More children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) should be taught in mainstream schools, the care minister has said.
In an interview with The i Paper, Steven Kinnock said he was working with the Department for Education (DfE) to “boost inclusivity” and enhance expertise in mainstream education.
Acknowledging the long backlog for diagnosing SEND, he added that there were “questions over whether a diagnosis is always the best way forward” when it came to supporting children.
He made the comments while discussing new guidance from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), which will introduce compulsory training for care staff working with individuals with learning disabilities and autism.
In January, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned that funding shortages for SEND pupils and a postcode lottery of provisions risked creating a “lost generation” of children, and there was “no sense of urgency” among officials to address the issue.
Families often have difficulty finding SEND schools that can cater for their children in their areas. By law local authorities – facing their own funding crisis – must pay for transport. The County Council Network said in March that 31,000 children were travelling to school each day by taxi, with the cost in 2023-24 hitting £1.4bn.
But Kinnock said the focus of the Government would be supporting children in mainstream settings, rather than creating separate provisions.
“We want to boost expertise in mainstream schools, helping to really work with people, young people who have complex needs, and rebuilding trust in the system. We feel that what we inherited is really a mess,” he told The i Paper.
Kinnock also questioned whether diagnosis was always the best way to deliver SEND support. Instead, he said, the government wants to “build the ability and capability and capacity in mainstream schools, so that you’ve got that diversity in the classroom”.
He added: “From that diversity comes really positive experiences, not just for the young people who are autistic or have learning disabilities, but also for all of the other young people in that class who really can see the benefits from having that diversity and that energy in the classroom.”
Kinnock questioned if diagnosis was the best way to deliver SEND support (Photo: Getty Images)Autism training follows parents’ campaign
The autism training, which is already available to care staff, is named after Oliver McGowan, an 18-year-old from Bristol who died in 2016 after have a sever reaction to antipsychotic medication, despite warnings from his family.
Oliver’s parents, Paula and Tom McGowan, have campaigned for improved training to prevent tragedies like their son’s and to improve care for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
Kinnock, who has completed the training himself, said it was “co-produced, co-designed and co-delivered with autistic people and people with learning disabilities” to help improve the NHS care they receive, and that he would be “encouraging everybody in the [DHSC] to take the training”.
Kinnock also addressed the impact that proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which supports disabled people, could have on people with autism and learning disabilities.
He emphasised the need to avoid writing off people with learning disabilities and autism, insisting that they “have a huge amount of creativity and intellectual firepower to bring to our labour market and to our society”.
“We need to ensure that we have a social security system that facilitates that and enables that, rather than writing people off and labelling them in a way that is not helpful to anybody,” he added.
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