The Guardian reported this week on the latest government recommendations allocating support for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). You can read the article in full here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/09/budgets-for-special-needs-children
The Green Paper is titled “Support and Aspiration: A new approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability – a Consultation”. The proposals have been put forward to give parents greater control and choice in making decisions around their children’s support and education. The Green Paper recommends that direct payments to parents be expanded, and that Case Managers become involved to support parents around decisions on spending their budgets.
However, campaigners state that ongoing council and NHS cuts mean that the services being made available to parents will be heavily reduced. They cite the example of 11 local authorities who have confirmed cutbacks to services for deaf children next year. The shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, is also concerned that despite the integrated services proposed by the Green Paper, the current government’s fragmented services will not be sufficient to cater to the complex multidisciplinary commissioning needs of children with SEN.
The Green Paper also proposes scrapping the current SEN system, which includes:
- School Action – for children who require extra support that can be provided by the school.
- School Action Plus – for children who require the services of professionals external to the school, such as child psychologists.
- Statement – for children with severe SEN.
The new proposal is for one single category of ‘special needs’, as the report’s conclusions found that many children on School Action or School Action Plus required better teaching or pastoral care, rather than needing a SEN ‘label’ per se. The Green Paper states that there has been an increase in the number of these pupils with special needs but without statements – up from 10% of all pupils in 1995 to 18.2% in 2010. This figure amounts to around 1.5 million children in England. Campaigners are concerned that under the new proposals, these children will effectively be unable to access support as they are no longer deemed to have SEN.
Sarah Bennington, March 2011
Written on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services. ITS is a private Speech and Language Therapy service based in Leicestershire and the East Midlands. It specialises in providing highly-skilled Speech and Language Therapists, but also associates with other therapeutic professionals, including Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Psychologists and Arts Therapists.
