Parents of SEND children like me are not ‘entitled’

Comments about special educational needs provision are ignorant of the reality SEND parents face

As a parent in the SEND (special educational needs and disability) world, I find that I constantly have that famous tagline from Jaws 2 on my mind: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water…”

There you are enjoying a gentle swim, when suddenly you’re confronted by a great white shark. Except that, in the case of the Department for Education’s Tony McArdle, it might just be something even bigger. Perhaps a more apt comparison would be the 2018 monster movie The Meg, where Jason Statham and friends battle a Megalodon that has been resurrected from extinction.

McArdle, a former council CEO, chairs the SEND leadership board for the Department for Education, where he also leads the negotiations with councils that have the most financially challenged SEND systems. He’s the man with the money to prevent them from going bust.

To bring deficits down, he told Schools Week, councils need to hand out fewer EHCPs (Education Health and Care Plans). These are legal documents that set out the support a child needs and is required to receive. That a child needs, remember.

McArdle said he wanted to overcome the (alleged) perception among teachers and parents that these represent a “golden ticket”. He also claimed that care plans sometimes result in children getting “too much” provision.

If you’re in this world, you can probably see why I describe him as the Megalodon for suffering SEND parents. Someone, please, call the Stath to save us from this monster.

It’s a joke, yes. But McArdle isn’t funny. Because those statements show that he is either ignorant or disingenuous when it comes to SEND reality. There might even be a bit of both at work.

The hard fact is that EHCPs are less golden tickets than they are passports. I speak from personal experience here. Some services that our child was in desperate need of – occupational therapy would be one example – flatly refused to engage with us until an EHCP was in place.

Even the support EHCPs set out – support that is needed, remember – often either isn’t available, or requires sitting on a waiting list for months (if not years).

Telling councils that they’re handing out too many is an inversion of reality.

The truth is that getting hold of an EHCP often involves a brutal slog. It’s less a gentle weekend swim than it is one of those psychotic open water endurance events the Olympics has added, in which competitors crash into, pinch, gouge, and generally do anything within their power to get ahead of their opponents (short of deliberately drowning them in front of the cameras).

My family didn’t set out on this exhausting journey for the good of our health. We did it for our child because it was necessary; because in the absence of the support they needed the roof fell in. The plan we fought for arrived far, far too late.

There is a reason why the number of appeals to the SEND tribunal increased by 29 per cent in the most recent quarter covered by the Ministry of Justice, and that appellants (ie parents) won at a rate of 96 per cent. It isn’t that councils are handing out too many of these. They are handing out too few. Their decision making is deeply flawed.

McArdle went on to tell the magazine that support for children with EHCPs “should diminish each year, because what is being provided is helping the child overcome their difficulty”.

This is a statement of breathtaking ignorance. A child doesn’t, say, “overcome” autism. In fact, the condition often gets more – not less – challenging. Puberty tends to have that effect.

Let’s assume a child has an EHCP in place prior to this, and the council decides to cut them off at the knees just when the support is needed most. What then?

Perhaps worst of all is McArdle falling back on the tired old “pushy parent” trope. It holds that all the SEND system’s problems are created by well-off middle-class parents who can afford lawyers, and are after more help for their children than they ought to receive.

This was also an argument put forward – without evidence – in an “independent” report commissioned and funded by the Local Government Association (LGA). It came up with exactly the conclusions the LGA wanted, including the absurd idea that council decision making was not at fault despite the staggering rate at which decisions were (and still are being) overturned.

Tania Tirraoro, the founder and co-director of Special Needs Jungle (SNJ), says her organisation has helped people from all sorts of backgrounds win tribunals. People turn to SNJ because lawyers are out of reach for many middle-class parents (pushy or not), let alone working-class parents.

Talking of working-class parents: the idea that they’re willing to meekly accept their struggling SEND children’s fate and that they lack the capacity to fight the system on their behalf is not only wrong; it is deeply patronising.

Matt Keer, from SNJ, perhaps summed up McArdle’s words best: “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

SNJ has also written in support of the teachers’ strike. I support the National Education Union’s action as well, because as much as it is about pay, it is also about resources. The problems for SEND kids are often the most overlooked. And their suffering should prompt action.