Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
6yr battle feels like I’m on trial
Ombudsman to investigate school complaints; and development of more employment and training opportunities for over-16s.
The Government has announced it is injecting £14billion into schools over the next three years. It has also pledged an extra £700million for kids with SEND in 2019/20.
But Tania said: “£700million alone is simply not enough to change local authority SEND behaviour, and it
Is your child among the one million affected by changes around SEND children and EHCP rulings? Are you battling to get the best education and effective help for your child?
won’t address the other major problems in the system. The funding has only been announced for one year.
“Realistically, a £700million cash injection into the SEND system would only restore local authority funding
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SUE Dickson has been battling for six years to get support for her son.
Now 15, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s at nine and, while extremely bright and articulate, he struggles in class and suffers from anxiety.
Sue, 56, from Hertfordshire, said: “We’ve applied twice for an EHCP but on both occasions it was turned down and we went to tribunal.
“That’s meant to be an ‘informal’ process but it feels as if you’re on trial.
“I have been tutoring my son for the past five years – having to learn chemical equations and other subjects.
“Now he’s in his GCSE year and the toll this is taking on my husband and me is immense. Is it any wonder that 84% of adults with autism are not in full-time employment?
“Instead of supporting these children we’re locked in an adversarial system that pitches parents against schools and is wasting the money that could be used to improve their lives.”
positions back to roughly where they were before austerity. But it isn’t just money, it’s culture change that is key. You can throw millions at the system, but if councils don’t teach their SEND staff, school leaders and teachers to follow the law, nothing will change.”
She added: “A 20% increase in tribunal appeals last year is a good illustration of what’s going wrong in the SEND system, with £100million spent by councils on legal appeals since 2014 that could have been spent on children and young people.”
Nearly 9 in 10 complaints about the EHCP process are found in favour of parents, said a report by Michael King, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, describing it as “exceptional and unprecedented.
He said councils’ “severe financial constraints” were no excuse for failing to meet children’s statutory rights.
Tania from Farnham, Surrey, added: “What’s more worrying is that it’s only a small percentage of parents who feel able to fight the system. Many don’t know their rights, or feel empowered enough to complain, or simply don’t have the energy after caring for their child and putting food on the table.”
This might explain why more than 8,000 children with SEND currently have no school place. They are also more likely to be affected by offrolling, when a child is removed from a school for the school’s benefit, rather than in the child’s best interests.
Tania and husband Marco, both 52, feel lucky they were able to fight the system and accept their son’s difference and that of his young sibling, diagnosed with similar conditions.
Ultimately, it enabled their boys to flourish. However, Tania – a member of national SEND advisory groups for Ofsted and a panel to improve SEND school leadership – is aware thousands of other parents do not have the same ability to take on the system.
And she has devoted her life to giving those parents a voice.
See specialneedsjungle.com