The most recent meeting of the Parliamentary education committee on SEND took place on 29 April. Subject specialists included:
- Lisa O’Connor, vice president of the Association of Educational Psychologists. She noted that cuts to council budgets and the academies movement had led local authorities to “reduce considerably their EP services, with many of them only employing EPs to carry out statutory duties”.
- Janet Harrison, head of service at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists noted that most therapists “have got inordinately large caseloads”, having to deal with “extraordinary large numbers”.
- Sarah Walter, director of the ICS network at the NHS Confederation said that many integrated care partnerships had “prioritised children and young people’s support”, but national priorities currently “feel very fixed towards a more short term and more financially driven approach”. She said “there was a “clear need for the NHS to recover services. There are significant financial and performance challenges at the moment. She further noted: “I think some of that then crowds out the ambition locally to have a greater focus in some of these partnership spaces, and for children and young people in particular.”
- Alison Stewart, head of SEND at the South West London Integrated Care Board didn’t think thaty accountabililty should be solely with the LA, she said “I think there does need to be an increased accountability for the local area, the local system, and that should be the local authority and the ICB and the providers within that… I think sometimes we’re driven into a position that we are splitting education and health, rather than looking at a proper needs-based approach to children offering the right support at the right time.”
Other experts were Professor Ian Kessler, Professor of Public Policy and Management, Kings College London; and arie Gascoigne, speech, language and communication policy expert, advisor and consultant, Better Communications CIC
The full sessionm is avaliable to watch on the Parliament website, here.
dsga.org.uk 