although I notice that there are demands for more funding from Members whose party has been responsible for these budgets for the past 13 years.

Every time I visit a school in my constituency and discuss my role and the children’s aspirations with them, I go on to meet the head or senior leadership team, and without exception the first and most pressing issue they raise with me is SEND. They tell me they do not have the resources to adequately support these children or their parents. They feel that these children are being abandoned. That is not for want of adequate legal powers, with the EHCP system brought in in 2014, or due to the support structures of Hounslow council, but because of a chronic lack of resources to deliver what the law expects.

Heads also tell me that there seems to have been a recent rise in the number of children who clearly have additional needs, with children exhibiting extreme stress, which is hardly surprising given the housing and income pressures that many local families face. A growing number of children also appear to be presenting with some form of neurodiversity. Most teachers are not specialists in mental health, neurodiversity or other forms of SEND. However, schools feel that they cannot teach a child, or indeed the other children in the class, if five children in a class cannot sit down, cannot stop talking, or are even screaming, ripping things up, chewing things, or as I heard about one child, spending hours on end switching a particular light switch on and off, on and off. These children are not naughty. The experienced educationalists telling me this know that, with appropriate and adequate specialist support, these children can and would learn. They can thrive and they can achieve, but the schools just do not have the resources to provide the world-class education that all children need.

Treating SEND as a serious policy priority is important not just for children with additional needs, but for their parents and siblings, their teachers and the other children in their schools, but under this Government these people are not getting the support they need. They are being let down, and children’s futures are being failed.

In 2014, the Government extended the SEND duty of local councils to include young people up to the age of 25 and added social and healthcare needs to what was previously a statement just of educational needs, yet there was no additional funding for the additional legal requirements. Despite this Government undermining local authorities’ role in school management and governance, local authorities are still expected to provide appropriate SEND provision. They cannot do that when there are sweeping cuts to their budgets: Hounslow council has faced budget cuts of over £150 million since 2010, and the cuts have had a huge negative impact on local SEND support in the borough.

Countless local parents have told me they are having to wait far too long for their child’s EHCP, and when the plan is issued, there are huge flaws and not enough support. Thresholds for support rise as funding declines. One indicator of the scale of such problems is that, nationally, there were 14,000 appeals to tribunal in 2022-23—an increase of 24% in the last year—and 98% of the cases are resolved in favour of the parents and children. Often, the appeals mark the first time parents feel they have been listened to, but as the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) said, the tribunal system only helps parents who have the ability and the resources to push through the jungle. Many of our constituents would not know where to start. No parent should have to fight for an appropriate education for their child.

What about the specialist resources taken up by the assessments and the tribunals that should be spent on providing appropriate education and support for these children, appropriate training for their teachers, and appropriate support for their parents, which together will enable the child to thrive? The briefing we received from the National Autistic Society highlighted the inefficient spending of what funds there are in the system, although as I said, funding is insufficient. The hurdles in front of parents before, during and after the process of appeal are immense. That was the central message I received when I visited and met the Hounslow Parent Carers Forum and heard about the problems they faced.

The shortage of resources means that there is a lack of training for teaching assistants for one-to-one support, a lack of transport and a lack of specialist therapeutic support, and for many children it even means the lack of a school place. Children with high needs are stuck at home, with parents who cannot go out to work, because there is no special school place for them. More families with one or more children with additional needs are also facing housing stress. I have constituents with a very disturbed child, who is always trying to jump out of a tower block window.