PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
SEND Provision: Autism and ADHD - 12 December 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I am grateful for the opportunity to address this critical issue that affects so many families and carers, not just in my constituency but across the country. I rise to speak up for all those who feel they are not being heard and to speak about the crisis in the provision of special educational needs and disability support, particularly for children and young people with autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This crisis is failing children and young people, their families and carers, the professionals who support them, and society as a whole.

Before I proceed, I thank all the courageous parents and carers who have taken the time to tell me their stories. Some of them have come to Westminster today to be with us in the Gallery. I pay special tribute to the staff from schools in my constituency, including Bassingbourn, Melbourn and Hauxton primary schools, who have taken the time to attend this critically important debate and are with us in the Gallery.

I was privileged to meet staff at Bassingbourn primary school, where I witnessed at first hand the inspiring work undertaken by dedicated and caring professionals, who are creating safe spaces, such as the hub. I saw for myself the calm and trusting relationships built with students, and heard about the difference that the hub makes for students. Rather than spiralling into disruptive behaviour or not even being able to make it through the door to registration some days, students are now seeking out the hub as a space to ready themselves for registration or to take time out before going back to class.

The headteacher, staff and the SEND co-ordinators go above and beyond, often making miracles happen on very limited budgets. However, let me share the words of one dedicated professional from my constituency, so that the House can hear what the current crisis is leading to. She says:

“On a daily basis I am setting up, delivering and helping other Teaching Assistants to deliver bespoke curriculums for children with SEND as they are mostly educated outside the classes of their peers. We do not have a special unit for them, we are just accommodating them as best we can in quieter areas of the school, including corridors, because they are not able to work in the noise and business of a primary classroom. The needs of these children vary though they all need 1:1 TAs to help them and others stay safe, regulated and learning throughout the day. At present we have two non-verbal children with an Autism diagnosis who, years ago, you would not have expected to see in a mainstream school. Up until this week I have believed that I was doing the right thing trying to make sure they are happy and secure and genuinely learning and making progress with us.”

That professional is now questioning the very fundamentals of her profession as a result of the heartbreaking experience of those children when they are facing key transitions: starting school, primary to secondary, getting to 18, 18 to 25 and afterwards. One of the children she had been working with was excluded a few days after starting secondary school because their behaviour was not manageable. In her words:

“It broke my heart to hear from her Mum what she had gone through in such a short time in mainstream Secondary and I knew at once that she must have been so frightened to have behaved as she did. The child was subsequently at home for most of the remaining school year receiving education from a tutor paid for by the Local Authority—after her parents fought hard and demanded it—and then was finally given a place at their local special school in the summer. What I now understand is that the broken system means that a child has to fail in a very distressing way before they are given the provision they need. I could not sit by and see another child I have known for many years go down the same path with all the knowledge of how damaging the experience will be for them without saying something about it!”

The account the hon. Lady is giving is incredibly powerful and I am really grateful that she has chosen to share it with the House. As somebody who was teaching maths at a secondary school until a few months before the general election, I can state that the situation she describes, while certainly not unusual, is not universal to all schools. I am pleased to report that despite the stresses that were put on schools by the previous Government, we teachers did all we could in secondary education settings to ensure there was an inclusive education for those with SEND. Does she agree that with the change of Government, we have seen a change in direction and intention, and hopefully we will see the wins for SEND students that they so desperately deserve?

Absolutely; I am here to pay tribute, as is everybody, to what teachers are doing, both with regard to the failure of the previous Government and with the current situation. Let us get to what is happening with the current Government.

Every child deserves access to education to get the best start in life and build a strong foundation that can provide valuable skills that allow them to thrive. That is not the case for all children across the country and particularly not for those with autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. Every professional I have spoken to agrees that early diagnosis and support are essential.

In respect of early diagnosis and onward support, in my constituency of Congleton we have two specific problems. First, although some children receive a diagnosis under the right to choose pathway on the NHS, others, often from more deprived backgrounds, face considerably longer waits than they would under that pathway. The impact of that on those children concerns me very much. Secondly, Cheshire East council sometimes goes for periods of time when it closes the education, health and care plan application pathway to new entrants because it is so overwhelmed by the number of applications it already has. Both those are serious issues for children in my constituency, and I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire for securing this debate and giving me the opportunity to air them. Does she agree that it is a huge improvement to have a Government who are integrating SEND support and that there is so much more that we are all looking to do?

I will come on to what I think is a postcode lottery. We see regional disparities in the care and provision given, so I thank the hon. Member for raising that point.

For many, the wait to get assessments for education, health and care plans can be months, if not years. Lord Darzi’s investigation of the NHS in England notes,

“Waiting lists for community services and mental health have surged.”

The report also mentions how

“Demand for assessments for ADHD and Autism have grown exponentially in recent years”,

with children disproportionately represented among them.

Recent research found that 200,000 children in England are struggling to get an education, health and care plan. That is 200,000 families left in uncertainty, desperate for help and struggling without the support they need.

Cambridgeshire currently has 8,033 students with EHCPs—a 51% increase in the last five years—and of those, 2,593 plans primarily address autism spectrum disorder. Indeed, I was told by the chief executive of Cambridgeshire county council that there has been an increase of 270% in the number of children presenting with autism. Requests for education, health and care needs assessments have risen faster than the national average. Why? We think that is driven by greater awareness of SEND and the statutory responsibilities of local authorities, the impact of the covid pandemic and the overall increase in mental health issues for children, even at a very young age. Those numbers help to underline the scale of the issue, but we should not get drawn purely into statistics and figures, because behind every number and every percentage there is a child, a family or a sibling being failed every single day.

I come to the issue of disparity that the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) mentioned. Families who can afford to seek private neurodevelopmental assessments tend to receive help much faster than those who are reliant on public services. For the rest, it is a postcode lottery. NHS England data reveals stark regional disparities in waiting times for diagnosis. For example, the north-west region has the longest average wait of three years and four months, from referral to diagnosis. We therefore have a health inequality element to this too, as certain groups of children are less likely to have their needs identified or met, punished just because of where they live.

For some children, mainstream schools are simply not suitable, and parents and carers bear the brunt of that reality, managing reduced timetables, enduring repeated exclusions and watching their children receive only a few hours of education each day.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing this important debate to the House. Following on from her comments about mainstream education, one of my first jobs after leaving university was as a teaching assistant. I also spent a year in a special needs school. Does she agree that the issues we are seeing are partly the result of the lack of recognition and appreciation over the last 14 years for support staff in mainstream schools and of the role that they play in ensuring that every child has a decent education?

I could not concur more. Over the past decade or more, we saw chronic under-investment from the Conservative Government, despite the needs having been recognised in statute, and that has left us in this pressure point situation. We are now seeing the results of that. I have also been told that this is a time bomb, because we will see the impacts in the future in the quality of life, in opportunities, in the NHS and in social services—in all services really—if we do not deal with this situation.

I have also been told about the situation for siblings. When a child is not given the support that they need in school, young carer siblings are often drawn out of their class and asked to be with their sibling during their lunch break or lessons. There is an impact on all those affected.

On that point about young carers, does my hon. Friend agree that, at the moment, schools struggle to recognise how many young carers are on their rolls? Does she think that the Department for Education would be wise to look at better ways of measuring the number of young carers and giving schools the toolkits to identify them?

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The Carers Trust has provided us with these stories and pointed out that we really need to collect this evidence. It would be easy to point the finger at local councils and say that this is their failure, but, as we have said, they are stretched to their limits by a chronic lack of funding. We have heard that f40, the cross-party local authority campaign group, has estimated that an additional £4.6 billion of annual SEND revenue is required to meet the current need, yet most of our county councils face a black hole in their budgets. One issue is the training and retention of educational psychologists, because they and council workers are overwhelmed. Turnover rates are high and burnout is common, which leads to an exacerbation of those waiting lists.

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene again; I appreciate it. Cheshire has some of the lowest per-pupil funding in the country. There is a direct link between schools that receive relatively low levels of funding and councils that have relatively high levels of SEND diagnoses, because there is not the same support in mainstream classrooms as when there are higher staffing ratios, which we find in areas that have better funding. We need to look at equalising that funding as best we can in the current environment to improve support at an earlier stage, as the hon. Lady was mentioning.

I agree with the hon. Member. My constituency of South Cambridgeshire also has among the lowest per-pupil funding, which exacerbates the fact that, even though we have EHCPs, most of them are not funded to the amount that is required for each of those students. That compounds the situation that our amazing schools are trying to deal with.

Let me return to educational psychologists. Cambridgeshire county council has 17.5 budgeted educational psychologist roles, but 6.4 remain vacant due to a national shortage and the fact that psychologists can get better pay in other jobs and other places. We are seeing an inability to fill those roles and to support psychologists.

The Liberal Democrats are calling for a national body for SEND to end the postcode lottery faced by families of children with the highest needs. That would include looking at immediate Government action to prioritise early diagnosis and support for children with SEND, and to increase funding for diagnostic services.

One concern is that many children end up being out of education because they are not getting the support that they need in school. Does she agree that it is an outrage that, in that situation, some parents face prosecution? Does she also agree that we need to provide support for children to receive an education, whether in school or through alternative provision, and that we should record that in a better way? At the moment we have authorised and unauthorised absences. We do not record the fact that some children are missing school because their parents do not believe that they are receiving the support that they need.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising one of the complex issues around this provision. While we support the current Government’s additional allocation of funding to this critical area, we really want them to look at the fact that it is not just about mainstream provision; it is also about specialist provision. As she says, we must look at all types of provision, because this is complex. Even if support is given in mainstream schools, it is often on very reduced timetables, which means that parents and carers are unable to work and be productive for society, because they are either covering the spaces in that provision, unauthorised or otherwise, in other settings, or covering for the times when the school cannot provide timetabled support.

I return to what the Liberal Democrats think we should have: a national SEND body, an urgent increase in diagnostic services, action to address the chronic lack of educational psychologists, targeted resources for local authorities to improve their capacity, support for our schools and for more special school places, and interim support measures for children awaiting diagnosis so that they do not fall through the cracks. The Lib Dems have always said that we need mental health professionals in every school. It is great to hear the Government talk about mental health professionals in secondary schools. We have heard about the need in primary schools, so let us get in there early too.

A capacity for early diagnosis and management means, as somebody said to me, in the words of Desmond Tutu, that we can stop pulling people out of the river, and instead stop them falling in the river in the first place. Once again, I pay tribute to all the amazing parents and carers who have spoken to me, and the amazing teachers, headteachers and SEND co-ordinators who are working in this area.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) ended with the words of Desmond Tutu, and I could not agree more. I congratulate her on securing this debate on an incredibly important subject, and I congratulate hon. Members on their valuable contributions to it. I know that, as a former teacher, she is really aware of the critical role that education plays in breaking down barriers to opportunity, and how vital it is that we get our education and health services right to support the most vulnerable in our society. She described incredibly eloquently and powerfully the difference that good, inclusive education provision can make, and the significant challenges in providing it. She also mentioned the challenges that many children face at transition points, which can undermine some of the incredible work that teachers are performing up and down the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mr Sewards) rightly pointed out.

Like others present, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire will have been inundated with letters and emails from concerned families in her constituency. I am sure she has been helping them to navigate the incredibly challenging special educational needs and disabilities system. So many of us are faced with this issue, which is why we need to reform the system. It is a priority for the Government. We want all children, regardless of where they are in the country, to receive the right support to succeed in their education and lead happy, healthy and productive lives. In far too many cases, we have simply lost the confidence of families that children with special educational needs and disabilities will be supported, because they are being failed by every measure.

Despite high needs funding for children and young people with very complex special educational needs and disabilities rising to higher and higher levels, the system is simply not delivering the outcomes that those children deserve, so we desperately need to reform the system. Our message to families is that we are committed to improving the SEND system and regaining their confidence.

I completely agree with the Minister’s comments. Part of ensuring that we provide the correct support to children is ensuring that the education, health and care plan assessment process is effective. I was told by a charity worker in my constituency of Dewsbury and Batley that 95% of appeals in Kirklees against a conclusion that SEND support is not needed are successful. Does she agree that this is a terrible waste of council resources, and that EHCP assessments must be done properly and got right the first time, so that children can be given support as soon as possible?

I absolutely recognise the challenge the hon. Gentleman has outlined, but it very much speaks to the point I was making, which is that we have published independently commissioned insights that suggest that if the education system as a whole was extensively improved, and if we had much better early intervention, which the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire rightly referred to, and better resourcing within mainstream schools, that could lead to tens of thousands more children and young people having their needs met without an education, health and care plan. Their needs would be met within a mainstream system and with their peers, without needing a specialist placement. Clearly, we need specialist places for children with the most complex needs, but to ensure we have those places, we need to improve inclusivity and expertise within mainstream schools, while ensuring that those special schools and places can cater to children with the most complex needs.

I come back to the hon. Lady’s point about transition points for young people and how important it is for the whole system to be reformed. It is not good enough to reform just part of it, and for that great work to then be undone when a child or young person moves on to a new educational setting that does not provide the right support and environment for them. My point is that this situation is huge and complex. There is not a magic wand, and there is no overnight quick fix, but we are determined to change it, and we cannot do it alone. We need to work in partnership to achieve this.

I thank the Minister for her response. So much could be said about special educational needs across the country and in my constituency of Mid Sussex. The Minister mentioned how we all as Members of this place are undoubtedly trying our best to help families navigate the special educational needs system. I am sorry to say that when families come to me and I ask, “How can I help you?”, they say, “We don’t think you can help us. We just want you to witness and listen to what we are saying,” because the system is so broken. I met the family of Annabel in Mid Sussex. She has been out of school for several years, has been sectioned and has had multiple suicide attempts because her autism was not being managed in the schooling system. Her family just wanted me to bear witness to them, and I am so sorry that there is not more that we as parliamentarians can do.

The hon. Lady has borne witness today to that family and young person facing that challenge. It is vital that we work together with parents, schools, councils, the health sector and expert staff, who we know go above and beyond to support children within education settings to achieve the changes that are clearly desperately needed.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire specifically focused the debate on support for autistic children and young people and those with ADHD. She will know from the work she has undertaken that we are seeing significant increases in the numbers of children and young people identified as autistic or with ADHD, and that is something we share in common with other countries around the world. We know families are facing significant challenges and that support needs to be in place, as she outlined, to ensure that those children can thrive in school.

We absolutely recognise the long waiting times across the NHS for autism and ADHD assessments, and we are working to address them. As the hon. Lady identified, we need to ensure that mainstream schools and colleges can identify those needs and put support in place early, because the earlier a child gets the support and right environment in which to learn, the more chance that they will thrive and that some of the challenges they face will be mitigated.

Ensuring that we have knowledgeable professionals in our schools and colleges is a key part of this. All teachers are teachers of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, but we need to make sure those teachers have the skills and support to help all pupils succeed. As such, we are implementing a range of teacher training reforms that begin with initial teacher training and continue through early career teaching to middle and senior leadership.

We have a universal SEND services contract, which provides SEND-specific courses and professional development for school and college staff. Through that contract, the Autism Education Trust offers a range of training and support for staff on how to support autistic children and young people. The contract began in May 2022, and over 200,000 professionals have received training from the Autism Education Trust and training partners. On 1 September 2024, this Government introduced a new mandatory leadership-level national professional qualification for SENCOs. We are making the changes, but it will take time for them to work through.

Our partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools programme is also running in around 10% of schools, which is approximately 1,600 mainstream primary school settings. It is deploying specialists from both the health and education workforces and building better teaching and staff capacity to identify the needs of neurodivergent children. It provides opportunities to enhance support and improve outcomes for all children, taking a whole-school approach. It is a cross-Government programme backed by £13 million of investment, and it is a collaboration between the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and NHS England.

Additionally, we have just established a neurodivergence task and finish group, bringing together a group of experts from various backgrounds to help us understand how to improve inclusivity in mainstream schools in a way that works for neurodivergent children and young people. We know that listening to children and young people and their families and understanding their experiences is a really important part of this work. That group met for the first time this week, and I look forward to seeing their recommendations on the best way that we can support these children’s needs. This is happening alongside our expert advisory group on inclusion and the work being done by Dame Christine Lenehan, our new strategic adviser on SEND. We are looking at all of these issues strategically across Government, as we urgently need to turn this situation around.

I could go into the details of high needs funding, but I am very conscious of time. I appreciate the concerns that have been raised about the national funding formula. We prioritised speed over change this year—we needed to get the formula processed and out to schools and educational institutions—but we will obviously keep it under review to make sure the money is being spent in the most effective way to deliver the best outcomes for children. We have also allocated £740 million for high needs capital funding to support mainstream schools to adapt, if needed, to create more inclusive mainstream settings.

I thank the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire again for bringing this matter forward. Ensuring that effective support is in place for young people is absolutely a priority of this Government. We know the hardship that far too many families have faced, and my final word of thanks goes to all those working in the interests of our children in our health, education and care systems. We will deliver the best for our children and young people, and I am confident that together we can achieve that.

Question put and agreed to.