Services for People with Autism

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann). I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on opening today’s debate, and I join him in paying tribute to the fantastic work of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan). I join others in sending our very best wishes to her and her family today.

I want to focus on children with autism. We know that, from the outset, families face an uphill struggle to obtain the help and support that they deserve, and I pay tribute to the work of a relatively new organisation in Liverpool called Autism in Motion, which seeks to provide a voice for parents. It was set up by three Liverpool mums of children on the autistic spectrum. National guidelines state that people should start their diagnostic assessment within three months of being referred to the autism team, but statistics obtained last year by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) revealed a postcode lottery in waiting times for an initial appointment, with many parts of the country falling woefully short of the three-month target. In some parts of the country, it can take years to receive a diagnosis of autism.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful to many families and indeed professionals who are challenged by these circumstances if the Government were able to put more resources specifically into initial teacher training and in-service training to help staff in schools to understand autism better and to better support children with autistic spectrum issues?

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I shall refer later in my speech to the Abbotts Lea special school in Liverpool, which is a shining example of the very best practice that exists in our education system.

Delays in diagnosing autism mean that many autistic people do not receive the support that they need, which can really harm their life chances. For too many families, securing the right support for their child at school is a hugely difficult task, and can become an all-consuming battle. The passport to receiving this extra support is an education, health and care—or EHC—plan, which is intended to bring together a child’s different needs in education, health and social care. Autism is the most common type of special need for school pupils who have an EHC plan. However, as budgets have been reduced, local councils often struggle to respond to demand, leading to EHC plans being refused or delayed well beyond the 20-week cut-off date by which a decision on whether to approve an EHC plan should be made.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. In my experience—and, I suspect, that of others—the delays in getting an assessment are resulting in some parents having to pay between £2,000 and £3,000 out of their own pocket because they cannot afford to wait such a long time for their children to be assessed.

[Stephen Twigg]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. This is one of the many aspects of this challenge that makes life very difficult for the families of children with autism, and we really need to do better by them.

Even those families who do get a plan are often not given the support they need. A report published by the all-party parliamentary group on autism found that only one in 10 parents was very satisfied with the process of agreeing an EHC plan for their child, with 60% saying that they was dissatisfied. In Liverpool, a recent Ofsted inspection into how Liverpool City Council and the local clinical commissioning group catered for children with special educational needs and disabilities found “significant concerns” and “long-standing issues” in local practice. In particular, the inspection found serious weaknesses in the EHC planning process as well as in the quality of the plans that were being made. In response to these concerns, the city council is required to submit a written statement of action to explain how Liverpool will tackle the areas of significant weakness identified.

I am pleased that the council is responding with the urgency that that report demands. It has responded positively, but we know that Liverpool is far from unique. In fact, a majority—more than 50%—of the SEND area inspections nationally have resulted in the requirement for a statement of written action. This is a huge national challenge.



Across the country, devastating cuts in local government funding have contributed to a crisis in funding for children with special education needs and councils are struggling to meet their statutory duties for children with autism. Data from freedom of information requests and council reports show that councils are overspending massively. Overspending on SEND has trebled in the past three years, and it is continuing to increase, with councils having to raid their overall schools budget for millions to respond to demand. Cuts to local authority budgets have further reduced the kind of support that used to be in place for social activities for children with autism and additional support for their families.

Despite this challenging environment, there are brilliant examples across the country of great support for autistic children and their families. In Liverpool, we have some truly outstanding special schools, and it is not just me saying that: Ofsted says that they are truly outstanding, too. They include three in my constituency—Redbridge, Bank View and Ernest Cookson—which serve children with autism.

I want to focus on Abbot’s Lea School, which is in fact in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle). The school caters for over 250 students from three to 19 years old, and its philosophy of education is the ASD model. I pay tribute to headteacher Ania Hildrey, who told me this week that she focuses equally on academic progress, specialist therapeutic support and development of life skills. She has transformed its curriculum, and she unapologetically aspires to be the best special school in the world.

Like so many other specialist schools, however, Abbot’s Lea is being held back from being able to provide the very best service, because local government funding does not go far enough to meet the demand for specialist placements or mainstream support. Ania told me that some of the welcome reforms in the Children and Families Act 2014 have not been implemented as planned, leading to poor school planning and a lack of joint commissioning. Delays in autism diagnosis often mean that schools receive referrals much later than they would like, and that limits schools’ ability to transform pupils’ lives.

Abbot’s Lea is keen to engage with both Government and the local authority to help shape the provision of education for children and young people with autism. I urge the Minister and her colleagues in the Department for Education to listen and engage with the concerns of brilliant headteachers such as Ania and with families in Liverpool and elsewhere and to work on a cross-Government basis to improve outcomes for children with autism. We urgently need to improve the quality of services provided to children, young people and their families, but that can be achieved only with proper resourcing and by ensuring that the barriers that still exist between our health and education systems are broken down. If we are truly going to make the progress that we all want to see, it is incumbent on us to listen to children and young people with autism, to their parents and families and to professionals, such as Ania Hildrey, who are working so hard to deliver the best in schools in Liverpool and around the country.