Dec 15, 2024, Cambridgeshire Live: Cambs MP calls lack of SEND support 'timebomb' for public services
A Cambridgeshire MP has described a lack of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), labelling it a “timebomb” for public services. In a government debate this week over SEND provision for children with autism and ADHD, Liberal Democrat MP Pippa Heylings read the words of a teacher in her constituency of South Cambridgeshire who said students with special needs were being taught in corridors due to a lack of space and resources.
"We will see the impacts of this on future quality of life, opportunities, NHS and social services – all services, really, if we don’t deal with this situation.”
"She says: ‘On a daily basis I’m setting-up, helping other teaching assistants to deliver bespoke curriculums as they are mostly educated outside the classes of their peers. We don’t have a special unit for them.
"We’re just accommodating them as best we can in quieter areas of the school, including corridors, because they’re not able to work in the noise and busyness of a primary classroom.’
"She saw one of those children that she’d been working with, who, a few days after starting secondary school, was excluded because their behaviour was not manageable. In her words: ‘It broke my heart to hear from her mum what she’d gone through in such a short time in mainstream secondary and I knew at once she must have been so frightened to have behaved as she did.’
"We want all children, regardless of where they are in the country, to receive the right support to succeed in their education and to lead happy, healthy and productive lives. And we know that in far too many cases we have simply lost the confidence of families that children with special educational needs and disabilities will be supported because they are being failed on every measure.
"And, despite high needs funding for children and young people with very complex special educational needs and disabilities rising to higher and higher levels, the system is simply not delivering. It is not giving the outcomes that those children deserve.
"So, we desperately need to reform the system. Our message to families is that we are committed to improving the SEND system and we are committed to regaining their confidence."
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