On SNJ Today: The parliamentary petition to #ProtectSENDRights is gaining lots of signatures - @rachel.stopsafetyvalve.uk about why we need 100,000 people to sign—If you haven’t already, please SIGN and SHARE this post and petition! www.specialneedsjungle.com/a... Please Share!
We cannot allow the government to take away the vital legal rights of disabled children - sign our parliamentary petition here: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...
@spcialndsjungle.bsky.social
We need support from parents, carers, teachers, professionals and everyone involved and would love your help with the campaign if you want to get involved.
Now is the time for us to make a stand before it’s too late.
You can also come and join our campaign as an individual, SEND group, charity, school, professional, union or anyone else who cares about this issue - sign up at SENDRA.co.uk and stay up to date with plans for a protest and other action.
You can share this post / information in the SEND, education and parenting groups you’re part of and encourage them to sign (it’s also on Facebook on the SEND Rights Alliance page here: www.facebook.com/share/1996Vk...
So what can you do?
You can sign our parliamentary petition here asking the government to commit to maintaining the legal rights of children with SEND petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...
The tribunal process, and the fact parents are almost always successful at appeal, is a vital safeguard against councils refusing to support those who need it. We cannot stand by and watch this happen.
We need to be extremely clear that we will strongly oppose any proposed changes to the Children and Families Act and other legal rights of disabled children. The failure in the system now can be directly linked to the failure to implement the law in full and correctly.
You’d hope that the government would see through the biased requests of local government and see the inherent social and financial issues with reducing statutory support to those who qualify. It seems they are listening however, and they’ll certainly be listening to the IFS.
The LGA, rather than fighting for the funding they need to support children, have repeatedly asked the government to reduce their legal obligations. This would not only be catastrophic for children and families, but would have a huge negative impact on costs.
There is also talk of EHCP entitlement ending at 18 rather than 25, which flies in the face of the government’s apparent concern with the number of young people who are out of education, employment or training inews.co.uk/news/labour-...
A member of the government’s inclusion task force “refused to rule out scrapping the current system of education, health and care plans (EHCPs), saying reform could mean “changing the existing system” or “using other systems”
An interview with the Ed secretary last week stated that there would be SEND changes coming in June. At this point, nobody knows what those changes are but allegedly a white paper is expected “in spring” inews.co.uk/news/politic...
At a recent speech, education Secretary Bridget Phillipson was asked whether they would be making it more difficult to get an EHCP, a question which she did not answer
www.theguardian.com/education/20...
In light of recent media reports suggesting the imminent publication of a White Paper on SEND, we ask you to write to us setting out your plans and the anticipated timescales for any policy announcements on SEND over the next six months.”
committees.parliament.uk/publications/4…
Numerous articles suggest the government is quietly working on a SEND white paper even before the current inquiry into SEND has completed. The chair of the education committee noted their evidence “made no reference to an upcoming White Paper or other major policy announcements.”
They even asked: “What would need to change for parents to trust the system to meet their children’s needs without statutory obligations?”
ifs.org.uk/publications...
The Institute for Fiscal Studies report on SEND spending: one recommendation was to change EHCPs so they are no longer statutory. Their main concern with this was how parents would react, rather than the vast costs of changing the law and picking up the pieces of broken children and families.
In practice, that would mean that councils could refuse to assess any children and there’d be no recourse beyond the overwhelmed (and inaccessible) judicial review process www.local.gov.uk/parliament/b...
The Local Government Association suggested preventing parents appealing if a council refuses to assess their child. “A more effective way to tackle the backlog in the short to medium term while long term reform gets underway would be to remove requests to assess from the appealable decisions list.”
Last year’s Isos Partnership report into SEND, funded by local authorities, called for scrapping the SEND tribunal, redefining SEND completely and called disabled children an “existential threat” to local authority finances.
specialneedsjungle.com/send-is-an-exi…
Why do we think that the legal rights of children with #SEND are at risk? Please read on and support our campaign to protect the rights of vulnerable children. 🧵https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/711021
Illustration in a blue-green top, on a yellow background. She is holding a sign that says Unite for SEND Rights and SENDRA SEND Rights Alliance
Parents, carers, teachers, clinicians, councillors and everyone else who cares about #SEND rights - I’ve started a national campaign, we’ll be planning a protest in the summer. Please sign up, as an organisation or as an individual #UniteForSENDRights www.SENDRA.co.uk
And *even then* there are thousands of children with EHCPs with no school place. There are countless EHCPs of insufficient quality that mean children don’t get the education they need. This golden ticket nonsense needs to stop.
We need to challenge this narrative. EHCPs are NOT a pass to a state-funded private education. They are a pass to a suitable education, and for most that’s already in a mainstream or maintained specialist school inews.co.uk/news/politic...
I’m seeing a lot of “yes but we can’t let local authorities go bust” arguments around SEND. Very true! Sign this petition to ask the government to resolve the deficits and end the damaging scheme caused by them. More info and a link at www.stopsafetyvalve.co.uk
What’s frustrating is that doing this - enabling more children with SEND to thrive in mainstream - will mean savings. It just won’t mean savings immediately - anything that does will increase costs down the line.
Of course it is not good for half of councils to go bust. That can’t be allowed to happen. We also can’t allow reductive narratives that encourage the uninformed to blame disabled kids for the fact there are no suitable schools closer to them.
Can you clarify - it read like you asked LAs specifically how much they spend on road maintenance and how much they spend on SEND transport. Is that what happened? And if so, why (aside from the public outrage over both issues) did you pick these two metrics?
Spot the obvious missing reason from this DfE survey for parents - if you’re going to survey parents of kids in specialist schools, there’s one major answer here you’re missing… what a wasted opportunity
