The upcoming shake-up in special needs services is said to be the biggest for 30 years. But some leaders fear it is being rushed through and others are concerned that a simplistic view of special needs means that some children could be left behind. Dorothy Lepkowska reports.

SENsory perception

Special needs education in England is in a state of flux in what has been hailed by ministers as the biggest change in provision for 30 years. Government plans unveiled in the Queen's Speech in May are aimed at making the process of accessing support simpler and faster, especially for the most vulnerable children and their families.

Under the new arrangements contained in the Children and Families Bill, statements of special needs will be replaced by a single, simpler plan that would potentially begin at birth and last until the child is 25, rather than the current cut-off age of 16. Local authorities (LAs) will have to publish details of what provision and support they offer to disabled children and those with special needs, and their families.

Crucially, these single assessment Education, Health and Care Plans will be accompanied by a personal budget, which families will be able to spend how they see fit, although there will be no compulsion on them to assume this responsibility. There will also be a new mediation process for disputes with a right of appeal if families are unhappy with the support they are receiving.

The categories of School Action and School Action Plus will also be replaced with a single school-based category.

Twenty pathfinders have been set up around the country to trial the new arrangements, amid some confusion about how this new process will work. What is clear is that it will be difficult for civil servants to come up with a single, nationwide model to implement the new policy, largely because existing models of collaboration, set up to meet the last government's Every Child Matters agenda, vary widely around the country.

Monitoring the money

The Department for Education (DfE) still has to answer significant questions about how the parental budget will work in practice. Who will monitor how the money is spent or decide how much a family is entitled to? Will the cash be paid directly into a bank account or administered in the form of a voucher? And will this sum of money cover the whole of the child's schooling or just the proportion that will meet their special needs?

Mark Dengel, headteacher of Fountaindale, a special school for young people aged from three to 19 with physical and communication difficulties in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, says that many heads are worried about how parents will be allowed to spend their funding allocation.

"We have pupils and families participating in our local pathfinder trials and there is a lot of discussion about how the single assessment will work," Mark says. "In particular, we are concerned about schools being expected to employ professionals who don't normally work there and the potential difficulties this may cause with aspects such as insurance or who will manage them when they are here."

Mark, who sits on a local pathfinder steering group, adds that many parents are not keen on the idea of being in charge of their own budgets. "In some cases these are already quite vulnerable families struggling with day-to-day life, and they believe it would be too much responsibility. We, too, wouldn't want any additional pressures to be put on them if this can be avoided.

"In theory, the proposals are mostly good. But we need the time to ensure that we can make them work effectively in practice."

Slipping through the net

Elsewhere, Kim Bolton, executive head of a federation of three special schools in Brighton and a special educational needs (SEN) representative on ASCL's Council, thinks that the changes may lead to some children slipping through the net.

"My own feeling is that the government perceives the special needs child as one who has severe health or disability issues and is unable to learn, rather than the one with dyslexia or social and behaviour problems," Kim says.

Kim fears that ministers expect schools to meet the needs of children with more minor conditions using the Pupil Premium, but this will not be enough. "We already know from [Education Secretary] Michael Gove's rhetoric that he thinks too many children are labelled as having special needs and all we need to do is have higher expectations.

"I am very concerned that we will no longer have the means to support some children because the government is taking a simplistic view of a very complex problem, and is only concerned with those who have to work with multiple professionals."

Anna Cole, ASCL's parliamentary specialist, has attended meetings between ASCL's Inclusion Committee and civil servants to discuss the proposals. She also has concerns about what the changes to School Action and School Action Plus will mean for those children who display mild or moderate levels of special needs.

"We are getting a real sense that children with perceived minor or lesser forms of special needs, such as behaviour problems, may not get the individual plans and may be overlooked," Anna says.

"There are also concerns about the role of local authorities, whose services are currently being decimated and where expertise is being lost. Yet there is an expectation that they will continue having a role in coordinating special needs provision."

Oldham Council is one of the pathfinder authorities trialling some of the new arrangements to see how they will work in practice – in particular focusing on the single assessment plan and personal budgets.

Parent power

Gary McBrien, head of the council's additional and complex needs service, says that the increased involvement of parents is a key part of the development of new procedures. "Parents will play a more proactive and involved role, and this is already proving to be quite a culture shock for everyone as we are not used to working in this way," Gary says.

"Everything moves at a slow pace because of their [the parents'] family and working commitments. But they do seem to appreciate the fact that they are driving the process rather than just being consulted about what is happening to their children."

In Oldham, a model of distributing funding – known as the resource allocation system (RAS) – used in adult services is being adapted for children's services and is currently being tested out on parents.

"We come up with a notional budget which is based on the child's needs, and each available service that may meet that need has a weighting or value," Gary says. "That enables us to arrive at a budget that parents can use to purchase the range of services they need for their child. Parents have to give us a clear indication of how they plan to spend the money, so it is not a case of just handing it over."

One of the biggest challenges lies in bringing together all the various professionals who support families where a child has special needs, he says.

"We have had to adapt a single approach to working in a more integrated way and be less precious about our professional boundaries and at a time when local authorities are being forced to reorganise and people are uncertain about their jobs and how their various departments will be structured in the future. This is not easy."

Another potential difficulty is the time-scale for nationwide implementation. Ministers want a national model in place by 2014, a prospect that is overly ambitious, Gary adds.

"While the chief benefit of all this is that parents have greater responsibility and there is more clarity about what support and services are available, I am concerned we are being rushed. Most parents would rather have the existing system in place for longer if it means we get it right, rather than rushing through the reforms."

• Dorothy Lepkowska is a freelance education writer.

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Key changes for schools and colleges

• A single assessment process for children and young adults up to 25 with special educational needs or disabilities. Students in further education (FE) will benefit from protections similar to those that currently apply to pupils with a statement of SEN until they turn 25 – at the moment, statutory responsibility ends at 16.
• A new Education, Health and Care Plan to be introduced from 2014, giving parents or young people a right to a personal budget to pay for their support.
• A single school-based assessment to replace School Action and School Action Plus.
• Greater powers for the children's commissioner, including assuming the functions of Ofsted's children's rights director.
• The redesigned National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) is likely to include a specific module on headship in special schools.
• BESD – the all-encompassing category of 'behavioural, emotional and social difficulties' – is being broken down into more specific characteristics.
• New measures are being introduced at Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 to highlight how many young people go on to further education or employment.

For more information, see www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00046-2012

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