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Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton): I, too, welcome the opportunity to participate in this important debate. It comes in the middle of the consultation process on special educational needs, which will conclude on 9 January. The Minister will not be surprised to learn that I have quite a few questions. If she cannot respond to them in her winding-up speech, I hope that she will be kind enough to take note of them. When the consultation concludes on 9 January, I should be grateful if she would reply specifically to the questions raised in today's debate.
I am also grateful to the Minister for her recognition of the previous Government's work in this area. As she said, the Eduction Act 1981, which followed the Warnock report, set the framework of recognition for special educational needs and, in 1993, a code of practice gave statutory guidance to local education authorities, health authorities, social services and, most important, parents. I agree also with the multidisciplinary approach established by the previous Government, on which the Minister said that she would build. We welcome that as an extremely important move.
We can support much else in the consultation document. It is critical to identify problems at the earliest opportunity. Improved training of SEN teachers and other
support staff is very important also. We need better co-operation between local agencies in order to support children with special educational needs. As to early intervention, the Minister will know that health authorities in particular often hold a lot of information that should be transferred to LEAs and the education establishment at a much earlier stage. Despite much effort in that area, such information is often withheld until a child approaches full-time school age. If there is to be early intervention, that information must be exchanged and shared on a multidisciplinary basis at the earliest opportunity.
There are many questions arising from the consultation document, and I shall outline several issues that concern the Opposition. At the last Education questions, I asked the Minister about legal protection for children who receive statements and how that is enshrined in law at present. I remind her of the words in the press release issued by her right hon. Friend the Secretary of State when the Green Paper was announced on 22 October. The Secretary of State said:
The Green Paper states that about 3 per cent. of children have special educational needs and are involved in statementing. There are now about 233,000 statements, compared with 153,000 in 1991. Hon. Members who have been here for some time will know that the practice of adhering closely to the figures cited by Baroness Warnock in her excellent report--which was produced in the 1970s and became the basis of the 1981 Act--is a personal bone of contention. If the purpose of the Green Paper is to examine the overall situation--the Minister said today that that is its purpose--I hope that she will also consider the changes that have taken place in certain areas of special educational need since Baroness Warnock produced her report.
For example, the Warnock report mentions dyslexia, which was formally recognised in the 1993 code of practice. However, the report does not identify the condition as necessarily requiring a statementing process, which is what happens now. I shall give several other examples later. I ask the Minister to do some number crunching. If this process is to be meaningful, we must address the real needs of children, rather than apportioning need according to a set of statistics which may be out of date for all sorts of reasons.
I turn now to the number of statements that the Minister is considering. Will the proposal involving quotas be at odds with local education authorities' basic duty to consider individual need? The inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream education and in special schools--I listened carefully to the hon. Lady's remarks about the dividing line and children who fall either side of it--requires resources. It is not just in mainstream
education that we are concerned about the resources that support statements; if statements are based on a quota system, that may affect children in both mainstream education and special schools.
Children in specialised environments, such as special schools, are as much at risk from changes in provision resulting from cuts in resources as children in mainstream education. Therefore, their need for statement protection is every bit as great. Does the Minister accept that the proposal poses a real threat to the right of children in special schools to receive the provision that they need?
The proposals in the Green Paper also seek to ensure that, where possible, children with special educational needs are educated in mainstream schools. I know that many parents will welcome that approach. However, attempting to increase inclusion while removing children's rights to the provision that they require may be self-defeating. Should the Government not aim to strengthen the existing entitlement to ensure that the inclusive placements are successful?
The legal contract with schools mentioned in chapter 3, paragraph 9 of the Green Paper also raises some questions. There is a possibility of a new contract, different from what is currently in place. The Green Paper talks about strengthening
What advice has the Minister had on the implications of the Green Paper on what a school should provide before a statement is agreed, bearing in mind the High Court ruling on Phelps v. London borough of Hillingdon? The case was brought by a mother whose daughter had dyslexia, arguing that the psychologist should have diagnosed the dyslexia in October 1985, when she was nearly 12. Failing that, it should have been diagnosed subsequently as the girl experienced increasing difficulties.
As a result of the failure to diagnose the condition, the girl failed to receive the necessary provision, and her standard of literacy was lower than she would have achieved had she received that provision. The defendant argued that the psychologist had no duty of care to the plaintiff and that his role was only to advise the local education authority and the school. The judge's ruling that the psychologist owed a duty of care to the plaintiff has implications if there is to be a legal contract between the school and the parent before statementing.
Statementing must focus on identifying need so that the services and provisions that will help to meet that need during a child's education can be delivered. However, it is obvious that the possession of a statement in education has a more far-reaching benefit to the child. It is a passport for life. The Minister did not mention that and I should like her to reflect on it. Children with lifelong special educational needs who do not receive statements often hit the buffers when they come out of full-time education at 16 or 18. Because they have no formal statement about their needs as a child, they have enormous difficulty in accessing appropriate training, benefits and appropriate employment.
The Government have already said that they want to get more people with disabilities into employment. I am not suggesting that there should be lots of pieces of paper flying around with lots of bureaucracy for no purpose, but the statementing process goes beyond the age at which the child leaves school.
I mentioned earlier that I should like to draw the Minister's attention to certain conditions that particularly affect children and their parents. Those conditions, many of which are lifelong, often make it difficult for parents to get recognition from the medical profession. I have been in that extraordinary position. If certain conditions are not diagnosed early and do not receive early intervention, the education of the child is adversely affected.
There has always been a big debate about labelling. I am familiar with the arguments. I understand the reservations of some in the medical profession about labelling children too early, because they do not know how a learning difficulty will develop from an early age or how severe the disability will be. However, labelling is not a stigma. Statementing was once a stigma. I hope that the 1993 code of practice has put that to rest. I hope that the Minister will not be gulled by siren voices that say that labelling and statementing are a stigma. They are a passport, particularly for children with certain problems.
I was delighted to hear the Minister recognise the difficulties of having children with emotional and behavioural problems in classrooms. We all recognise the difficulties caused to the individual child and to the others being taught in the classroom with them. My sympathies lie particularly with any teacher trying to teach a class including one severely emotionally disturbed child or a child with challenging behaviour. Certain conditions give us special cause for concern.
The Green Paper notes on page 77:
In the past few years, there has been an explosion in the number of parent support groups for children with attention deficit disorder, otherwise known as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Those parents are desperately concerned that the condition should be better understood and that appropriate treatments and management should be developed. It is unfortunate that the condition is sometimes dismissed out of hand, and parents are criticised for their children's behaviour.
Will the Minister also consider another aspect of emotional disturbance in children? There have been changes in society and in the way in which people live in the past 15 years. Divorce is on the increase. For one reason or another, there are a lot of children in school who are emotionally disturbed because of a specific trauma in their life. I do not want to undervalue such needs or the necessity of providing appropriate support when the problem is identified. I should be interested to see the statistics that relate to the statement on page 77 of the Green Paper.
Baroness Warnock's report made suggestions about the number of children involved. There are clearly many children who would be classified as emotionally disturbed, albeit for a temporary period, who have to be catered for in the net of special educational needs. That must mean that the cake is being cut ever more thinly. I hope that the Minister will consider specifically how to address the problems of those children.
The concerns of parents about the appropriate education to be provided must be listened to by professionals. They need people to stand alongside them. As the Minister knows, one of the great difficulties is that some parents are not able to articulate their own and their children's needs. That gives cause for concern. Some parents cannot articulate their children's needs, but others do not want to kick up a fuss in case teachers, doctors or other professionals think they are making a fuss or take it out on them. Whatever changes the Minister makes, it is important that parents are listened to.
I refer the Minister to a paper that was sent to me by Contact A Family. It says:
The House will not be surprised to know that I shall conclude by talking about a particular group of children and their special educational needs--children with autism. I am a member of the national council of the National Autistic Society and this is Autism Awareness Week, so it is a timely opportunity for me to give yet another plug for their needs.
A recent survey found that one in three parents were being turned away by professionals when they expressed concerns about their children, yet those children were subsequently diagnosed as having autism. The survey also found that there was an average delay of almost four years from when parents first sought professional help to when they got a diagnosis. Ignoring and dismissing parents' concerns in that way leads to much greater problems for children and their families than is necessary.
Children with autism can be helped to learn and to reach their full potential if they are diagnosed early. More than 500,000 people in the United Kingdom have autistic spectrum disorder, which is a disability with a wide range of effects. Some children with autism have learning disabilities, whereas others do not. Some children have no language and some exhibit challenging behaviour. All of them, whatever the degree of their autism, find the world a confusing and frightening place. With the right support, however, the impact of autism on children and their families can be minimised.
I ask the Minister to look particularly at the physical adaptation of the mainstream environment for children with autism. She will know that there are specialist schools for autism where the teaching methods are quite different from those in mainstream schools. I have in my
constituency an excellent SEN school, Millwater school in Honiton, where in recent years the staff have adopted methods of teaching children with autism. I went there recently and the staff showed me what they were doing with the children. It is admirable work.
That type of teaching requires a more enclosed environment for the individual and much more structured programming in terms of what the child will do from one session to the next. Millwater school can offer that teaching in the earlier years, but it cannot follow it through until the child leaves school at 18. The school has established best practice. Indeed, teachers from other parts of Devon are trained by the teachers at Millwater school.
"The present law, including statements for some children, is there to protect the interests of the vulnerable. We shall not change that."
LEAs must, by law, deliver what is written into statements. Changes to the statementing process that recognise need must have legal backing. For example, an LEA would be legally obliged to deliver speech therapy if that were written into a statement. If speech therapy were suddenly to become the responsibility of the health service, although it remained a recognised need, there would be no statutory obligation on the health service to deliver it. I do not wish to see a diminution in the legal protection afforded to individual children through changes in the statementing process.
"the assurance to parents that schools will offer effective and consistent support of stages 1-3"
of the statementing process. Are the Government thinking of legally binding contracts? If so, will there be an appeals system? There must be a right of appeal in those circumstances. The Minister has identified the bureaucratic nature of the statementing process, but there must be checks and balances associated with rights. Will the Minister say whether the Government intend that parents will have a right of appeal on the school contract?
"The number of children perceived to be falling within this group is increasing."
That is an ambiguous statement about children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Will the Minister say before the results of the consultation are printed whether that is only a perception or whether the numbers are genuinely increasing?
"Most parents are at best wary and at worst downright hostile to the notion that their child's statement of special educational needs should be replaced or reduced by LEA discretion. As the Green Paper states . . . some LEAs have sought ways of restricting the rise in the number of statements and that has undoubtedly created some 'mistrust and conflict in an area where trust and co-operation are essential.'"
One of the groups of parents who have particular difficulty are those with children who have a medical condition that the LEA tends not to recognise for all sorts of reasons. It is unacceptable that LEAs should pick and choose among conditions that they think they should recognise and those that they think they should not.
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