Analysis: SEN Green Paper - The advent of parent power?

Parents of children who are disabled or who have special educational needs are to be given control over the support provided for their child and family, in the biggest reforms to SEN policy for 30 years.

They are to be at the heart of the decisions made about their child, including being given personal budgets, under the proposals set out in the Government's Green Paper, Support and Aspiration: a new approach to special educational needs and disability.

The consultation document published by the Department for Education envisages a system that gives parents more control and confidence, supports better life outcomes for young people and transfers power to frontline professionals and to local communities.

Ministers are committed to overhauling the current system, which they say often works against the wishes of families, leaves children frustrated at the lack of a right to support at school and makes parents bewildered and fraught at having to fight to obtain the services they need.

As with all policy papers, the devil is in the detail. But at this stage in the reform process, some of the details are a bit vague. 'There are a lot of different ideas at different stages of development here,' says Philippa Stobbs, principal officer with the Council for Disabled Children.

'Our concern is that these are being discussed at a time when local authority budgets have been cut very significantly and the very services that support children and families and schools with early intervention might be the services that are being diminished.'

The proposals make more than a passing nod to the Prime Minister's pet policy initiative, the Big Society, with the suggestion that local pilots looking at how to replace the statutory assessment and statement should explore whether the voluntary and community sector could co-ordinate assessment and bring greater independence to the process.

UNIQUE FAMILIES

The advent of parent power may be seen as the legacy of Ivan Cameron, the Prime Minister's son, who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy and was only six when he died in 2009. The document says, 'Early intervention from all the services on which families rely is essential, but the effectiveness of this support is undermined if it doesn't reflect each family's unique circumstances. Parents know their child best. As well as giving their own love and care, parents rely on health services, early years settings, schools and other people to help look after their child and help him or her have a happy childhood and fulfil his or her potential.

'It is crucial to families that these services work well together and that parents are empowered to make decisions about their child. Unfortunately, this is not what many families experience.'

However, while organisations working with SEN and disabled children and their families welcome the Green Paper, they voice reservations, particularly about how in the current climate of budget cuts the funds will be found to put it all into practice.

Karen Walker, head of children's services at the London Early Years Foundation, says, 'From our perspective, we are incredibly worried about the funding we are having withdrawn now.

'We are going to have to target the children with the most severe problems and needs, which means for those who might benefit from a little bit of help, the money is not going to be there. They are the children we might have put on a short intensive programme to bring them up to speed, but now the problem is we don't have that option. It is causing real consternation among the staff teams because they recognise they are not able to give that extra little bit of help that is needed.'

Kevin Williams, chief executive of the charity KIDS, welcomes the move to a single assessment procedure. He says, 'Until now, thousands of families have been burdened with extremely complex levels of bureaucracy just to establish their child's needs and entitlements, involving as many as 28 different professionals.

'However, I'm concerned that decisions that have already been made by local authorities regarding cuts to services for disabled children will undermine some of the aspirations outlined in the plan. We're already aware of 154 families with disabled children who are having services funded by local authorities and provided by KIDS cut in three weeks time. This is in just three out of 152 local authorities across the country.'

SCHOOL CHOICE

The document proposes giving parents a choice of school. But Ms Stobbs says, 'Our view is that there is not actually a choice now. It is sometimes quite difficult for parents to get their child into a mainstream school. It is quite often difficult for them to make sure the relevant support services are there. A lot of parents that we meet are "refugees" from mainstream school because they have not been able to secure the services they need for their child.

'I am not suggesting this happens to all parents, but we know that for a significant number who wanted their child to attend mainstream school, they could not make it work for them and opted for special schools. That was not their first choice. If we are giving parents a choice, then we need to make sure they have a real choice.'

Nicola Gibson, inclusion manager at the Pre-School Learning Alliance, says the current graduated response system works well in early years settings, giving practitioners time to observe a child, identify a need, put in extra support and monitor progress.

'Young children develop at different rates. Behavioural, speech, language and communication difficulties exist, and we can identify long-term underlying problems and identify them accurately. But some problems are linked to normal blips in development and can be helped with a little bit of extra support. I don't think the Green Paper explains properly what they are going to replace that period with, where we can reflect in the graduated response.'

Currently, more than one in five children are identified as having a special education need, but only 2.7 per cent have statements, where children have severe and complex needs requiring extra support. While campaigners welcome an end to the bureaucratic battles around statements, they call for guarantees that the new system will continue to give parents statutory protection.

Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society, says, 'Parents have told us that they really value the protections provided by statements, which are an essential tool in helping to fight for their child's rights and to hold schools and services to account if they fail to provide adequate support.

'Many parents we speak to have been battling for years to get their child's needs recognised, understood and met. If the Government is to remove statements, then they must ensure that they fulfil their promise to provide the same level of legal protection. Otherwise, they will be unsuccessful in their commitment to stop vulnerable children falling through the gaps.'

Srabani Sen, chief executive of the charity Contact A Family, agrees about ensuring accountability. 'The introduction of a simplified assessment process has the potential to make lives less stressful for families. However, the Green Paper is not clear about where responsibility lies to ensure that a joined-up package of support is delivered for disabled children and their families, and that those carrying out assessments have the right skills and knowledge.

'Professionals involved in a child's care must be made accountable if they do not deliver, and there is no clear indication of how this would work in the Green Paper. Our own research found that 60 per cent of families have a poor or unsatisfactory experience of being listened to by the professionals involved in their child's care.'

What matters now is that ministers listen to the parents and professionals responding to the Green Paper.

GREEN PAPER: KEY POINTS

The aim now is to test and consult on the Green Paper proposals and bring forward legislation in May 2012. There will be a four-month consultation period ending on 30 June.

The Government is inviting expressions of interest by June from local authorities to start pilots from September looking at developing a single assessment process and plan for children and young people and their families, and also to join the existing pilots looking at setting individual budgets.

Key points proposed are:

• - A robust system of checks involving health visitors and early years practitioners to assess children's development before the age of three and identify problems early.
• - A new single category for early years settings and schools to reduce the over-identification of SEN and replace the current graduated response of School Action and School Action Plus.
• - An 'Education and Health Care Plan' to replace the current statutory SEN statement by 2014. In the meantime, the process will be speeded up by reducing the time limit for statutory assessment.
• - Parents will be given their own budgets by 2014, giving them control over their child's funding.
• - Assessment plans will run from birth to 25 years old.
• - Services to be made more transparent for families, with local authorities and other support organisations setting out an offer of all the services available locally.
• - Trained key workers to help families navigate through the system.
• - Ensuring parents have a real choice of a range of schools.
• - Ensuring parents and local authorities always attempt mediation before making an appeal.
• - Parents to continue to have access to respite breaks.
• - Better training for teaching staff and head teachers.
• - Funding for phonics-based training and resources to support children needing extra help to learn to read.
• - Outside organisations will be able to bid to run Every Child a Talker, Every Child a Reader and Every Child A Counter programmes.
• - SEN specialists having input into the new national reading test for six-year-olds to identify those who need extra help.
• - A well-co-ordinated transition from children's to adults' health services, including the possibility of annual health checks from GPs for all disabled young people from the age of 16.
• - Access to better quality vocational and work-related learning options to enable young people to progress in their learning post-16.
• - Better opportunities and support to help young people get and keep jobs.

MORE INFORMATION:

Support and Aspiration: a new approach to special educational needs and disability, www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/CM 8027