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Some rib-tickling data from DfE....

17 replies

uggerthebugger · 15/08/2014 22:56

The Department for Education put out a press release today. You'll be as stark-bollocking flabbergasted pleased as I am to learn that parents feel more supported ahead of radical SEND reforms ....

Buried in the notes though is a research report looking at how much time and money it costs to process statements versus EHCPs.

In case you ever wondered what your hard-working LA SEN staff were doing on your behalf - wonder no longer. These LAs claim it takes anything from 49 to 85 staff hours (or £1,130 to £2,000 of monetised time) to conduct a case referral, complete statutory assessment and issue the first statement.

The data's pretty mind-boggling for anyone with direct experience of these services - it's not obvious what the researchers did to verify or validate the data. Probably not a fat fucking lot. For example...

  • Some of these LAs say they take 15 staff hours to decide whether to conduct an SA on an individual case. In my LA, that'd be 1 minute to change the names on the boilerplate for an "after careful consideration, fuck off" letter. What happens for the other 14 hours 59 minutes?


  • The variation in the data is just crazy. One LA reckons it takes 8 hours to decide whether to proceed and put a draft statement together, others reckon it takes 18 hours. My old LA just cut-and-pasted from a generic template, occasionally remembering to change names and genders in the statement text.


  • The LAs surveyed here - all part of the detachment of Pathfinder shock-troops- mostly expect time taken and costs incurred to increase when the EHCPs kick in. Unless they are working in a completely different time and space continuum to the rest of us, how the fuck is this possible?
OP posts:
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Bilberry · 15/08/2014 23:26

Meetings - you are forgetting the infernal internal meetings they need to have. The whole team needs to go to this meeting and they all need coffee and biscuits.

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StarlightMcKenzie · 16/08/2014 09:07

50 hours? Hmm

That's the equivalent of 18 months of an hour of weekly therapy ffs.

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StarlightMcKenzie · 16/08/2014 09:09

I suppose the implication is that all these additional staff hours in meetings somehow magically improve children's outcomes over and above what they woukd should they be hours working with the child directly!?

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Ineedmorepatience · 16/08/2014 09:50

Dont forget all the hours wasted going to tribunals that they know they are going to lose.

And of course conning speaking to parents about what their child needs, even though they have never met them or actually read any of the paperwork!!

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tempe48 · 16/08/2014 10:29

Yes, but certainly in the case of specialist residential schools, they look at it like this - 7 years in a expensive school say, £500,000 versus £3,000 for a firm of solicitors to defend a tribunal plus a bit of their own time. Its well worth them fighting and it sends out a message to all the other parents!

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StarlightMcKenzie · 16/08/2014 10:33

Sure, but those cases are extremely rare. Most statements are for mainstream or a state specialist provision that costs no more once you take into account all the mainstream extras.

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tempe48 · 16/08/2014 12:55

Yes, but its like writing a blank cheque - once parents have got a statement, it opens up the door to more expensive provision. Parents kept on School Action/SA Plus cannot think about specialist schools.

In my county, many of the parents I know, did go for specialist schools. The LA even complained about how unfair it was that they have a high percentage of parents, who are professionals.

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Ineedmorepatience · 16/08/2014 12:57

Dd3 is going to cost them a hell of a lot more if they dont put the support in to keep her in mainstream!!!

Its just such a damn shame they dont use some of those hours thinking ahead to the future Hmm

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StarlightMcKenzie · 16/08/2014 13:03

Why did they blame requests for on professional parents and not on their shit in-house provision?

Parents go to tribunal be sues they are desperate, not to get one over on anyone, and a won tribunal means their child gets no more than adequate provision which is discrimination really as NT children are entitled to receive a good or outstanding education or schools are put on notice to improve.

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tempe48 · 16/08/2014 14:28

Actually, my county does have a lot of special schools, and did have quite a few primary language units. The trouble was there was nothing at secondary level for those children with speech and language impairments, who could not cope in mainstream. We got a new head of SEN, who believed ALL children could be included in mainstream!

Parents, who were told their child was not going to cope in mainstream secondary, went to Tribunal for places at the specialist speech and language/ASD schools.

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StarlightMcKenzie · 16/08/2014 16:42

I believe all children could be included in mainstream too, including my Ds.

The trouble is he 'wouldn't be. His inclusion only extend to the building and sometimes physical space he occupied. Educationally, socially, creatively, academically and therapeutically he would be excluded.

Often the 'belief' in inclusion stems from a financial incentive to place a child in the cheapest building with their provision or otherwise hidden from the parents, from challenge and from accountability.

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tempe48 · 16/08/2014 18:33

Many children could be included in mainstream, but it would cost more than special schools in my opinion, and SEN has never been funded properly by the government anyway. I agree that many LA officers have jumped on the inclusion bandwagon, as they saw it as a way of saving money on special school places.

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StarlightMcKenzie · 16/08/2014 18:46

SEN hasn't been funded properly because those who work in it have failed to safeguard those children within it. They were charged with providing a statutory service without the resources or expertise needed so they cooked the books, shared statemented provision, lowered their expectations for the children and spent what little money they did have building bureaucratic self serving empires costing millions in order to elevate their professional statuses and justify their positions that used to require little effort and were gained by being promoted out of the classroom due to incompetence.

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Ineedmorepatience · 16/08/2014 20:22

The state inclusion is in in my LA is dreadful particularly with regard to children with Asd! The LA reps keep on rolling out the party line that "Most children with Asd are fine in mainstream schools!!"

That is clearly not true, nearly everyone I speak to or have contact with [and there are quite alot] are either fighting the system, have been excluded, is a school refuser, is really struggling!!

My LA which is small keeps on saying that children with Asd can have their needs met at SA+ [which isnt going to exist in September]

They have no provision for our children, many are in ESBD schools and many more are out of county!!

We are all very worried about September, the SEN Team are just constantly referring to their local offer, which is the vaguest bit of paper I have ever read and stating that the funding has been put into schools so it is upto them to meet the needs of our children!!

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2tirednot2fight · 16/08/2014 21:23

How much rubbish do they need to spout out? Don't they know how much it adds insult to injury, no one believes it anyway surely? Our pathfinder hand picked their folks to test drive - they could have put the outc

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2tirednot2fight · 16/08/2014 21:25

Outcome onto a questionnaire without bothering to conduct the testing out. It's a disgrace can't mumsnet get Nicky Morgan on so we can ask her why they publish this rubbish.

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billiejeanbob · 16/08/2014 21:45

the majority of LAs 'believe' in inclusion within ms! they know that the statemented provision can be shared and that TAs can be employed to practically babysit - works out much cheaper than a ss place.
my LA were adamant that dd could remain in ms - they finalised her statement with no 1:1 or any therapy and handed the school a few grand to employ an additional classroom assistant.
18 months and 2 tribunals later....
dd is now included within ms! she has full time TA 1:1, weekly 1:1 SLT and OT, weekly 1:1 specialist dyslexia teaching, individual curriculum devised by slt, ot and dyslexia teacher, ct and ta and senco have been trained by a specialist plus 45 mins a week of 2:1 teaching!

I am 100% certain that had the LA known that this would have all been specified within her statement they would have tried to place her in ss as it would have been cheaper! however they made such a fuss in the beginning that dd didnt need a high level of support and that ms was the only suitable option, they couldnt propose ss!

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