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Memorandum submitted by Scope
Scope welcomes this opportunity to submit written evidence to the Select Committee Consultation on the separation of SEN assessment and funding, regarding the rights of disabled children to appropriately resourced education and support, and commends the Committee for investigating such an important issue.
Scope Scope's mission is to drive the change to make our society the first where disabled people achieve full equality. We will know that this is achieved when: · disablism is banished; · all disabled people of all ages and their families enjoy their full and equal human and civil rights; and · all disabled people are able to exercise full personal choice and control, with the right support, over their own lives.
By the term "disablism" we refer to any discriminatory, oppressive or abusive behaviour arising from the belief that disabled people are inferior to others. Scope's mission underpins all our work and all the activities included in Scope's Time to Get Equal campaign.
Scope has a particular focus on people with cerebral palsy. Many of the disabled people we support through Scope's information, employment, education and residential and day services have cerebral palsy and a significant number have multiple impairments and high levels of support need.
Scope's Response Scope welcome this request for written evidence on the separation of assessment from funding provision. The history of this challenging problem goes back to the Warnock recommendations of 1978 and Scope will not rehearse the arguments about that here, other than to repeat the Select Committees own conclusion in their report on SEN of July 2006, that the Warnock Framework is no longer fit for purpose.
Our experience is that parents who challenge the content of their child's statement of special educational needs do so for 3 principal reasons:
1) They do not believe or have not experienced the school named in the Statement as having the potential or actual capacity to meet their child's needs.
2) They believe that the Statement has been distorted to the degree that it does not correctly reflect their child's needs, so that the local authority can argue that one of their special schools can meet the need.
3) The Statement is insensitive to the wider difficulties experienced by the family, leading to a choice of school by the local authority that protects that authority from the costs and complexities of meeting the wider needs.
Parents are expected to engage in what is a highly expensive and complex, legal and bureaucratic process of assessment and Statementing; may have little confidence in the local authority as a result of previous contact; may be suffering from 'assessment fatigue'; are unlikely to be familiar with their rights and the DDA; and have little or no access to information about where, what or who could meet their child's education and related needs.
Local authorities also have constraints put upon them as they have a financial interest in ensuring disabled children are placed in their own schools and as such their own schools are usually named in the SEN statement.
The government via the Audit Commission apply pressure to local authorities to deter them from placing children in out of county placements which are very costly and according to research can impact negatively on family relationships and parental attachment; the local authority may be also be concerned that a request for a child to attend a special school may not be for educational reasons but for social care reasons, because parents feel they cannot 'cope'.
How might assessment of special educational needs be undertaken other than by the relevant local authority without the establishment of a new separate agency for the purpose? Scope believes that it is necessary to separate the funder from the assessor however, we feel that local authorities are still best placed to conduct assessments of need. On this basis we would advocate leaving responsibility for conducting assessments with local authorities rather than and instead remove their responsibility for funding statements of SEN.
Scope would suggest establishing a single multi-disciplinary children's disability service in each local authority area fuelled by pooled budgets, which would provide a single "Needs Assessment", incorporating the need for family support as well as educational support. Where SEN or disability support in an educational context is required, these specific needs would be extracted from the single assessment.
This approach would preserve existing good practice and local knowledge, including an understanding of the nature of local provision, local culture, extended family and community resources and the need for an intimate knowledge of related services such as transport and voluntary services. This also would overcome the problem of the statement of SEN being insensitive to the wider complexities of the family's situation. The call for joining-up children's service has been raised for many years. This structure could deliver that objective. This assessment would also have to be appealable. To resolve any conflict of interest experienced by the local authority as both a provider of a multi-disciplinary assessment and also as the sole provider of education services, Scope suggest that following an Assessment of Need which found SEN or disability support in education support was required, that the assessment board would declare there to be a direct educational payment (DEP) payable.
Parents could trade a DEP for an educational placement with the appropriate support and resources as outlined in the Assessment of Need, including a residential placement where the Assessment of Need had agreed that this was one of the wider requirements.
A DEP would not have a face value. Parents would be unaware of its value. Any school that believed it could meet the profile of the child's needs, including of course local maintained mainstream or special schools, could then offer their prospectus to the parents, inviting them to consider using their DEP in favour of that school.
DEPs would need be portable so if a parent felt their child's needs were not being met as agreed they could move their child, and their child's DEP, elsewhere.
This model would create far more of a level playing field, allowing the local authority to compete for DEPs in the same way as any other provider and creating an environment that encourages schools to maintain high standards and provide high quality services. It would preserve the best of the independent and non-maintained sector and would also encourage and incentivise mainstream providers to promote inclusion, as they could benefit from DEPs in the same way as a special school could.
Providers would exchange the DEP for funds with the DfES, from whom they would have to win approved provider status which would include approved provider costs. The DFES already owns the mechanism with which to do this, and regulate it, through OFSTED
Such as system is radical and would need piloting, but it would also be very likely to overcome many of the existing problems and disputes. It would enable schools to share expertise, a mainstream school for example could buy in specific support or expertise using the DEP from a local specialist provider and vice versa, encouraging inclusion whilst maintaining high quality provision.
This model might be more expensive but not necessarily so. It would create a single assessment process, something successive administrations have recognised as a need. It would preserve good schools irrespective of provider or sector and encourage high standards. It would provide real choice, incentivise inclusion both for parents and mainstream schools and reduce conflict between parents and local authorities. It would recognise and accommodate complexity and the interdependence of the various processes and thus the need to assess the family more widely than the educational assessment alone. How might local accountability for assessment be maintained if the local authority does not directly undertake the assessment? Scope is suggesting that the local authority maintain responsibility for undertaking the assessment. Accountability would be ensured in the usual way. What other issues need to be addressed in order to make the separation of assessment and provision effective? Disabled children and their families need appropriate social care and health support as well as educational support, which is why it is so important that a multi-disciplinary team carries out a holistic assessment of the child's needs. Choosing a school through the use of a DEP will not be useful if accessible transport is not available to ensure that the child can travel to the school of their choice. Equipment is also vitally important, some equipment such as communication aids ensure that the cognitive development of the child continues to develop as part of a structured educational environment. Parents who are carers also need support with the demands of caring for a disabled child. According to Mencap 7 out of 10 families provide more than 15 hours of care every day, and 5 out of 10 provide care during the night [1] . For those supporting people with the most severe impairments empowering carers requires giving them real resources in terms of support, money, comprehensive short break services, training, and appropriate quality services
Thank you for taking the time to read Scope's written evidence. Scope would welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that you may have about any of the information provided in this paper.
July 2007 |