I thank my hon. Friends the Members for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and for Torbay (Mr Sanders) and the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for the amendments they tabled. I thank in particular the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for embodying in her approach the very essence of this part of the Bill, in that she has demonstrated a lot of co-operation and constructive consultation and has, I suspect, sometimes strayed into the occasional bit of joint commissioning, which I welcome. I also thank other Members who have spoken in this debate on the SEN provisions. I will do my best to respond to the amendments and the key points that have been made.
Amendments 30, 46, 62 and 66 to 69 and new clause 21 are concerned with arrangements for improving local provision. I hope I will be able to address the concerns that are behind amendment 30—as just raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North—through regulations and the code of practice. Draft regulations under clause 48 would require local authorities to provide information, advice and support in relation to personal budgets, including information about independent organisations. Draft regulations made under clause 36 would require local authorities to provide any support they consider necessary for parents or young people to take part effectively in the education, health and care assessment, and regulations made under clause 30 would require local authorities to include in their local offer sources of information, advice and support for children and young people with special educational needs and their families. The indicative code of practice—which my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon helpfully pointed out was made available in Committee and proved invaluable as a consequence—clarifies that this should include information, advice and support available in relation to personal budgets.
I share the aim of my hon. Friend’s amendment 46, which is to ensure that education and social care provision is sufficient to meet the needs of children and young people with SEN and to promote improvements in that provision, but that should be balanced with the need to retain local decision making; that point seemed to unite the House in the debate we have just had. Local authorities, schools and other services must determine spending on provision for children and young people with special educational needs, taking account of their legal responsibilities. Clause 27(3) would require local authorities to consult a wide range of people and organisations in reviewing provision, including, importantly, children and young people with special educational needs and their parents, but placing a specific legal duty on them to improve special educational and social care provision until everyone consulted agrees it is sufficient would be impractical, as views of different people and groups would inevitably differ. Local authorities will be able to reflect the outcomes of the reviews they undertake under clause 27 in the local offer, which also requires
the close involvement of children and young people with special educational needs and their parents in its development and review.
On amendments 66 to 69, I can assure the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West and other hon. Members that the local offer will not be a speculative document. It will set out what the local authority expects will actually be available. The local authority does not have control of all the services set out in the local offer, so it can only set out what it expects to be available. If it can only reflect what is currently available, that will prevent the local offer from setting out, for example, what provision it expects to become available in the near future. This could, for example, include new provision in a school, which parents or young people will want to know about in advance.
On amendment 68, I agree that online communities can be a valuable way to socialise, and perhaps that is especially true for young people with special needs. Only yesterday I had the opportunity to visit Springfield special school in my constituency. The children being educated there were keen to show me first their school’s IT suite, where they had developed some important skills in a number of innovative ways. I agree that online communities have their dangers, and that young people should be equipped to socialise over the internet safely. I repeat the commitment I gave in Committee: I will consider including a reference to online communities in the code, in the context of preparing for adulthood. I do not believe it is necessary to amend the Bill in order to achieve what Members want, but I think what I have said demonstrates the importance of this area both now and in the future.
Amendment 69 concerns minimum standards in the local offer. The key to the success of the local offer in each area will be the transparency of information, and the involvement of local parents, children and young people in developing and reviewing the local offer. Central prescription would stifle the very innovation and responsiveness we want to see the local offer trigger, and stipulating minimum standards for the local offer would weaken local accountability. They would constrain parents’ ability to influence a local authority, which could point to meeting minimum requirements to end further discussion. That is a potential “race to the bottom” that we must avoid; my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon raised that point in Committee. I hope that detail about what will be in the offer and the strength of the processes for agreeing it will reassure Members that such a potentially counter-productive minimum standard is not necessary.
Amendment 62, from my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, the Chair of the Education Committee, reflects the view expressed by his Committee about the importance of parent carer forums, whose national network I believe I am meeting tomorrow. I share my hon. Friend’s views about the importance of parents helping to shape local policies for supporting children and young people with special educational needs. The indicative SEN code of practice makes clear reference to that and to the value of parent carer forums, but as they are not legally constituted bodies we cannot include them in the list in clause 28 of organisations with which a local authority must consult when carrying out its functions under the Bill.
Provision has been made in clause 27 for local authorities to consult children and young people with special educational needs and parents of children with SEN, along with
“such other persons as the authority thinks appropriate”,
when carrying out their statutory duty to keep their special educational provision and social care provision under review. I am sure that local authorities will want to consult parent carer forums as they carry out that duty, which is reflected in the draft code of practice. The SE7 pathfinder, for example, is working closely with its local parent carer forums to develop the local offer, to ensure that it reflects the needs of children, young people and parents.
Turning to new clause 21, local authorities aim to provide services close to home, and I know how important it is for families for provision to be made locally. However, as has been said, that is not always practical for those who require specialist support that is available only in very few places. Clause 27 requires local authorities to consult children and young people with special educational needs and their parents when they are reviewing their special educational provision and social care provision. Local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and NHS England must develop effective ways of harnessing the views of their local communities, and they will undoubtedly want to engage with Healthwatch organisations, patient representative groups, parent partnerships, parent carer forums and other local voluntary organisations and community groups.
Clause 30 requires local authorities to involve children and young people with special educational needs and their parents in developing and reviewing the local offer. That will ensure a continuing dialogue between local authorities and their partners, including children, young people and families, and keep a focus on the need for local provision. I recently discussed these issues with Scope, which has a good deal of experience in this area, and undertook to consider how the guidance in the SEN code of practice could best encourage the development of services that are responsive to local needs.
I shall now deal with amendments 44, 37 and 39, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon, which are all concerned with ensuring an integrated approach to meeting the needs of children and young people. I share the goal of amendment 44—integrated health and social care support—but cannot agree that it is the best way to achieve it. Under the Bill, the support that must be available to the child or young person is that reasonably required by his or her special educational needs.
Local authorities and health commissioners have the power to include other social and health care if they feel it is appropriate. So a child with special educational needs arising from cerebral palsy who needs a wheelchair would have that in their plan. If the child developed an unrelated minor infection, any prescribed medication would not normally be included. Amendment 44 would add unnecessary bureaucracy and hinder pragmatic decision making. I am alive to the case studies that my hon. Friend brought to the House’s attention and will look carefully at them in understanding the consequences
of the point he makes. I am happy to continue to discuss that with him, but as things stand I am not convinced that his amendment is necessary.
Amendment 37 seeks a specific duty on authorities to deliver social care provision in EHC plans. As I said in Committee, existing duties in section 17 of the Children Act 1989 provide important protections. I understand concerns that this is a general, not an individual duty, but I fully expect that local authorities will provide care services to meet assessed needs. In the case of disabled children, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 applies, and once the authority is satisfied it is necessary to provide support and assistance, it is required to do just that. I do not think it right to prioritise, as a matter of course, children with EHC plans over all other children in need, who would then risk being marginalised—I am thinking, for example, of children suffering neglect or abuse.
On amendment 39, I know that my hon. Friend has concerns about clause 21, and my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), among others, has also raised this issue. Clause 21(5) fulfils an undertaking I gave during pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill that we would maintain existing protections, including case law. The subsection was included to preserve the current position whereby, of course, there is no duty to secure the health provision in plans. Amendment 39 goes further than current case law and would define all social care and health care provision made for a child or young person with SEN as special educational provision, if it was in some way for the purposes of education or training.
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I have looked again at clause 21, taking account of the views put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon and others. Under the broader, integrated assessments and plans in the Bill, decisions will be between special educational, health and care provision. Without clause 21(5) it may be difficult for a tribunal to say that although speech and language therapy is health care provision made by health care providers, it is in fact special educational provision. The clause also enables appeals to the tribunal in respect of health provision where it is defined as special educational provision, as now. However, as my hon. Friend said at the end of his excellent contribution, we want to get things right, so I am content to continue to listen to the views expressed in the House, such as the wording suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, and in the other place.
On personal budgets, we debated amendment 70 in Committee and I repeat the assurances I gave then. As I said to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West in Committee, we will take full account of the findings of the pilot scheme as a discrete element of the pathfinder evaluation, and learning will inform the SEN code of practice. I assure her that the cases we have seen to date do not show any negative impacts in the areas referred to in the amendment; they actually show how local authorities can work with schools to improve the quality of provision received without having an impact on the other children and young people. As I am sure she would agree, that is an encouraging picture.
Amendment 38 is a repeat of the probing amendment that my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon moved in Committee and of the proposed new clause 24 tabled by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West. In Committee, I set out the well-established complaint procedures for complaints about health and social care. Widening the tribunal’s remit would not prevent the existing mechanisms from continuing to be available. The effect of the amendment would be to add to the routes of redress, rather than to simplify them. We are preserving the right to appeal to the tribunal about health and social care provision, where that is mainly for the purposes of education and training. While strengthening the role of health and social care in the assessment process and laying a new duty to provide the health provision set out in a plan, we have maintained the focus on special educational provision in the Bill and as was set out in the Green Paper. It is therefore right that the tribunal should continue to focus on dealing with SEN appeals, where its expertise lies.