I have two children, both autistic. One is good at school in the mainstream, with adaptations; Some don’t live in a mainstream environment of all – all about it prompts him.
Any minister who wants to lose special needs and deficiency of education and deficit education (Send) Settings should be required to leave their quiet office and spend a week to take over their duties in a busy secondary school (After deficit benefits, hard work is nearly targeting education rights to children’s special needs?, 7 July).
Every 55 minutes they should drop what they do and move in a separate room to work in a different minial portfolio, regardless of their interests or capacity for it. A few times a week, they need to change for PE in a room full of people.
Why is it difficult for the government to understand that “coverage” does not mean that “forced everything in a framework no matter how inappropriate”? This means understanding, respect and act deserving, because everyone has different needs.
Rachel Taylor
Lewes, East Sussex
War to get an education, health plan and care (EHCP) cannot be easily overcome. It often takes relief, stress and no small measure of trust and skill negotiating the process of appeal and court.
As a teacher, a barrister and former representative of the independent advice of special education advice, the leading love of love in England, I know it from the first hand experience. My own child has complex medical needs and I am amazed at what my local authority says they do not meet the threshold (clearly defined by children and family acts 2014). I appealed, successfully, but should attend a hearing of a Court of the magistrate.
I understand why local authorities are not supported by EHCP applications; They know they don’t have funds to answer plans. Watering, or removing children’s rights to support cannot be the answer. Enough funded funds to send children to be successful. My own child, with a full school plan, managed to achieve a first-class degree. I’m afraid it’s not the result for our next generation of children.
Susan Hails
Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire
Your letters (Letters, 6 July) Create a strong case for the need to support children with additional educational needs, but I feel like they make a mistake to continue using EHCPs.
I, for many years, a governor of two secondary schools and witnessed the system problems “with the dispute. The processes are so complex that they are not reached by the parents’ administrative skills.
The time taken to secure a plan becomes more likely to drink useless for junior schools to start a child’s time request with child hours with them; The second school can struggle with child support for their first year and only get a plan at the end of year 8 – means that children in school life lacking more support in three years.
Any system with these features should be replaced, and I will encourage your readers to accept the opportunity to achieve it.
Dick Quibell
London
