Missing special needs support a "national scandal"

In today's news:

The thousands of children missing out on key support for diagnosed special educational needs in England is a "national scandal", Ofsted has said.

Chief inspector of England's schools, Amanda Spielman, reveals 2,060 children with official education, health and care plans (EHCs) setting out their needs receive no support at all.
She also raises the issue of children disappearing from education.
Some parents said a child is only assessed when they are excluded.

Ms Spielman says: "Too often, children who have been assessed still do not receive the services they need."
She uses her annual report to expose what she describes as a "bleak picture" of too many children "failed by the education system".

Link to article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46400397

Parents
  • Do you have more information about this?

  • All I know is the mainstream school I work in they get practically no additional funding for sen children the staff have been cut and the extras they are expected to provide in school is more than should be happening. But I'm lucky the staff there put in there own time so the children don't miss out but it's not sustainable. I agree parents are the first people responsible for caring for children but it is not good enough when you go to the NHS for help with your childs needs and they send you back to the school as you are not qualified to decide whether your child has a problem this then puts more strain on the school especially when the child seems to function in class. Ofsted are the ones that keep piling pressure on schools and to me it looks like they are playing teachers and parents against each other which helps no one. 

    I might be way off for other areas but this is what I see in my kids school and our local NHS trust 

  • What exactly would the money be spent on?

  • GP's rarely have a good knowledge of psychology as their training has been for the body rather than the mind. They tend to view matters that aren't life threatening or everyday medicine as little more than a whim. One area the NHS is weak are muscles and joints which is why there are so many private podiatrists and sports / RTA injury places.

    Round my way it's almost a case of find me a GP who isn't Indian.

  • I don't think it's fair to say most GPs are a complete waste of space.  You have to remember that they are the *level 1* human support engineer, so they can see people potentially presenting with absolutely anything.  What you can expect is that they will have the most common stuff "off pat".  The chances are, each one may have an area or two where they have a bit more specialised knowledge. But there's too much to know for every GP to have in-depth knowledge about everything.

    A large part of their job is keeping the pressure off the more specialist support engineers by dealing with stuff that doesn't need to go their way, so that the specialist support engineers can concentrate on dealing with the people who really need their speciality.  Specialists cost more and take longer to train, and there are less of them, so you need to try and make the most efficient use of their time that you can.

    Also, diagnosis of humans is not just a case of plugging in your car diagnostic tool and reading out what the faults reported are.  A lot of problem have very similar symptoms, and often you can only narrow down what the problem is by a process of elimination.  To try and maximise their chances of finding the right things first, they have procedures that sort things by commonality, likelihood severity and they try and rule out the most common/most likely/most severe first.  I believe the maxim is "When you hear hooves, look for horses first not zebras."

    So yes, if you have something rare/uncommon/not very likely and with relatively common symptoms, then it can take a while to rule out the most common/likely things first.  That's the diagnostic process for you and it's true for pretty much any product - human or otherwise...

  • Personally I consider most GPs to be a complete waste of space.

    A consultant once told me that all GPs do most of the time is deal  with minor ailments like sore throats, prescribe medications - half of which aren't actually needed, or if they think there is something more serious that they don't know anything about refer patients to specialists, all whilst drawing a handsome salary. They tend to look down on their patients and are economical when it comes to explaining what is really wrong with them. Just (sod off) and take this medication, or there really is nothing wrong with you, or you will grow out of it.

    If patients have uncommon conditions with subtle signs then GPs are well known to overlook them.

  • No.  Of course not.  Your GP is a level 1 human support engineer.  The human is too complex for any one person to possibly know everything about how a human works and what can go wrong with it etc.  You need to work out what you need to do to get your GP to escalate an issue to L2 / L3.

  • I have been thinking over the years that the NAS should establish some mechanism for parents to refer children with ASD to specialists and bypass their GP.

    The way the NHS works is that GPs are gatekeepers for many services but they are not in a good position to provide the initial diagnosis.

  • There used to be more special schools and bases attached to main stream schools. Then they scrapped a lot of this and children that would have attended had to go to main stream school hence the need for more support. There has also been an increase in the number of SEN children. The expectations for SEN children was also much lower in the past. Now it is something that OFSTED looks closey at. Schools are struggling with funding in general right now. It's not just about the children with SEN. It's all very worrying to be honest.

  • In my daughters case gp agreed that she needed to be seen at age 3 due severe sleep problems and repetitive behaviour as well as food refusal, paediatrics said not their problem needs camhs referral told me waiting list was 2 years so I waited, only to find they never sent the referral by this point school was noticing her behaviour and need for routine, so school nursing team got involved they noticed immediately the things I had reported and got camhs in to see her they agreed that either she has ocd, anxiety and a sleep disorder or asd is the root cause and the rest is symptomatic, they referred her to child development centre for assessment along with all the supporting evidence from school. But thanks to the phrasing of the referral letter she was rejected. We are now having to compile new evidence so they will consider her again. 

    I want the diagnosis as her coping methods are failing and her sleep is getting worse but no one will do anything until child development centre diagnosis. 

    So I'm stuck putting more strain on a school asking them to repeat what they've already done but those are the hoops we have to jump through, a diagnosis won't change my child or me but may help her get the support she may need in life

  • When I was at primary school my parents had never heard of AS. They were vaguely aware of traditional autism but they did not think that I fitted the criteria. Having knowledge that your child has a particular type of SEN is one thing but not knowing what on earth is wrong with them is a completely different scenario. Their number one objective was to find out what was wrong with me rather than obtaining an official diagnosis for a condition that they are aware of and are 99% certain that I have.

    My GP was unhelpful but I can't always blame him because how a child acts and behaves in a GP's practice is completely different from how they act and behave in the primary school playground. Therefore he claimed that there was nothing wrong with me so was reluctant to pursue the matter any further.

    If my GP had a dossier of evidence from school signed by the teachers then it might have been a different story. The trouble was that the teachers didn't seem to know anything about AS and never mentioned the term anywhere so they misdiagnosed me as having behavioural problems.

    The truth is that GP's generally won't take action without concrete proof and evidence provided by the school over a prolonged period.

    If a parent is 99% certain that their child has a certain type of SEN and all they want an official diagnosis (a piece of paper) but are struggling with the NHS then it often pays to go private rather than wasting your child's life fighting the system. The NHS isn't really designed for ASD and some other forms of SEN. Even if parents go private then it's strongly recommended to also have a dossier of evidence from the school signed by the teachers.

  • Personally, my daughter assessed for asd, 

Reply Children
  • GP's rarely have a good knowledge of psychology as their training has been for the body rather than the mind. They tend to view matters that aren't life threatening or everyday medicine as little more than a whim. One area the NHS is weak are muscles and joints which is why there are so many private podiatrists and sports / RTA injury places.

    Round my way it's almost a case of find me a GP who isn't Indian.

  • I don't think it's fair to say most GPs are a complete waste of space.  You have to remember that they are the *level 1* human support engineer, so they can see people potentially presenting with absolutely anything.  What you can expect is that they will have the most common stuff "off pat".  The chances are, each one may have an area or two where they have a bit more specialised knowledge. But there's too much to know for every GP to have in-depth knowledge about everything.

    A large part of their job is keeping the pressure off the more specialist support engineers by dealing with stuff that doesn't need to go their way, so that the specialist support engineers can concentrate on dealing with the people who really need their speciality.  Specialists cost more and take longer to train, and there are less of them, so you need to try and make the most efficient use of their time that you can.

    Also, diagnosis of humans is not just a case of plugging in your car diagnostic tool and reading out what the faults reported are.  A lot of problem have very similar symptoms, and often you can only narrow down what the problem is by a process of elimination.  To try and maximise their chances of finding the right things first, they have procedures that sort things by commonality, likelihood severity and they try and rule out the most common/most likely/most severe first.  I believe the maxim is "When you hear hooves, look for horses first not zebras."

    So yes, if you have something rare/uncommon/not very likely and with relatively common symptoms, then it can take a while to rule out the most common/likely things first.  That's the diagnostic process for you and it's true for pretty much any product - human or otherwise...

  • Personally I consider most GPs to be a complete waste of space.

    A consultant once told me that all GPs do most of the time is deal  with minor ailments like sore throats, prescribe medications - half of which aren't actually needed, or if they think there is something more serious that they don't know anything about refer patients to specialists, all whilst drawing a handsome salary. They tend to look down on their patients and are economical when it comes to explaining what is really wrong with them. Just (sod off) and take this medication, or there really is nothing wrong with you, or you will grow out of it.

    If patients have uncommon conditions with subtle signs then GPs are well known to overlook them.

  • No.  Of course not.  Your GP is a level 1 human support engineer.  The human is too complex for any one person to possibly know everything about how a human works and what can go wrong with it etc.  You need to work out what you need to do to get your GP to escalate an issue to L2 / L3.

  • I have been thinking over the years that the NAS should establish some mechanism for parents to refer children with ASD to specialists and bypass their GP.

    The way the NHS works is that GPs are gatekeepers for many services but they are not in a good position to provide the initial diagnosis.

  • There used to be more special schools and bases attached to main stream schools. Then they scrapped a lot of this and children that would have attended had to go to main stream school hence the need for more support. There has also been an increase in the number of SEN children. The expectations for SEN children was also much lower in the past. Now it is something that OFSTED looks closey at. Schools are struggling with funding in general right now. It's not just about the children with SEN. It's all very worrying to be honest.

  • In my daughters case gp agreed that she needed to be seen at age 3 due severe sleep problems and repetitive behaviour as well as food refusal, paediatrics said not their problem needs camhs referral told me waiting list was 2 years so I waited, only to find they never sent the referral by this point school was noticing her behaviour and need for routine, so school nursing team got involved they noticed immediately the things I had reported and got camhs in to see her they agreed that either she has ocd, anxiety and a sleep disorder or asd is the root cause and the rest is symptomatic, they referred her to child development centre for assessment along with all the supporting evidence from school. But thanks to the phrasing of the referral letter she was rejected. We are now having to compile new evidence so they will consider her again. 

    I want the diagnosis as her coping methods are failing and her sleep is getting worse but no one will do anything until child development centre diagnosis. 

    So I'm stuck putting more strain on a school asking them to repeat what they've already done but those are the hoops we have to jump through, a diagnosis won't change my child or me but may help her get the support she may need in life

  • When I was at primary school my parents had never heard of AS. They were vaguely aware of traditional autism but they did not think that I fitted the criteria. Having knowledge that your child has a particular type of SEN is one thing but not knowing what on earth is wrong with them is a completely different scenario. Their number one objective was to find out what was wrong with me rather than obtaining an official diagnosis for a condition that they are aware of and are 99% certain that I have.

    My GP was unhelpful but I can't always blame him because how a child acts and behaves in a GP's practice is completely different from how they act and behave in the primary school playground. Therefore he claimed that there was nothing wrong with me so was reluctant to pursue the matter any further.

    If my GP had a dossier of evidence from school signed by the teachers then it might have been a different story. The trouble was that the teachers didn't seem to know anything about AS and never mentioned the term anywhere so they misdiagnosed me as having behavioural problems.

    The truth is that GP's generally won't take action without concrete proof and evidence provided by the school over a prolonged period.

    If a parent is 99% certain that their child has a certain type of SEN and all they want an official diagnosis (a piece of paper) but are struggling with the NHS then it often pays to go private rather than wasting your child's life fighting the system. The NHS isn't really designed for ASD and some other forms of SEN. Even if parents go private then it's strongly recommended to also have a dossier of evidence from the school signed by the teachers.