Select Committee on Education and Skills Written Evidence


Memorandum submitted by The Bridge for Social Communication

1.  INTRODUCTION

  Current figures estimate that 1:100 of the population have Autistic Spectrum Difficulties. For children—and others whose social difficulties may arise from ADHD, ADD, Dyspraxia—there is a high risk of bullying, exclusion and isolation.

  Their relationships often suffer from the pressure this puts on them and can even lead to family breakdown. Yet despite the high risk, to date, no child accessing—the bridge- has been excluded from school.

  —the bridge—, is a Richmond-based charity, set up in 2002 to help children and families with social communication difficulties by providing a range of services. The majority of the children are from mainstream schools and attached units, although some of the older children now attend specialist secondary provision. Through careful use of therapists' advice, the children have fun while participating in activities aimed at helping them to integrate more fully into society. While the children have fun, parents meet in support groups. Our activities include:

    —  Talking Group—five to seven year olds develop social skills through games and play.

    —  Talking Group Drama—social interaction and fun for children from seven to 13.

    —  Sport—introducing social skills through team games, six to 13-year-olds.

    —  Activate—Occupational and Speech and Language therapy for pairs of children socialising together, for five to 13-year-olds.

    —  Inform—Parent/Professional discussion evenings.

    —  Liase—Work with local and national bodies to find innovative solutions to shortages in service provision and increase best practice. This includes providing multi-disciplinary teacher training for teaching staff where—the bridge—acts as the co-ordinator on behalf of schools and health professionals.

Synopsis of Findings

    (a)  That SEN funding relates to education and health yet services are funded separately with no apparent relationship to individual statemented need in terms of incidence, setting or outcomes for children in the longer term. This causes serious problems for effective service delivery to promote good outcomes for ASD children. Even the latest National Service Framework guidelines may not be sufficiently clear in terms of how education commissions health services to overcome current problems.

    (b)  That ASD is a newly emerging area of need without the benefit of longer term planning for service delivery in comparison to that for the visual or hearing impaired. There is a case for special status to put services in place. This might be done through the establishment of local, multi-professional/NGO groups with commissioning and planning responsibilities as outlined in the National Autism Plan for Children

    (c)  That parents should be recognised as the fixed point for the child's care and provided with training and support to enable them to work alongside professionals. Equally all professionals need to have clear guidelines for multi-disciplinary working and service delivery to make the most of health and education budgets focussed around the child.

  The information contained in this paper is the result of consultation with members and users of services provided by—the bridge—and NAS Richmond. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the trustees of—the bridge—for social communication.

2.  PROVISION FOR SEN PUPILS IN "MAINSTREAM" SCHOOLS: AVAILABILITY OF RESOURCES AND EXPERTISE; DIFFERENT MODELS OF PROVISION

  *  A mixed, flexible provision of SEN placements, as envisaged by the Government, to encompass inclusion, specialist units and special schools is also supported by parents canvassed who need to see that individual need is considered and choice is available to them. However when it comes to practice parents in Richmond report the following:

    (a)  A perceived overarching indifference to service users and lack of rigour/strategic planning in the way decisions are made relating to SEN provision for the ASD community.

    (b)  That councillors have expressed publicly their inability to accurately appraise SEN matters put in front of them by officers and that there is a need for overview and scrutiny of this area of public service. This request, backed by parent groups, has been taken off the agenda for the education and leisure committee.

    (c)  Poor communication with parent groups in terms of planning, feeding back and problem solving on SEN matters is leading to a reliance on SEN tribunal to negotiate between parents and the LEA on many occasions.

    (d)  There is concern that the current allocation of SEN resources, such as EP services, are made according to the numbers of children claiming free school meals at a school. This does not reflect the reality of SEN children in settings or delivery of the statement.

    (e)  Furthermore discussions about devolving SEN budgets on similar lines to school heads is causing concern about how effective this would be in solving problems as buying power would be diluted. Some consider this to be a method of the LEA trying to step aside from dealing with issues relating to SEN inclusion.

    (f)  Currently special units in Richmond have no allocation of Educational Psychology services made available to them.

    (g)  That the sixth form college in Richmond appears to have no training budget for ASD pupils or a clear, college wide strategy on ASD inclusion despite having a number of children on its roll.

    (h)  That children with above average intelligence and an ASD diagnosis on school action plus are not given priority at transition and hence their secondary placements could fail causing mental anguish.

    (i)  That home-educated ASD children are not able to access support services to help parents with curriculum differentiation and delivery.

    (j)  That parents are not always treated as partners in education.

    (k)  There are on-going problems relating to the provision of therapy within schools at primary, secondary levels and tertiary levels caused by the health/education divide and current service commissioning priorities.

    (l)  That specialist, peripatetic ASD teachers are not available in Richmond although there are teachers for hearing and sight impaired children. This service is available in other London boroughs. Richmond schools report benefits when visiting professionals help with curriculum differentiation.

    (m)  That methods for multi-disciplinary working and responsibility for delivering teaching programmes are not always clearly outlined between the teaching staff, support staff and health professionals. Consequently valuable information given to a learning support assistant may not be followed through in terms of programme delivery. Parents are often left out of this planning and so unable to follow through work at home.

    (n)  That the primary concern of the LEA and council appears to be budgetary control and not educational outcome.

3.  RAISING STANDARDS OF ACHIEVEMENT FOR SEN PUPILS

  Concern is reported about the following:

    (a)  The role of the SENCO as an administrator and as an expert to help differentiate the curriculum for ASD children is unrealistic in practice. Time and skills for this role are often not available and so in reality the work is left to Learning Support Assistants who are not sufficiently trained to take on the responsibility, which should in fact be that of the teacher.

    (b)  The division of responsibility between the teacher and LSA. LSAs are reported as being used to do a range of jobs around the class-room which are not related to the child's needs and in other cases teaching-staff devolve responsibility for the child to the LSA.

    (c)  The need for specialist, visiting teaching staff who can provide differentiated programmes of work for ASD children and problem solving experience. This role is established in other London boroughs.

    (d)  Teachers need to be able to look beyond the National Curriculum and read between the lines of the statement to differentiate work, with the help of specialist advisors, and deliver work to children that is 95% attainable and 5% stretch.

    (e)  Training as piloted by—the bridge—, which provides input from speech and language, occupational therapy and educational psychology on an annual basis to mainstream teaching staff is providing a starting point for addressing these issues.

4.  THE SYSTEM OF STATEMENTS OF NEED FOR SEN PUPILS ("THE STATEMENTING PROCESS")

    (a)  It is difficult for parents to police the LEA's decisions against the rights of their child and to monitor the preparation of a statement without legal advice. There is a belief that this difficulty is being used to `dupe' parents and save the LEA money. For example, despite case law and good practice guidance, there appears to be an ongoing habit of putting speech and language therapy into the health rather than educational part of the statement. Even when this is changed after a request from parents the provision is documented as broadly as possible by the LEA, making it difficult for parents to have a document that will enable them to access funds for the service when these health professionals fail to meet the statemented needs of the child because of staff shortages.

    (b)  The process takes too long and in the meantime the child's education, social relationships and self-esteem can be severely compromised.

5.  THE ROLE OF PARENTS IN DECISIONS ABOUT THEIR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION

    (a)  That parents should be acknowledged as the central point of continuing care for their children and be offered access to training and support services so that they can work alongside professionals to deliver the best outcome for their child. However, parents would find key-workers very helpful.

October 2005





 
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