Special educational needs: 'Brick wall' for NI parents seeking school support
- Published
Paul Kavanagh and Emma Morgan
Some parents of children with special educational needs (SEN) meet "brick wall after brick wall" when seeking school support, a committee has heard.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is holding an inquiry into the funding and delivery of public services.
Parents from the SEN Reform NI group appeared before MPs on Wednesday.
Their evidence included a claim that a parent has to regularly go to a school to change their child's nappy in person due to a lack of support in school.
There were significant pressures on suitable school places for children with SEN this year.
That meant that hundreds of children had to wait until the summer holidays before their school place could be confirmed.
Some parents held a protest at Stormont about the situation they and their children were facing.
As well as those waiting for a place, almost 2,500 children were in the statementing process over the summer according to the Education Authority (EA).
A statement is a legal document that sets out a child's needs and the support they should have in school.
Paul Kavanagh and Emma Morgan, from SEN Reform NI, appeared before the NIAC and said they were there to represent many other parents and children in the same situation.
'My son is not in school today'
Mr Kavanagh told MPs his son has Down's syndrome as well as a severe learning disability and physical needs.
He read out a communication from his son's school, which said that they did not have the necessary support to allow him to attend on Wednesday.
"Why am I at Westminster advocating for my son's basic human right to an education?" Mr Kavanagh said.
"He's at home today because the school that he's been allocated doesn't have the necessary supports.
"He's not in school today. Will he be in school tomorrow? I don't know the answer to that. Will he be in school next week? I don't know the answer."
'Typical' experience
Ms Morgan talked about her struggle to get support like speech and language therapy for her five-year-old autistic son Tom, who is non-verbal.
"We just met brick wall after brick wall and my experience is typical, if not even as bad as what some of the parents in our group experience," she said.
"My son's statement of educational need was so vague it was meaningless.
"We ended up having to go to a tribunal for our son, which was at a cost to us and the state, simply because the Education Authority would not put in the therapies that our son needed."
SDLP MP Claire Hanna, Emma Morgan, Paul Kavanagh and Alliance MP Stephen Farry
'No staff trained'
She later told MPs of other parents also struggling to get appropriate support to allow their disabled children to go to school.
"We have an example of a mother in our group whose little girl has a severe learning difficulty," Ms Morgan said.
"She is non-verbal, and she is not toilet-trained.
"She is now in a mainstream classroom, with no staff trained, with severe learning difficulty.
"And the mother works full-time, the father works full-time but that mother has to make herself available to change nappies, there is no changing facilities in the school so the nappy has to be changed on the ground."
"There is a statutory obligation to provide access to education for all children regardless of disability and that is currently not happening in Northern Ireland, and at the minute it is seemingly acceptable for a child with a disability not to have a school space," Ms Morgan added.
Mr Kavanagh said that children with SEN were being discriminated against.
"We don't accept that nothing can be done," he said.
"The Education Authority is failing our children, they are not accountable to anybody."
A spokesperson for the authority said it wanted every SEN child to be "happy, learning and succeeding".
"The Education Authority (EA) is continuing to work closely with the Department of Education (DE) and other stakeholders on a comprehensive End-to-End Review of SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) with a focus on improved outcomes and cost-effective delivery.
"The EA is committed to ensuring that every child with SEND receives high quality, timely and cost-effective provision and we are continuing to work with families and settings on an individual basis."
The committee chair, Conservative MP Simon Hoare, told Mr Kavanagh and Ms Morgan that it was "trying to fill in a scrutiny and accountability overview gap created by Stormont not functioning".
"Quite properly you should be in normal circumstances sitting in front of the relevant Stormont committee making your case."
- Published8 May 2023
