Special Educational Needs and Disability Funding

Debate between Steve Reed and Layla Moran

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. As many others have done, I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) on securing this important debate. She has big shoes to fill, following her illustrious predecessor, but has certainly made an impressive start this afternoon.

Children with special educational needs and disabilities are some of the most vulnerable children in our country. They need help and support when they are young to help them to cope with the rest of their lives, which can be very challenging. I join the many Members who have congratulated the incredible professionals who dedicate their time and their lives to supporting those children.

There can surely be no MP who has not encountered heart-rending cases of children who have been refused the support that they so urgently need. In my constituency of Croydon North, I have been dealing with the case of a young boy with dyslexia whose family have to spend four hours a day travelling to take him to an appropriate school. Another child, aged just seven, had to be educated at home for more than a year because none of the three special schools that were close enough for him to attend had a place to offer him.

The cause of those problems, and many like them, is the severe underfunding of such services by the Government. The Conservative-led Local Government Association says that, even after the additional funding that I suspect the Minister will shortly trumpet, high-needs services face a shortfall of £109 million over the coming year. They cannot plan for what comes after that because the Government have still not announced the funding. Councils, which are responsible for those services say that high-needs funding is one of the most serious financial headaches that they face. The money simply is not there to provide an adequate service for every child who needs it.

Things have got so bad that the LGA says that councils will no longer be able to meet their statutory duties to support children with special educational needs and disabilities. That is simply shocking and unacceptable. It means that children in desperate need—children with severe disabilities—will be turned away because the Government refuse to pay for the care that they so urgently need, and that every single one of them deserves.

Ofsted, which inspects such services on behalf of the Government, tells us a very similar story. According to Ofsted, last January almost 3,500 children who needed special support were still not receiving any. Of those, 2,700 were not in school or receiving an education of any kind because of the lack of support. That is not only short-sighted but cruel. It is cruel to the children whose futures are being curtailed, and cruel to their parents, who are left struggling, angry and frustrated that their child is being denied that most basic of human rights: the right to an education.

[Layla Moran]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Does he share my concern that very often these children end up in the prison service, and is he aware of the statistic that children in custody are, on average, twice as likely to have SEND problems as those in the general population? If we intervene early and ensure that they do not go to prison, that will save the state money.

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Many of the outcomes for these children in later life are negative when they could have been positive.

The failure to fund high-needs services adequately means that lower-level support suffers as a result. The Children’s Commissioner says that speech and language services and mental health services have all suffered. Leaving children with such disabilities unable to cope means that their chance to function well as adults is taken away from them. It is fair neither on the children, who deserve much better, nor on society as a whole, which will be left to pick up the much higher costs of supporting them as adults.

We cannot just abandon these children, so I would be grateful if the Minister responded to a few specific points. Councils need the powers and funding to open new special schools where they are needed. Will she confirm that that will be part of the Government’s review? By the end of August last year, half of the 100 areas that had been inspected by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission were found to have significant weaknesses in their SEND services. They were all required to submit written proposals for improving their services. That is a shockingly high level of failure. Why has it not triggered a co-ordinated action plan across Government to bring those services up to the level required?

The inspections identified a long catalogue of failings. Here are just some of them, according to the reports: joint commissioning and service planning is weak; education, health and care plan assessment is not working well enough; too many care plans are not finalised within the 20-week timescale; designated medical officers are under-resourced; oversight of care plans is inadequate; transitions into adult health services are inadequate; families do not know where to get the help and support that their children need; more than half of parents or carers have had to give up work to care for their disabled child; more than half of parents and carers have been treated for depression, including suicidal thoughts; and too many parents and carers say that their views and experiences are neither heard nor valued.

That all comes from Ofsted and the CQC, the Government’s official inspectors for such services. Is the Minister really content to preside over services failing to that extent, because she should not be? I hope that she will not just dismiss that evidence, as previous Ministers have, or resort to platitudes about inadequate funding increases. Special needs services are in crisis. Too many vulnerable children with disabilities are living in crisis, and they deserve an urgent response from the Government to put things right.