'The system is set up not to have our children in it, so it needs to change.'
'The system is set up not to have our children in it, so it needs to change.'
Parents whose children have been failed by the special education needs system are now taking matters into their own hands to campaign for change
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By Sarah Ward
On Saturday dozens of parents whose children have special educational needs gathered at a social club in Corby to come up with a plan. How to fix the system that is failing their children and many hundreds, if not thousands of others like them in Northamptonshire.
The stories shared were upsetting and amount to a scandal. Children out of education for years; suicidal children unable to access mental health support; parents forced to take the local authority to tribunal just to get an assessment and the council repeatedly conceding at the eleventh hour; waiting lists of two years for a necessary consultant appointment; parents giving up work to care for and educate their child.
The list of problems is endless and was spelt out in a report published recently by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission following a two week inspection of the service run by North Northamptonshire Council.
The report said that families were being driven into crisis by the system, which had ‘widespread, systemic failings’. Not enough special school places; a lack of information sharing; too little action, too late, are all converging to create a system in which many children were being failed.
The leader of the council, Cllr Jason Smithers, apologised on the day the report was published and said immediate action would be taken, but did not outline any of the measures that would be taken.
He did not respond to an invitation to go along to Saturday’s first public meeting of the North Northamptonshire Send Action Group and hear the problems first hand. Cllr Scott Edwards, the cabinet member who has been responsible for children’s services in the council since it began in 2021, did respond but said he couldn't attend due to a prior engagement.
The authority’s new chief executive Adele Wylie, head of SEN services Charlotte Franks and the interim director of children’s services David Watt were also invited to attend. David Watt wrote to the group’s coordinator Julie Heron to say senior council officers would meet her for a private meeting but she refused, adamant that meetings must be open and transparent.
One mother Maria spoke of the long running battle to secure the correct provision for her daughter, who was not coping after joining her secondary school. She said:
“She became so overwhelmed that she broke - not completely, but she broke.
“Things went from bad to worse. She went for two weeks without eating. She was self harming and her mental health plummeted. She did not want to be on this planet anymore.”
Marie, who has a legal background, said she had been in situations where she has had to ‘beg for support’ for her child and said her daughter was at one stage out of school for three months without any contact from her school to check on her welfare. She detailed a two-year wait for mental health services and one monitoring call that lasted just one minute 48 seconds. She has won compensation from the council through the local government ombudsman but does not see the victory as worth celebrating.
She said:
“Although we won, there is nothing to be happy about. There is nothing in the local offer that will meet her needs.
“They don’t have enough provision for children with mental health needs. She leaves school in one year and her chances of getting a GCSE are zero.”
She said the local authority uses scare tactics and parent blame throughout their communications with families and regularly breaks the law regarding education for children with SEN, without facing consequences.
Kay, who until January was a school SENCO (special education needs coordinator), also spoke at the meeting. She said she has spent three years working at a school and helping families to try and get the support they were entitled to for their children.
She said:
“The biggest issue is the fight. The relentless fight, day in, day out.”
She said as a SENCO, she and the school would be on the front line while the “local authority is hiding. They are behind an email wall. They are quite happy to send SENCO and teaching staff to be fired at.”
She said she could only get so far in helping the families and while she could offer empathy she became frustrated at not being able to get them the support they were entitled to.
She said: “It is fighting for something that just should be happening.”
We contacted Cllr Scott Edwards to ask why he did not attend the meeting and put to him a number of questions about the SEN provision in the North of the county.
We have not received a response at the time of publication.
The Labour parliamentary candidate Lee Barron, along with Corby councillor Mark Pengelly has been working with the families and listening.
He said: “The system is designed to fail. This is 14 years of managed decline. There are children living in North Northamptonshire who have not been to school for three years. People are being pushed into poverty by this. It is just awful. It makes me absolutely determined about the absolute need for change.”
He said the group had a meeting lined up with shadow education minister Bridget Phillipson and he hoped that they would be able to help shape Labour policies on providing care for children with SEN.
Speaking at the meeting was Robert Martin, a nurse and parent of SEN children from Leicestershire went along to offer the group advice following his own battle and campaigning in the bordering county.
He said the way families are being treated by local authorities is ‘abhorrent’.
He said: “They really need to stop blaming parents for asking for the rights of their children.
“This [lack of enough SEN provision] is leading to a pandemic of children not being in school.”
(The current figure in North Northants of a child without a school place is 312, but the number is considered to be much higher as many children are counted as home educated, a decision by parents sometimes to avoid a fine from the council for their child not being in school).
He said some solutions to the current broken SEN system were: changing the funding models for school; ensuring joint working between health and education services; rebuilding sure start centres to increase early intervention and ending the reliance on the private sector to provide special school places.
He also said a change was needed to employment rights to allow for flexible working for parent carers and also to the Children’s Act 1989, as child protection is often being used as a ‘scare tactic’ to intimidate parents.
Julie Heron, who is currently fighting to receive an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) for her daughter, and who is leading the North Northants Send Action Group, said she formed her group because she ‘felt there was no choice left’.
She said:
“There are issues everywhere. What I want is to have five clear aims on a local level that we can campaign on. We will be in the council chamber demanding change.
“The system is set up not to have our children in it, so it needs to change.”
The group will get together its aims over the next few weeks and then its campaigning will begin. We will follow their progress and continue our reports about this huge issue.
More from us
https://www.nnjournal.co.uk/p/special-report-dangerous-and-immoral
Clearly the Conservatives have no plans to remediate the situation so making vague promises and staying away from events is all you can expect.
The latest Cabinet meeting in West Northamptonshire blamed Children's services cost for not being able to repairs the numerous"Potholes" in the County. The North and the West Council’s see Children's services being the causes of their financial problems. Mental health like SEND is being seen as the enemy. It remind me that in the 1930 Hitler did eliminate Children's with any disability of any kind as he wanted a "pure race".
Is that what the Councillors are really looking for?. They are scared of a public meeting for fear of being lynched? Shame on them.