Opinion: Our Congress wants to do what’s best for children

Ten years ago, the government passed a new Children’s Act.

The intention was admirable. Bringing together all agencies responsible for the welfare of the most vulnerable children, including children with special needs and disabilities or SEND.

For the first time, education, the NHS and social care are all jointly responsible for creating an education, health and care plan detailing the help and support each child needs.

At the same time, we have expanded the age range of young people we work with from 16 and 18 years old to 25 years old.

As I have written previously, this was done without providing much of the extra funding needed to care for the extra young people.

As a result, across the country, top local councils like Devon are struggling with large SEND budget deficits.

The national education fair fundraising campaign f40, of which Mr Devon is a key member, estimates that around £4.6bn more is needed nationally to provide all the support needed.

Devon is expected to have an accumulated deficit of £162 million by the end of this financial year.

This is clearly unsustainable.

All these arguments were rehearsed in a debate in the House of Commons earlier this month, where speakers included North Devon MP Serene Saxby and Torbay’s Kevin Foster. f40 also gave evidence to Parliament’s all-party expert committee.

Locally, we are in close consultation with the Ministry of Education on the so-called safety valve programme. This is a national plan designed to provide financial support to councils with SEND deficits.

In return, the DfE will want to see evidence from us about how we are containing costs and improving the services we provide to vulnerable children.

You might think these are potentially contradictory objectives, especially when we say that 24-hour care, support and accommodation for one of our most vulnerable children is currently costing the equivalent of £281,704 a year. not.

This is clearly a group of children with very severe needs, but there are around 9,000 children in Devon who have education, health and care plans. This represents just under 10% of all school-aged children in the county.

We often have to rely on specialized independent providers for this type of support, as we often do not have the expertise ourselves and it can be very expensive.

It also means that children may live miles away from home because the only facility where they can receive proper care is in another county, or indeed another region. Masu.

So one of the cornerstones of our plan is to reduce the use of expensive proprietary provision by around a third over the next six years, which equates to around 360 locations .

We also want more children to attend local schools with suitably qualified teachers and parents.

And we are rapidly expanding our unique special education school offering. Significant investment by Devon and the DfE should help expand special schools by just under half by 2025, providing an additional 525 places.

These improvements enable us to provide the same education and care in our own schools, but with the advantage that children are educated closer to home and at a significantly lower cost than in the independent sector. .

These are the highlights of our plans, which we are developing in partnership with school leaders and Devon NHS, and in full consultation with parents.

It is clear that they know their children best, and just like them, we want what is best for them and their children.