Percy Hedley Foundation

The Percy Hedley Foundation Speaks Out

“Adequate” provision is simply not good enough

Cara – her parents were “left feeling the special educational needs system is entirely biased in favour of local authorities and heavily weighted against parents”.

More and more parents of disabled children are facing a process which leaves them shattered, disillusioned and with a clear sense of injustice. They have faced up to and come to terms with their children’s diagnoses and are seeking the educational and therapeutic provision which will best meet their children’s needs. Increasingly they are being denied this.

The Department for Education’s “Special Educational Needs Code of Practice” enshrines partnership between parents and Local Education Authorities. The expert knowledge parents have of their children is meant to be valued. They are supposed to be given full information regarding the range of provision available to meet their children’s needs. Increasingly, however, they are only being fully informed about local authority provision. Specialist provision available within the voluntary sector’s non-maintained special schools is not being discussed. When parents do find out about these specialist choices, they are more and more often being told they are not an option, and that if they persist in requesting them, they will have to take the LEA to a Special Educational Needs Tribunal. So much for partnership, choice and valuing the expertise of parents.

Parents who do have the emotional and financial wherewithal to go to Tribunal find that system also heavily weighted against them. Even if there is a history of failure and broken promises between it and the parents, the local authority merely has to demonstrate “adequate” provision or the promise of “adequate” provision. What other education sector champions “adequate” education? Which political party has “adequate” education as a central plank of its manifesto? What other group of parents is expected to settle for “adequate” education?

Moreover, at tribunal the parents have to prove that the cost of sending their children to alternative provision is not ‘unreasonable public expenditure’. Perversely the tribunal system ruling is that sending children to local authority provision costs nothing. This ruling leaves parents with a heavy burden of proof.

The Percy Hedley Foundation, a charitable organisation, runs schools in the North East of England for children with specific low incidence conditions such as severe cerebral palsy, communication difficulties, sensory impairments and complex learning difficulties. These schools offer a regional service and have consistently been described as “outstanding” and “very good value for money” by OfSTED. Parents of children with these low incidence conditions recognise the specialist nature of the work of the schools and how they offer precisely what their children need. Yet with more and more LEAs denying these options to parents, and the tribunal system being heavily weighted in their favour, parents stand little chance of accessing them.

This injustice is repeated across the country but because each case involves one child and their parents it is not receiving the attention or scrutiny it should. Nationally, hundreds of parents are being denied the opportunity for their children to obtain the specialist provision they need.

Can MPs be aware of, or condone such a blatantly unfair system that denies parents full information, choice or the best provision for their very vulnerable children.?

© Jim Ferris

This article first appeared in The Parliamentary Monitor, February 2005
Email: editorial.housemag@parlicom.com

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