For parents whose children have special educational needs or disabilities (Send), getting help can resemble an adversarial battle. Over the last decade, parents have increasingly resorted to taking councils to court for failing to carry out assessments for education, health and care plans (EHCPs), or for issuing a plan that fails to recognise their child’s needs. Cases heard at tribunal have soared by 580% since 2011. Delayed support is harming children’s education and leaving many in distress. Parents who don’t have the time, money or confidence to fight their council, or who don’t speak English as a first language, are especially likely to see their children go without the help they need.
When the Northamptonshire Chronicle recently submitted a freedom of information request to its local council, the newspaper found it had spent £275,000 on fighting such cases at tribunal. Most of these will be lost; 95% go in parents’ favour. The cost of providing specialist support has the potential to bankrupt local authorities, one council treasurer recently wrote. Faced with rising demand for EHCPs, councils seem to be dragging out the process to save money. Similarly, huge waiting lists have led some NHS managers to drastically restrict initial autism assessments for children. Unless that is reversed, a greater number of children will go undiagnosed and miss out on support.
Because more children are now diagnosed as neurodivergent, and medical advances mean children with serious disabilities are thankfully living longer, the number of children with Send has grown. Yet rising demand isn’t the only cause of this crisis. Conservative policies all but guaranteed the difficulties many parents now face. The government introduced EHCPs in 2014 and raised the maximum entitlement age to 25, but gave councils no extra funding to cover this. Meanwhile, swingeing cuts have decimated council budgets and reduced school resources and teaching assistants, leaving mainstream schools less able to manage children with complex needs.
The Department for Education (DfE) has signed up 34 councils to its “safety valve programme”, which bails them out on the condition they reduce specialist support by keeping more children in mainstream schools. This amounts to cutting services in exchange for cash. More schools should be encouraged to support children with Send, yet the government’s dogmatic pursuit of school freedom and forceful move towards academies has made some schools less inclusive. The disciplinary ethos praised by ministers, together with the zealous drive towards exam results, can create a challenging environment for children with Send.
For many children, the EHCP, a legally binding document, is one of the only routes towards adequate support. There have been tentative steps to resolve these problems. The government’s recent improvement plan pledged a 50% increase in funding for Send services and specialist schools, yet this won’t be enough to cover rising demand, nor the funding cuts that councils have suffered. The DfE has proposed introducing mandatory mediation between parents and councils to reduce the number of cases at tribunal, creating another hurdle in the system. The current wait for a tribunal hearing, one of the few mechanisms parents have to hold councils to account, is a year. As long as the government remains more focused on cutting costs than on supporting Send children, those with complex needs will continue to be let down.
