Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on supporting disabled children and families to recover from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Will Quince
The department continues to work closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on supporting disabled children and their families. Since June 2020, we have announced £4.9 billion to support education recovery. This includes support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Our recovery programmes have the flexibility to support those pupils most in need, including children with SEND. We have also provided additional funding for those interventions that the evidence tells us will have a significant impact on high quality tutoring and great teaching.
We have consistently prioritised children who attend specialist settings by providing additional uplifts both in the 2020 Catch-up Premium and in the 2021 Recovery Premium, and providing the flexibility to deliver provision based on pupils’ needs. Specialist settings also received an uplift to deliver the summer schools programme.
We have ensured that settings have the flexibility to target this to meet the needs of their pupils and students. In addition, the department continues to work hard to ensure children and young people are given access to therapies and equipment so that the right support is in place for all children and families, including addressing the backlog in assessments.
We are providing over £42 million in financial year 2021-22 to continue funding projects to support children with SEND. This investment will ensure that specialist organisations around the country can continue to help strengthen local area performance, support families, and provide practical support to schools and colleges. This includes £27.3 million to the Family Fund in financial year 2021-22 to support over 60,000 families on low incomes raising children and young people with disabilities or serious illnesses.
Asked by: Marion Fellows (Scottish National Party - Motherwell and Wishaw)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what fiscal steps he is taking to help ensure that the necessary (a) health services, (b) therapies and (c) physical equipment is in place for disabled children and their families.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
The forthcoming Spending Review will set out the Government’s spending plans for health and social care for future years. On 6 September 2021 we announced an additional £5.4 billion for the National Health Service to support the COVID-19 response over the next six months, bringing the total Government support for health services to over £34 billion in 2021/22. This includes £2 billion to reduce waiting times for patients, including disabled children.
We are working with the Department for Education and NHS England and NHS Improvement to improve the provision of health and care services for disabled children, including access to therapies and equipment. In 2020, NHS England and NHS Improvement published guidance making clear that restoration of essential community services must be prioritised for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities aged up to 25 years old and who have an Education Health and Care Plan in place or are going through an assessment.
Asked by: Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to include disabled children in the levelling up agenda and help them recover from the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Will Quince
We are committed to helping all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), to make up learning lost as a result of COVID-19. Since June 2020, the department has announced more than £3 billion to support education recovery in schools, which includes support for children with SEND, 16-19 providers and early years to help pupils make up education lost as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The department’s recovery programmes have the flexibility to support those pupils most in need, including children with SEND, with additional funding provided for those interventions that the evidence tells us will have a significant impact on high quality tutoring and teaching.
We have consistently prioritised children who attend specialist settings by providing additional uplifts, both in the 2020 catch-up premium and in the 2021 recovery premium and providing the flexibility to deliver provision based on pupils’ need.
Additionally, specialist settings have also received an uplift to deliver the summer schools programme.
The department has also ensured that schools, colleges, and universities have the flexibility to target this to meet the needs of their pupils and students. In addition, we continue to work hard to ensure children and young people are given access to therapies and equipment so that the right support is in place for all children and families, including addressing the backlog in assessments.
The department is providing over £42 million in the 2021-22 financial year to continue funding projects to support children with SEND. This investment will ensure that specialist organisations around the country can continue to help strengthen local area performance, support families, and provide practical support to schools and colleges. This includes £27.3 million to the Family Fund in the 2021-22 financial year to support over 60,000 families on low incomes raising children and young people with disabilities or serious illnesses.
Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the report by the Disabled Children’s Partnership, Then There Was Silence, published on 10 September 2021, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the finding in that report that fewer than four in 10 children with an Education and Health Care Plan attended school between January and March 2021.
Answered by Will Quince
We welcome the research from the Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP). The impact of the lockdown in early 2021 on children and young people with education, health and care plans (EHCP) was reflected in Government policy, including ensuring children with EHCPs were provided with suitable, high quality remote education. Guidance to schools on meeting this duty for children with EHCPs included putting in place reasonable adjustments as necessary, so that pupils and students with SEND could successfully access remote education alongside their peers.
While attendance is now far higher, with approximately 87% of all pupils with an EHCP on roll in state-funded schools in attendance on 16 September 2021[1], we recognise the implications of being out of school for children and young people with SEND who have an EHCP. We have prioritised education recovery funding for specialist settings by providing additional uplifts, recognising the additional costs involved. We have also ensured that settings have the flexibility to target this to meet the needs of their pupils and students. In addition, we continue to work hard to ensure children and young people are given access to therapies and equipment so that the right support is in place for all children and families, including addressing the backlog in assessments.
We continue to work closely with the DCP and monitor to identify the impacts the COVID-19 outbreak has had on children and young people with SEND and the implications for our policies. We also continue to closely monitor attendance rates.
Asked by: Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what fiscal steps they are taking to help disabled children, young people and families (1) to recover from missed health and social care services during the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) to access the therapies, care, equipment and health services they need in for their future wellbeing.
Answered by Lord Kamall
The forthcoming Spending Review will set out the Government’s spending plans for health and social care for future years. On 6 September, we announced an additional £5.4 billion to support the COVID-19 response over the next six months - a total of more than £34 billion this year. This includes £2 billion to tackle the elective backlog and reducing waiting times for patients, including disabled children.
We are working with the Department for Education and NHS England and NHS Improvement to improve the provision of health and care services for disabled children, including access to therapies and equipment. In 2020, NHS England and NHS Improvement made clear that the restoration of essential community services must be prioritised for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities aged up to 25 years old and who have an Education Health and Care Plan in place or are going through an assessment. We are supporting access to appropriate disability equipment via the NHS Supply Chain, which maintains a framework contract for the supply of rehabilitation and disabled services equipment, such as paediatric wheelchairs.
Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of providing additional funding for disabled children’s health services at the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review to support access to appropriate disability services and equipment.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Further details on the next Spending Review will be set out in due course. As part of COVID-19 recovery planning we are working with the Department for Education and NHS England and NHS Improvement to improve the provision of health services to disabled children.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - Wolverhampton South West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what Government support is being provided to ensure that children with special educational needs can access (a) specialist playgrounds and (b) play centres that cater for children with sensory needs in their local area.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We continue to prioritise support for children and young people with special educational needs, including those with sensory needs, and their families. Children and young people with an education, health and care plan should be allowed to continue attending their education setting if their parent wants them to (or, for post-16 provision, if the young person wants to attend). This will mean that those children and young people can continue to access sensory support at their school or college.
Parents and carers may continue to access respite care to support them in caring for their disabled children during the national lockdown, including both services which care for children away from home and care which is delivered in the family home. Guidance for parents on early years providers, schools and colleges, which sets out that respite provision for families of disabled children can continue to operate, is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-parents-and-carers-need-to-know-about-early-years-providers-schools-and-colleges-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak.
In terms of access to specialist playgrounds, under national lockdown rules, outdoor playgrounds can remain open. The full guidance for this can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-managing-playgrounds-and-outdoor-gyms/covid-19-guidance-for-managing-playgrounds-and-outdoor-gyms.
We are also providing £40.8 million for the Family Fund this year to support over 85,000 families on low incomes raising children with disabilities or serious illnesses. This includes £13.5 million to specifically address needs arising from the COVID-19 outbreak. These grants can be used to purchase a range of things including sensory toys and equipment.
Asked by: Marco Longhi (Conservative - Dudley North)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment he has made of the accessibility of (a) community and (i) green-space amenities for children in (i) Dudley and (ii) England with special education needs and/or disabilities.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The provision of community and green space amenities, including their design and equipment is the responsibility of the Local Authority. The Local Authority has a duty of care under the Equality Act of 2010 to make reasonable adjustments to prevent those protected characteristics, including disability, experiencing a disadvantage. Section 149 of the Act places an over-arching duty on Local Authorities to eliminate discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The duty expressly includes taking steps to meet the needs of disabled persons. Further detail can be found in the Act which can be accessed here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents. The responsibility for local authorities falls to MCHLG.
The Children and Nature Programme is a major programme funded by Department for Education which aims to support children from disadvantaged backgrounds to have better access to natural environments. The programme prioritises pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, and engagement with school. The main target audience for the programme are schools with the highest proportion of disadvantaged pupils, Alternative Provision Institutions (API) including but not limited to Pupil Referral Units, and importantly special schools, so many of the children who are impacted by the programme will have special educational needs and/or disabilities.
The Programme comprises three delivery projects and an evaluation project. The largest project in the programme is the Nature Friendly Schools Project, which is delivering greener grounds and pupil visits to green spaces for schools with the highest proportion of disadvantaged pupils. The Government is planning to start delivery to two schools in the Dudley area from April; Hawbush Primary School in Brierley Hill and Crestwood Secondary School in Kingswinford. We are also supporting the Community Forest and Woodland Outreach Project, which aims to increase and help sustain community forest and woodland outreach activities being delivered to school children, particularly those in disadvantaged areas. In addition to this the Growing Care Farming Project aims to achieve a transformational change in the scale, scope and uptake of care farming services in England for children and adults facing disadvantage or social exclusion, to benefit their health and wellbeing and their social and educational development. The evaluation project will deepen our understanding of the effectiveness of nature-based interventions and how activities in nature impact pupils’ health and wellbeing. We are also supporting national landscapes in their aim of helping everyone, including children and young people, discover and engage with protected landscapes to benefit the health and wellbeing of the whole nation. The responsibility for these programmes falls under DEFRA.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase the level of sensory equipment in primary schools.
Answered by Michelle Donelan - Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
Every school is required to identify and address the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) of their pupils. Schools also have duties under the Equality Act (2010) towards individual disabled children and young people. They must make reasonable adjustments, including the provision of auxiliary aids and services, to ensure that disabled children are not at a substantial disadvantage compared with their peers.
Local authorities are responsible for meeting the additional support costs for pupils with SEND up to the value of £6,000 per pupil by providing schools with sufficient funds to enable them to do so from the schools block of the Dedicated Schools Grant.
When the costs of additional support required for a pupil with SEND exceed £6,000, the local authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This top-up funding, and funding for special schools, comes from the local authority’s high needs budget. The department recently announced £780 million in additional high needs funding for the next financial year, bringing total high needs funding to over £7 billion. Every local authority in England will see an increase in high needs funding of at least 8% per head of population aged 2 to 18.
The department have also allocated £365 million special provision capital funding to local authorities in England from 2018 to 2021, to increase the number of places available locally and enhance facilities for children with the most complex SEND. This could include re-purposing areas so that they meet the needs of pupils with SEND.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment he has made of the welfare of children living in Gaza.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The UK continually monitors the humanitarian situation in Gaza. We are concerned by the high levels of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and the impacts of the humanitarian situation on children. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in a report on 31 May titled ‘The Gaza trauma response’, noted that from 30th March 2018 to 30th March 2019, during the ‘Great March of Return’ demonstrations, 172 people became permanently disabled because of their injuries, of whom 36 were children.
The UK is committed to help the growing needs of approximately 1.5 million registered refugees in Gaza through support to the UN Refugees and Works Agency (UNRWA). Between 2019-2020, the UK will provide up to £80m to UNRWA. UNRWA runs over 274 schools and educates over 278,000 children in Gaza. We are providing £2 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to help support several of the most urgent health needs in Gaza, including drugs, surgical equipment and physical rehabilitation for people with disabilities. We have recently announced £1.6m aid to the World Health Organisation Appeal, which will support trauma medical treatment in the Gaza Strip, including establishment of a new limb reconstruction centre.