Parents to get budgets to spend on special needs children

Campaigners warn that cuts to council funding will reduce services for children with special needs

Parents will be given a personal budget to spend on services such as home-based education and equipment including laptops and wheelchairs for their children with special education needs, under proposals intended to give greater control to families.

But campaigners warn that cuts to council budgets will sharply reduce the services available for parents to choose from, as a survey showed 11 local authorities had confirmed cutbacks to services for deaf children next year.

A Department for Education green paper published on Wednesday proposes an expansion of direct payments to parents for education and health services.

The green paper says that case workers will guide parents on how to spend their budgets.

But Lorraine Petersen, chief executive of the National Association for Special Educational Needs, warns that this expertise could be lost.

“We need to acknowledge that some parents will need more support than others. With the reduction in key personnel at local authority level, Nasen has a concern that those advocates will not be available for parents to turn to.

She is also concerned about the amount of money available to families. “What will happen if the child’s current provision costs more than the budget allocated to parents?”

Petersen warns that the growth of academies and free schools could pose risks to council services, as less money will be channelled through local authorities for central education services.

Existing pilot schemes are focused on social care, with parents able to spend their budgets on short breaks.

The government plans to begin testing the new system this year and will give parents a legal right to their own budgets by 2014. Ministers stress the budgets will be “a personal choice for parents who want one”.

Jo Campion, deputy director of policy and campaigns at the National Deaf Children’s Society says: “Our main concern is that this taking place after many local authorities have made their budget decisions. We have received information about cuts to frontline education services. We are very worried that local authorities are making decisions that will seriously affect their ability to deliver these proposals.”

A number of specialist teachers for deaf children are about to lose their jobs or have to work part-time, according to a survey by the NDCS. One authority is planning to scrap four posts for visiting teachers who provide one-to-one tuition and train mainstream staff. They can have a caseload of up to 140 children each.

The green paper proposes replacing the existing statement of special educational needs with a single care plan covering schooling, health and social services from birth to the age of 25. This will give parents “the same statutory protection” as a statement, the green paper says.

Currently, if a particular school is named in a child’s statement of special needs, it is obliged to provide a place for that child. Legislation will be introduced to give parents “equivalent rights to express a preference for any state-funded school”.

The existing three-tier system will be scrapped. At present there is:

• a school action level at which a child might receive some one-to-one support;

• school action plus, where the child is likely to receive support from external services such as child psychologists;

• and statements for children with the most severe needs.

The green paper foresees a single category of children with special needs. Ministers argue that many children in the lower tiers are wrongly labelled as having special needs when they may simply need better teaching or pastoral care.

Although the proportion of pupils with statements has remained “relatively stable” over time, the green paper says, there has been an increase in the number of pupils with special needs but without statements – up from 10% of all pupils in 1995 to 18.2% in 2010. That is 1.5m children in England.

The government is also looking at how voluntary groups might “coordinate the package of support” for children with special needs. It says this will give parents greater independence from councils.

The children’s minister, Sarah Teather, says: “Parents and voluntary organisations have given us overwhelming examples where they have felt let down by local services.

“At the moment there is an appalling situation where public money is being wasted as children are growing out of equipment, like wheelchairs, before they even arrive. The new single assessment process and plan will tackle this issue and mean that parents don’t feel they have to push to get the services they are entitled to.”

Andy Burnham, the shadow education secretary, says the green paper’s aims are “hopelessly out of touch with the reality on the ground”.

“Councils are laying off the specialist teams that carry out the assessments and provide the support these children need. The green paper sets out a vision of integrated services but the Tory-led government’s own health and education reforms make that harder.

“They are breaking down our NHS and education system into fragmented parts – this makes it much harder to plan and commission the complex services these children need.”