Children with SEND: Assessments and Support Debate
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Lizzi Collinge
Main Page: Lizzi Collinge (Labour - Morecambe and Lunesdale)Department Debates - View all Lizzi Collinge's debates with the Department for Education
Children with SEND: Assessments and Support
Lizzi Collinge Excerpts(2 days, 18 hours ago)
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Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq.
I welcome the opportunity to speak about special educational needs and disability support. I know how important the issue is to many of my constituents, because every week, like many of us here, I receive heartbreaking casework and have to try to help so many children whom the system is failing. I have spoken before about the importance of early intervention, as many colleagues have today, and I very much welcome the Labour Government’s roll-out of Best Start centres. Only through that early help and early intervention will we really get on top of this issue.
The crisis has been a long time in the making and will take time to solve. Years of austerity have left our system unequipped to cope with rising demand and meet the needs of students. The cost of the failing system is staggering. We are firefighting. It costs loads of money, but is not actually helping anyone.
I know that so many parents have spent so many years advocating for their children, and that the prospect of reform is understandably very worrying and frightening. These people have been let down again and again by a system that is meant to support them, so they have good reason not to trust it, but I know that the Government and their Ministers are listening and trying to engage with families, including groups in my constituency. I was very pleased to hear the Secretary of State say in the main Chamber that, under a Labour Government, children will absolutely still retain a legal right to support. That is really important, but the way we deliver that support has to change, because it is not working. It is absolutely failing our families. There has to be a better way of doing it.
Kids who are waiting years for an EHCP, and parents who are at their wits’ end, cannot go on any longer. We cannot keep doing this harm to our children. We need to deal with this carefully, with responsibility, and in tandem with parents and children—that is the only way to get it right—but we cannot leave it as it is.