As reported by BBC news, parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) say they are struggling to secure suitable school places for them
Anna Geldard spent £20,000 fighting for the Education, Health and Social Care Plan (EHCP) her child is entitled to. She said it was “so stressful” and the emotional impact was far greater than even the financial cost to her family.
The government said the SEND system was under review and it had also increased SEND funding to £8bn in 2021-22. An EHCP is a legal document that sets out the child’s needs in these areas and the support they require.
Some families struggle to obtain an EHCP however and feel intimidated by the “adversarial” and detailed legal process involved, parent-led campaigners Send Crisis group said.
“You’re literally having to fight people to get what you know your child is actually legally entitled to,” Anna, from Somerset, said.
Her daughter is autistic with developmental language disorder and specific learning difficulties in writing and spelling that Anna describes as a form of dyslexia.
She began struggling to fit into mainstream education as she progressed through primary school and matters came to a head in Year 5.
“She started to refuse to go to school so she would literally physically hide,” said Anna.
“When I spoke to school about it and I said, ‘could she please be assessed by an educational psychologist because she’s a lovely girl, she’s a compliant girl, this is not naughty behaviour, this is something really wrong’.
“They said they couldn’t justify it because they only have a budget for two hours or something for an educational psychologist.”
Her daughter stopped attending classes in December 2019 when she was due to begin secondary school. In the end she missed a whole year, although this was partly due to waiting for a place at her chosen special school.
The process was further complicated because after the EHCP had been obtained, Somerset County Council’s educational psychologist recommended a mainstream school for her, a decision that Anna’s family appealed against at tribunal. She said that she did not find it easy to raise the funds to fight the council psychologist’s recommendation.
“We had family to help us but how many people can do that really? Not everyone could.”
A spokesperson from Somerset County Council said it was “working hard and investing heavily” in the area.
“While we cannot comment on individual cases, we can say every young person is different and their needs will be different,” the spokesperson said.
“Decisions about education health and care plans are made by an expert panel in discussion with parents/carers, and ensuring the best life chances and educational outcomes is at the heart of all our decision-making.”
Anna’s frustration is shared by many other parents who feel they are “fighting a system” where local authorities are unwilling to pay for EHCP assessments and place a child in a special school.
Emily Carr, from Kent, said: “My son has a diagnosis of autism and he really struggled in mainstream, he was overwhelmed by the size and the demands and the noise.”
She said while he was academically able he found the school environment difficult to cope with in terms of sensory processing. Some days he would “curl up into a ball” because of the stress.
As a result her family de-registered him from school and paid privately for him to complete his GCSEs online. In total they spent about £10,000 on private tuition, on top of the legal costs of securing an EHCP.
It was only when they were eventually referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), which in turn recommended an EHCP, that they secured one. Having obtained it, Emily too had to appeal against the local authority’s recommendation of sending him to another mainstream school.
She said she employed professional help because she “didn’t feel confident” making the appeal by herself, given the “detailed legal procedure” involved and how emotionally invested she was in the outcome. Her son is now “doing fabulously well” at a special school in further education.
“The whole system really needs quite a serious overhaul it feels very, very adversarial with the local authorities.
“They’re looking for every reason possible to meet that legal requirement at the minimum possible costs they can get away with.
“I don’t blame them, I recognise that it comes from finance.”
Kent County Council’s director for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, Mark Walker, said: “Kent County Council carried out an Education and Health Care (EHC) needs assessment at this family’s request and a final Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) was issued in February 2019.
“The plan named a mainstream school as this was deemed to be most appropriate for the child’s needs.
“The family exercised their right to appeal this element of the plan at a First-tier Tribunal.
“The case did not progress to a hearing, with KCC agreeing to name the particular special school the parent had requested.”
The council also said that if a student had registered for home-schooling the family was responsible for all educational provision, including financial costs.
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