SEND Provision: South-east England
Debate between Rebecca Paul and Peter Swallow(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Rebecca Paul (Reigate) (Con)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for obtaining this important and very timely debate on SEND provision in the south-east. First, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a serving Surrey county councillor. I was also a member of the Public Accounts Committee during its inquiry on support for children and young people with special educational needs.
SEND support in the south-east is in crisis. Children are not getting the support that they are legally entitled to at the right time, which is driving poorer outcomes and putting untold stress on families. My inbox, like those of many Members here, is full of examples: parents battling to secure much-needed support for their child to thrive, yet facing incompetence and fundamental misunderstandings of the law by the council; carers forced to give up work to stay at home with their child while they languish without school provision; and families driven to the brink of despair by the adversarial system. Those issues must be addressed, and fast, for the sake of our children and their loved ones.
Despite significant increases in recent years in SEND funding, to £10.7 billion, there has been no consistent improvement in outcomes for children and young people since 2019. Only half of EHCPs are issued within the 20-week statutory deadline, resulting in children having to wait too long for support. Shockingly, in about 98% of cases that go to a tribunal, the tribunal finds in favour of the family, indicating that something is going very wrong in the original decision-making process. It is clear that the overall system is not fit for purpose and is inadequately funded, making local authorities’ already difficult job in this area even harder.
Worryingly, a statutory override system has been put in place, which essentially allows the ever-growing SEND deficit on local authority books to be ignored. According to the recent Public Accounts Committee report, nearly half of all English local authorities are at risk of “effectively going bankrupt” when the statutory override ends.