Official Report 296KB pdf
Good morning and welcome to the 10th meeting of the Education Committee in this session. This morning we are taking further evidence on the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill. I ask people to switch off their mobile phones and pagers in order to ensure that we can proceed without interruption.
Good morning. I am a senior manager in Fife Council's education service. The Association of Directors of Education in Scotland welcomes the broad intentions of the bill to modernise, broaden and strengthen the approach to children who have additional support needs. We also welcome the stated intention to reduce bureaucracy in the system and to replace the outdated record-of-needs system, which was established by the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.
We welcome the opportunity to give evidence orally and in writing to the Scottish Parliament.
Our association broadly welcomes the bill and, in particular, welcomes the concept of additional support needs. We recognise the challenging diversity within school populations in Scotland. We have concerns, however, about the balance between youngsters who have a formal co-ordinated support plan and those who have additional support needs. Schools have in place at the moment various levels of planning for such youngsters; we do not want schools to have to increase significantly those levels of planning.
The Association of Directors of Social Work also welcomes the general thrust of the bill and the aspirations therein. Some areas do not fully resonate with the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, but that is the nature of new legislation; some of that will be worked out in the definitions in the new code of practice and in the case precedent that ensues from new legislation.
We are all conscious that a significant management role will fall on you and your colleagues to ensure that the bill delivers in practice. On support or otherwise for the bill, I was particularly struck by Mr Kirkaldy's comments and submission. On the one hand, you say that you support the bill but, on the other hand, your detailed comments seem to go against the framework of the bill in relation to how the new arrangements would be delivered. I would like you to elaborate on that; we have first to get the framework right, but you seem to have considerable criticisms about the way in which the Executive is proceeding in that regard.
We support and welcome the broadening of the concept of special educational needs to additional support needs, which reflects current practice. We have understood for some time that children with special educational needs are simply one fragment of a continuum of children who require additional consideration within schools and services.
Are there any other general observations on the central theme of the bill? We will consider issues in more detail in a minute.
The increased numbers will be an area of debate. Under the bill, we would in a school of 900 pupils have 120 children who have particular additional needs. My school currently has about 90 youngsters who have individualised educational programmes or individual behaviour plans—support for their behaviour or educational development. We currently have 34 children with records and 24 who need base support. I do not argue that all 120 would need co-ordinated support plans, but I stress that levels of planning are required of schools even before we switch over to co-ordinated support plans.
A number of planning documents are already in the public domain. I would like to mention the success for all initiative, on which I have a bit of detail, if that would be helpful. Through the children's hearings system and through health services, we have plans for children who have very complex needs. We already have individualised educational programmes that meet the needs of a wide range of children, but it is not clear to me how the plans would work together—especially in relation to the children's hearings system, where account would be taken of a number of children who have multiple needs. In my view we will, instead of reducing bureaucracy, be taking up a lot of professional time with producing plans but not necessarily on outcomes for children.
Following that point, I can envisage children's hearings regarding the CSP as an avenue into a resource bank, just as the record of needs was. Tensions could be set up, which it might be possible to resolve through practice. Given the varying amount of education plans—individual and personal learning plans—the looked-after and accommodated children forms, the forms for children's hearing assessments, the CSP requirements, and the assessment of all children prior to reaching the CSP threshold, we need to sit back and ask how we can better integrate the assessments, forms, bureaucracy and legislative base. We must do that instead of simply adding another tier of legislation that requires another tier of bureaucracy. I support the reference to the children's hearings.
I want to pick up on the issue of bureaucracy and to follow on from what you said about whether the bill could conceivably be an opportunity to develop a more integrated approach to sit alongside the children's hearings system. I will then ask about integration of IEPs, PLPs and CSPs and so on. Will you expand on how you think plans can be integrated to allow them to work better within the children's hearings system?
I will have to sit back and think about that. We already have a process whereby the school refers the child to the social work department, for example. We would then be requested, through the children's hearings system, to prepare reports, to take into account the views of the school, the parents, the child and the other agencies involved, and to submit the various reports to the children's hearing. That would be a fairly comprehensive assessment if it reached a hearing or a post-hearing review. The views of the school would be accommodated in a pro forma that was laid down by the relevant authority and—if the child became a looked-after and accommodated child—in a pro forma that was laid down by the Scottish Executive; such forms are called the LAC forms.
All agencies have to meet their statutory duties—we are describing education and social work statutory duties. Those are our prime functions and, at the moment, they continue to be separate. We have just heard about the way in which the children's hearings system works and how the record of needs works. I cannot see anything that will necessarily bring those together; we might continue to have parallel lines.
We might want to explore with the minister what sort of thinking has gone on in that area.
Although we are worried about the levels of bureaucracy and paperwork, I make the point that our central concern is about active involvement of the different agencies in supporting young people. We certainly have gaps in the system at the moment.
If I may go back to my earlier point, we need to build the foundation of what is ordinarily available. That needs to be as strong as possible both for personal learning plans and for individualised educational programmes. We need to reserve the more statutory elements for the top of the pyramid, so that we do not go first to the statutory elements when we respond to the population. We should try to build the foundation of what is ordinarily available informally and quickly for families and children at school level.
You emphasise in your submission that you would like the definition of those who will require a CSP to be narrowed down. The submission proposes that we should
In a way, that is the nub of the issue. We need parents to have confidence in the system's capacity to deliver. We need a system that can deliver equitably according to greatest need—a system that can prioritise resources accordingly.
Would not that be quite difficult to establish? How would you build that use of CSPs into the system?
In everyday terms, planning for children's educational arrangements takes place in discussion between the family and the school. Those discussions are often also attended by an educational psychologist or other support services. The process is defined by the extent to which agreement is reached and confidence is built between the family and the education service.
Surely that is what the bill is intended to do? The intention behind the abolition of compulsory assessments is to make the process more informal and to make it a part of the school mechanism.
I agree that that is the stated intention of the bill. Our criticism relates to the detail of the definition of eligibility for the co-ordinated support plans. We think that the detail of that aspect undermines the principal intention of the bill.
One of the submissions touched on the question whether it would be possible to build on a basic document such as the IEP. Which of the working documents in the school could be used as the starting point for whatever is built on top of it in terms of bureaucracy and so forth? What would be the most appropriate mechanism, document or procedure with which to do that?
I think that it would be the IEP—the individualised educational programme. If we go back, even to the early 90s, it was in the interests of head teachers as well as parents at that time for more children to be identified and to hold records of needs. At that time, authorities committed resources including auxiliary support and so on only for children who had records of needs. Authorities have become much more responsive to the needs of children and the needs of schools; they now go beyond the boundaries of the records.
I apologise for being late. I hope that I am not going to ask about an area that has been covered already.
I agree with what George Haggarty said about IEPs. They are well embedded in the system throughout Scotland and schools use them in consultation and co-operation with families and agencies. They are the foundation for what we should be doing every day in schools. We are starting from a strong position.
The documents to which I referred started being developed in 1999 and in 2002 they were sent to all schools, local authorities and psychological services. The documentation is there and good practice has been developed. Children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties are challenging to the systems that we have, because their difficulties are not resolved quickly. Many of our support structures are not as yet developed for the long term; that requires co-operation of a different order. I look to the bill's being changed to accommodate that. A year in these young people's lives is not enough; we may need 12 or 15 years.
On the duty to comply, I believe that section 21 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1980 permits a local authority to require another agency to provide services where the local authority is not able to do so itself—provided that the agency has the resources so to do. There is an opt-out in that respect.
I want to get a handle on IEPs. There seems to be broad agreement that the IEP is probably the most sensible tool to build on in respect of the bill. Roughly how many children, in percentage terms in schools across the country, have IEPs?
I think that the number in my school is 10 per cent.
Is that typical?
It would vary according to the social characteristics of the school intake. That said, the figure is broadly in that area.
What are the criteria on which an IEP would be opened?
Most authorities have up to five stages of intervention. Stage three is the point at which we would start to open an IEP. It is the stage at which the normal routines and resources of the classroom, department or school are not resolving the youngster's difficulties, in terms of either their learning or behaviour.
So, there is a need to draw information that is held by other agencies into the school at the proper time.
When it is needed.
Am I correct in thinking from the evidence that you have already given that you would be content for the duty for compulsory assessments to be withdrawn in moving to the new system? What should that mean in practice?
Yes, we would be pleased if compulsory assessments were withdrawn. It would be in tune with the idea of building more universal, readily accessible assessments at school level and using more specialised assessments where necessary and where agreed with families. As you will know, the 1980 act required medical and psychological assessments for all children who had records of needs, and in many cases those assessments were redundant. Children were therefore being subjected unnecessarily to assessments, and professional agencies were being tied up in the process. We would welcome the removal of compulsory assessments.
Is that the view of all of your colleagues who are giving evidence?
I understood that the idea was that it was not compulsory in all cases, but that where an education authority requested an assessment from an agency, the agency was required to provide it. I would not like that fundamental point to be overlooked.
From the psychological services point of view, most services throughout Scotland have an open referral system where parents can write in and ask for an assessment. We would not see the need for the statutory requirement. We might want to ensure that that knowledge is more available to parents, but we feel that a system is already in operation.
I am not sure that an authority is required to respond—
I thought that that was in the consultation paper. The gap that I referred to earlier is there because some agencies either have no active involvement with a young person or there can be significant delay in the response.
Do you think that children's panel documents should be made accessible to those concerned? Who should bear the responsibility and be accountable for ensuring that that happens?
Sorry, I did not quite understand the question. Are you referring to children's hearings documents?
There may be children's panel documents relating to children who, for one reason or another, have antisocial behaviour problems or other difficulties. Those documents could be very relevant to the child concerned, and to the education authority and the school. Should those documents be made accessible? Who should be responsible for ensuring that that becomes a reality?
The current—and fairly recent—legislation under children's hearings rules and regulations, the "S" judgment from down south and various other judgments have led to legislation that allows all reports to the children's hearings to be available to the child and to the parents. The school is, in general, fully involved in the production of those documents, and any teacher attending a hearing would have full access to the documents. Education authorities and local authorities are a single agency under data protection legislation, so the sharing of information is perhaps not as complex as it is in other areas such as health and the police. Any productions for, and any results of, children's hearings in documentary form are made fully available to the child, to the parents and to relevant agencies where they attend the hearing or have an input to it.
Are you satisfied that the school receives the information?
There are practices throughout Scotland that can be improved. In general, however—I can speak only for my own part as opposed to for the ADSW—I am comfortable with the information sharing that goes on at that level for that purpose.
I want to return to the issue of power and responsibility and how education authorities can request support from other agencies. The submission from ADES talks about optional help from other agencies. Education authorities can make requests from any other local authority, health board and so on but, interestingly, social work departments in the same local authority are not even mentioned in the bill.
I am advised that the reason that social work services are not mentioned in the bill is that the education authority that is considered to be the legal entity is the council, so the social work service and the education service are both part of what the bill describes as the "education authority". It might have been clearer to have referred to it as a local authority, because the phrase "education authority" is misleading—it certainly misled us at first.
You might have noted that, south of the border, the green paper "Every child matters" has resulted in the formation of children's trusts that bring health, education and social work services together under one children's services director. That is one structural route that we could take, and, although I hesitate to rush down a structural route, some accountability is needed.
Are you suggesting that the pooling of funds is aspirational, could work similarly to the joint futures agenda and would not require a legislative framework—it would not require changes to the bill—but that the issue would be how it was rolled out, and that you would want some strengthening of accountability?
Yes.
I will pursue the issue of accountability. There are circumstances in which things go wrong, and they are more likely to go wrong in circumstances in which all the agencies are not working together. That leads me to two things that we want to elicit for the Official Report. The bill provides for a duty on education authorities to make provision for independent mediation, and I would be interested in the witnesses' view on the mediation proposal.
I am not sure that that was a supplementary question; nevertheless, perhaps our witnesses can deal with it, since they have been asked.
Yes, we support the introduction of mediation in the light of the fact that parents' rights have been strengthened in the bill. Under the record-of-needs legislation, parents were not able to appeal the placement that was proposed by the education authority. The bill proposes that they should be able to appeal that, and we see that as fair and a natural development of justice. Associated with that right come tribunals; and associated with tribunals comes mediation. We support both those developments.
Am I the only one to whom that suggestion sounds more bureaucratic than what it seeks to replace, in that it involves a separate process, which you were castigating at the beginning as not being the way forward? Is not separating out the statutory appeal, the paperwork and all of that going to be even worse than other mechanisms of dealing with this—mechanisms that come organically from problems that may have emerged in the system?
The record of needs carries a statutory process within it. We try to manage it as efficiently and effectively as we can, but it is hard for us to get that process below about 24 weeks because of the statutory involvements in it. The same will apply to CSPs. There is no way that an instrument that will be used for appeal purposes will be slim; it will have to be cumbersome. Our suggestion is that we confine the number of cumbersome mechanisms that we use to that small percentage of people who require and want to take an appeal route and that we maximise the use of ordinary, sleek procedures.
I have two further points to cover. My question is for the Headteachers' Association of Scotland. There is obviously going to be an issue about staff resources and training. Initial teacher training can help in implementing the bill, but the concern is more about the training of teachers who are in place. How much time do you think that such training will take? Do you think that you have sufficient resources for it, bearing in mind the McCrone agreement, contact time, and so on? Are the resource implications reasonable, or do you have concerns about them?
The key question, from the schools' point of view, is whether the issue belongs only to the support-for-learning staff or to all the staff. Newly trained teachers are becoming more aware that additional support is an integral part of their job. There is also a job for good, committed and experienced teachers; however, the subject boundaries in a high school are an obvious barrier to fulfilling the needs of children who require a greater level of support.
You think that that will happen naturally and will not be an undue burden.
I think that it will happen naturally. Following the McCrone development, it is at the moment an open question for us whether, in some sense, the stranglehold of subject boundaries will be broken. I put on public record the fact that we have a major concern in Scotland that guidance has been significantly negatively affected by job sizing. The guidance staff in our schools are fundamental to all the processes that we have been talking about this morning. However, it appears that, in many schools, there will be much less incentive for staff to go into guidance, which would be a major problem in schools' delivering all that we have been talking about.
There are two aspects of the financial memorandum that we are interested in commenting on. Section 15 of the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000 introduced the presumption of mainstreaming. Because it was a late amendment, it was not financially costed by the Parliament; therefore, the Auditor General has produced some estimates of what the cost might be. That is the context in which we are operating the whole development of inclusion. It would be a mistake to consider the specific administrative costings associated with the bill in isolation from the broader question of the costs of inclusive education and mainstreaming. Those costs have been estimated at somewhere in the range of £38 million to £121 million in revenue a year. We believe that to be, potentially, a conservative range; however, that is the Auditor General's view.
As it is drafted, the bill seems to be open to interpretation. We have seen a variety of estimates for the number of CSPs that will be required, ranging from half the current population with records of needs—the current population is just over 2 per cent—plus another 0.6 per cent of the population, to your estimate of 15 per cent. At the Finance Committee yesterday, somebody suggested that the figure could be as high as 20 per cent. The upper limits are similar to the estimates of the number of people who will have IEPs, which could give rise to confusion between the IEP and the CSP. We felt that the matter might be clarified in the code of practice. I was, therefore, slightly surprised to discover that ADES, in particular, seems to be wary of the code of practice to the extent that it would consider not supporting it if it felt that it was prescribing inputs irrespective of context, as you say in your submission.
I shall speak historically, first of all. The record-of-needs system was monitored to see how many records each authority opened, irrespective of a context of IEPs. In my view, an authority that was effectively operating an IEP system at foundation level would be less likely to open more records of needs and that would be a positive indicator. However, in the outcome accountability to Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education with which local authorities had to comply, that was often used as a positive indicator. If local authorities did not have many records of needs, that was a matter for criticism. That was an example of how the 1980 act was outdated and did not reflect best modern practice. In that context, we are wary about the code of practice. If the code of practice focuses on outcomes for children and families, we will support it. If it prescribes inputs, irrespective of context, we will be extremely cautious about it.
I thought that the indicator was the length of time that it took to open a record of needs rather than the number of records of needs, because the figures vary greatly between local authorities. It is clear that as people are in different socioeconomic circumstances, local authorities cannot all be expected to have the same numbers of records of needs.
It is true that the statutory performance indicator is the length of time that is taken to open a record of needs, but we were held accountable for numbers.
Your evidence is almost that, in some circumstances, you would oppose a code of practice. If no code of practice is produced, how do we clarify who is entitled to a co-ordinated support plan?
My comment is simply about the quality of the code of practice and its focus on outcomes. We would support a code of practice that was intended to ensure good-quality outcomes and equitable outcomes for children throughout Scotland.
I support that. We would be concerned if the code of practice dealt solely with expectations about professionals and not with outcomes for children. Previous guidance may have focused on professionals and been prescriptive. We are aware of the different contexts in which authorities throughout Scotland operate. If we focus on outcomes, we must be careful to ensure that the code of practice is effective in rural and urban settings and is not a prescriptive code that could cause problems.
The problem with the bill is that the word "and" rather than "or" has been used, which makes the situation less clear.
Yes.
We need a code of practice, because it will set a standard of reasonableness in the system. We considered the idea that a parent could ignore mediation and go straight to a tribunal. In procedural terms, that is fine, but we hoped that more emphasis would be placed on mediation and conciliation and on what is regarded as reasonable, which is one matter that a tribunal would test.
Local authorities are not responsible for children who are educated outwith the public education system, but they would comply with requests in relation to children who are under three, home educated or in private schools. Are you comfortable with the provisions in the bill that deal with that?
We are broadly content with the provisions in the bill. We expect to take responsibility for three and four-year-old children who have additional support needs.
Do you expect to do that whether they are in local authority nurseries or private nurseries?
Yes.
The City of Edinburgh Council is an example. We have private partnerships with more than 130 nurseries. We also have psychologists who provide services to those nurseries and all the children in them. We are already moving forward on that.
You are comfortable with the provisions on that.
Yes.
The provisions—or, at least, the recommendations—that the "For Scotland's children: Better integrated children's services" report makes are that education should act as the universal anchoring service for services to all children and should draw in the other services as required. Although that is an aspiration, it is one to which many people subscribe.
Yes, we do not want to miss anything.
I might have misread the bill, but we were concerned about the idea that an authority would be expected to grant a placement request to an independent school. Our caveat was that that could be done, provided that the equivalent provision was not available within the authority.
I am not sure that that is clear, but we can pursue the issue with the minister.
I want to return to a few points, because I am not sure that I am entirely clear about some of the issues. In their submissions, Anna Boni and Bryan Kirkaldy made a point about the CSP being based on an individual medical model, as opposed to a systemic approach. Will you expand on that remark, because I am not sure that I fully grasp it?
I was referring not only to the co-ordinated support plan but to the model of assessment that leads up to it. Educational psychologists are trained in human behaviour and we work systemically on a number of levels. We work with children within a context; we do not use a deficit model in which the child is out there. We have different solutions depending on the context. We would find out different things depending on whether the child was at home, in a nursery or in a school. That sort of systemic assessment, which is based on context and the surrounding support, is important.
Why do you think that the bill does not allow that? I would have thought that it allows a child-centred approach.
I think that the reason for that is that the co-ordinated support plan is for the child, not necessarily for the context. We are focusing on the child. Terminology such as "psychological assessment" is highly misleading, particularly when it is accompanied by the phrase "medical assessment". People have good experience of doctors. When they read sentences with such phrases in them, they have the same model in their head. We are keen to show that that is not how we work. We are constantly faced with parents who expect that that is how we work, because of the association.
That is a common assumption.
It is.
I would relate the issue to what I said in my introductory remarks. The effect of the raft of legislative reform in the context of which we are working is that we need to develop the capacity of all schools to become progressively more inclusive. That is the requirement of the disability legislation and section 15 of the 2000 act.
But taking a parental rather a provider perspective might give us a different approach to the matter. As I understand it, the bill also seeks to reduce conflict between parents and all your organisations. For example, the CSP is not arbitrary; it has very clear criteria. Anyone with needs outside those provided by an education service will qualify for a CSP, which means that there is a very clear division and everyone can see whether they qualify. Although some cases might have to go to a tribunal, we will not have the same kind of judgment that is currently made with regard to a record of needs and which constantly leads to conflict. Do you not welcome that?
There will be no confusion in that respect if a percentage of the young people on the co-ordinated support plan have complex or multiple long-term needs. The issue is the size of that percentage of the population and the realisation that, as Bryan Kirkaldy pointed out, agencies work at a number of levels. As a result, we could be involved with children and working with schools and teachers long before a co-ordinated support plan is introduced. Input is made and solutions are found at different levels. I am concerned about the percentage of children who will qualify for a CSP. Indeed, the criteria might not be as you have described them.
I know that this is anecdotal, but it was suggested in all the schools that we visited that fewer children would have CSPs than currently have a record of needs.
That would be the case if the bill emphasised the involvement of a different agency. However, any reference to multiple and complex needs brings the focus back to the child and the nature of their difficulties. As I have already said, children with such needs might not have a CSP, which means that the essential criterion is the involvement of an external agency. Indeed, the need to involve an external agency might be part of the overall definition. For example, such an agency might not have been identified at the point at which a CSP is sought. That would be the core distinction for parents. In particular, it would be helpful if the core definition included reference to the fact that the CSP would last up to a year or beyond.
I understand that. However, the involvement of an outside agency is clearly included in the definition of a CSP, although I can see that it might give rise to some dispute.
It depends on how one sees that matter. The last thing that we want is conflict between families and services. Whatever happens, we want a system that supports families in a co-operative relationship with schools and education authorities.
I agree totally with what you say, but I think that that is what the bill will achieve. You say that, because the CSP will be a statutory measure, it will become a device that parents will use to battle for resources, which will mean that the CSP system will duplicate the failings of the record-of-needs system. The record of needs was not designed to lever resources out of the system but, because it gave statutory rights, it was used for that purpose. You say that the CSP will be used in exactly the same way because it differentiates one group of children and gives them additional rights to lever resources out of the system.
The definition that you mention, which is a worthy basis, is as wide as it is long because children are involved in many agencies through schools, including voluntary organisations that support mothers and medical organisations. All children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are involved with other agencies and all those with autistic spectrum disorder are involved with health agencies. As the net that the bill will cast is extremely wide, we will have to hone down the group to those children who have more complex needs, which will introduce a gradation of assessment and need, at which point the more able parents will take action. Parents are, rightly, desperate for their children to receive the best outcomes, but social work services work with parents who do not have sufficient self-will and self-belief to advocate strongly on behalf of their children. We will end up with something similar to the record of needs and all the arguments that pertain to it.
That would be concerning.
We are not against the code of practice because of the parental rights element. My concern is that the code of practice is a document that fills gaps and that we are trying to make the bill work through the code of practice. That will reduce some of the parental statutory rights that we would have if we had more overarching legislation. The code of practice will become a more complex document that all professionals will have to carry with them at all times. It could also be extremely complicated for parents to find their way through because it is not a parent-friendly, supportive document.
How will the code describe to parents their right to ask for a medical assessment of an 11-year-old child when a Health Department circular, precedent and the medical professions state that the child has a right to refuse or agree to medical assessment if they have sufficient understanding of the process involved? The guidance will have to address a number of key issues, some of which are fundamental to the rights of children.
We would welcome a code of practice if its intention were, as you describe, to look at equitability of access and provision for families and children throughout Scotland, rather than to prescribe inputs.
I am conscious that one or two people want to make supplementary points. However, I have a more general question about resources. The committee has visited a number of schools and seen best practice here and there throughout the country, but we think that we have been sent to places where things are working much better than in a typical, average school. Will the school representatives give me a handle on the resource position in the typical school to deal with the requirements of the bill and the general move towards inclusion that underlies it? Are there sufficient resources in a typical school?
The biggest constraint in many schools is accommodation. We built an extension to our school, which gives us model accommodation, but many schools simply do not have alternative accommodation. Schools are no longer running one alternative curriculum; they run various layers of alternative curricula including some for individual children. That is when one hits the staffing resource problem. Some authorities are more generous than others with the staffing resources that they give. A few authorities still hold to a support-for-learning model in which one gets support-for-learning staffing and that is all. However, more authorities have had to acknowledge that there is a wider spectrum—SEBD, special educational needs and so on.
People are saying to me that they will struggle to deal with the requirements of the bill, particularly against the background of resources and the job-sizing implications that you touched on. How serious a problem is that for schools throughout Scotland?
Some schools are already models of better resourcing and better practice, but I would not say that that applied to 50 per cent of our schools. I think that more than 50 per cent of our schools currently require some attention. As members know, the policy on improved accessibility strategies has already been identified as a challenge for authorities and schools in respect of accommodation. I am not talking about anything excessive. If a school's capacity is fairly full, the biggest problem will be in identifying an alternative location. As members know, some authorities have off-site provision for young people who are still within the educational system. I do not know whether everybody would endorse that model, but support is needed.
I understand that the bill means that gifted children could be considered to have additional support needs. Is there a risk that many families will consider their children to be gifted and therefore that the number of children who would be considered for additional support needs could be greatly increased beyond the number that was originally anticipated?
The intention is that additional support needs will encompass gifted children; children who suffer discontinuities in their education as a result of illness; children who have suffered from family upsets, children with social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties and chronically ill children; as well the categories that I mentioned earlier, such as children with dyspraxia; dyslexia; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and so on.
Are you satisfied that the bill makes adequate provision for transitions from school onwards?
I have been involved in work in association with the Beattie report and have found that the Beattie model is already in operation in most authorities. There are inclusiveness projects and key workers, transitional arrangements are being considered, schools are developing more appropriate arrangements and people are starting to plan for children around the age of 14 who have more complex and multiple needs. Such things are already in place and I am not sure what the bill adds to them. Perhaps Beattie is more inclusive than the bill in his approach.
Our view is that the bill is broadly supportive of current good practice and is therefore not problematic. It broadens the scope of those young people whom we must be concerned about when they leave school and allows all of them to participate in a planning process that is appropriate to the degree of their difficulties or their additional needs.
The requirement to notify other agencies and then to be proactive in planning for children leaving school is one thing, but references to the receiving agencies and the transition process itself are singularly absent or singularly unclear. The proposals fall short of being a good basis for transition. I know that Careers Scotland made a submission to the Finance Committee yesterday that estimates all sorts of shortfalls. I have concerns about transition and know that, at the hard end of need, parents sometimes have a desperate experience of transition.
I would like to return to what Lord James Douglas-Hamilton said. It is important that children with particular abilities are recognised as having additional support needs. I do not imagine that identifying those children will necessarily lead to co-ordinated support plans—I do not think that they will require that level of support—but we should acknowledge that they would benefit from an individual support plan or an individualised educational programme, although such support would still be within the normal provision that is available within the school. I would not expect that it would lead to the more formal processes that we have been discussing this morning.
I want to go back to co-ordinated support plans and complex and multiple needs. That is one of the major issues for parents who have concerns about meeting the needs of their children. There is some confusion and I wonder whether Anna Boni can provide clarification. From my experience, I know that many young people require multi-agency support. Our discussion leads me to believe that there is a school of thought that all children who have multi-agency support will require a CSP. If we go down that road, we will be overwhelmed. It should not necessarily be the case that they all require CSPs. I think I am picking up the same view from the panel. Can the panel clarify their views? Anna, can you help us?
It depends what we mean by multi-agency support. Already there are systems involving social workers in schools that engage children in community education and transition groups. Young carers are involved in lots of activities, but I would not necessarily expect those young people to have co-ordinated support plans. That would work against the young people buying into those activities, because they would view them differently. They need to view positively those activities and others, such as involvement in the sports initiative. Young people benefit from a lot of positive initiatives that have come through new community schools and other avenues. In a sense, we are concerned about the population further down, but those are solutions for those young people. I would be concerned if every single youngster who required multi-agency involvement had a co-ordinated support plan, because we would be overwhelmed.
I take you back to the multiple and complex needs of these children. Originally, I took the view that we needed just to emphasise the multi-agency involvement, but it is clear that we need to have a sense of children's multiple and complex needs, too. The school process of stages of intervention is our mechanism for identifying children for whom the ordinary, normal routine provision is not enough. In some cases, that is because we are looking at something that is deep seated. The involvement of psychological services, with which we must have a close relationship, is fundamental. We have a lot of informal as well as formal discussions with psychological services about the needs of various young people but, as members know, some children remain a mystery to their parents, never mind to us. That is the reality that we will continue to live with. However, adolescence does not last forever.
Thank you. This has been a useful session. If the witnesses want to get back to us with particular information or points that arise following their contemplation of the evidence—not least on the interrelation between IEPs, individual progress plans and all the rest of it—to help us to get a handle on the numbers, that would be helpful. They can also get back to us on any points that arise during the progress of the bill. We are grateful for their involvement this morning.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I reopen the meeting as we are refreshed after the break. I welcome our second panel of witnesses: Felicity McElderry, from the National Association of Paediatric Occupational Therapists, Lesley Bruce, from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, and Kim Hartley, from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
As well as being a practising speech and language therapist in the field of adult learning disabilities, I am the Scottish officer for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, which is a professional body that represents 1,000 therapists working in Scotland. More than 50 per cent of those therapists work in education and the majority are employed by the NHS.
I am the professional adviser for our organisation, which is a UK-wide organisation for occupational therapists working with children, with members throughout Scotland. Occupational therapists are employed mainly in health, in some independent organisations and in local authorities. We work with a full range of children with special needs.
I am the superintendent physiotherapist in west Fife. I have been working in paediatrics for about the past 20 years and am currently the chair of the clinical paediatric physiotherapy network.
A key aspect of the bill is the multi-agency working that has been mentioned. You have expressed some concerns in your written and oral evidence about how that aspect will work. What would need to be done to strengthen the provisions in the bill? Will therapists be caught in the middle, between education authorities saying that certain therapy is needed and health boards necessarily having restrictions in supply and resourcing?
That is the difficulty that arises at present and is why we support some alignment of power and responsibility.
Do you want there to be provisions in the bill to ensure stronger accountability of health authorities?
It would be good if the health service were jointly accountable for delivery of services with education, but the budgets have to be shared rather than remain in the control of one or the other. The budgets must be pooled, as suggested in the written submission from the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland. The second option in paragraph 2.4 of its submission is one that we particularly support.
I would certainly support joint, aligned budgets. That is working well in the joint futures sector, where I also work. Our concern is how we get into individual schools to give the children who will be dissipated across the community the support that they need, which they received when they were attending special schools.
It would be fair to say that health resources have been concentrated on adult services to a greater extent than on children's services, which is a concern. It would be good if there were a re-emphasis of resourcing to meet children's needs.
Comments have been made about needs that are unmet by current provision. Do you anticipate that increased need will be identified as a result of the bill? What will be needed to bridge the gap?
The need for considerable resourcing has already been identified. We will have to increase the pool of trained therapists and consider the options for capacity and skill mix in the recent Scottish Executive review of therapy services in Scotland.
Were your organisations involved in the initial work on the financial memorandum? Should there be a review of that, and if so, would your organisations want an input into that review?
To my knowledge, my organisation was not involved in the preparation of the financial memorandum and we would certainly support a review of it. We engaged with Audit Scotland's review of the presumption to mainstream.
It is envisaged that the education authorities will usually be the agencies that are responsible for overseeing CSPs, but that they could delegate that responsibility to, for example, professionals from your specialisms. Are your organisations happy with that provision or do you have concerns about it?
Over the past 10 years we have worked much more closely with local authorities, so there is already an integrated approach to providing care in schools. We are happy to take responsibility for planning the support mechanisms, but we need to think about how we finance those packages of care in the long term. I am relatively happy with the proposal.
Do you think that, for example, a physiotherapist could be the person with lead responsibility for the CSP and that they could draw in resources from elsewhere?
I do not think so. The bill talks about having a co-ordinator—
That is what I am asking. Would you be comfortable with someone from your profession being designated as a co-ordinator?
Yes. It is a good idea for the co-ordinator to be an independent person who is not allied to education, health or social work. We have found that that works well within the joint future agenda.
We would have no problem with an occupational therapist's being the co-ordinator. Indeed, as occupational therapists have such a broad view of matters, their experience might be relevant. However, it comes down resourcing—people would need time to make the proposal work efficiently.
I agree with the points that have been made about resources in relation to the number of people and the skills and knowledge that would be needed for therapists to be able to co-ordinate effectively. We encounter that issue in relation to education because there is poor awareness of the contributions that the broad spectrum of disciplines can make to a child's progress. For example, we heard earlier that the contribution that work with communication disability can make in relation to mental health work is poorly recognised.
The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy's submission raises concerns about the ability of the education authorities to take responsibility for three and four-year-olds who are in private nurseries because nine-to-five nursery education is not widely available to the majority of the population. This morning, we were told that it was felt that the education authorities would have lead responsibility under other legislation. Are you satisfied with that or would you prefer something stronger in the bill?
I would prefer something stronger in the bill. I do not see a lot of activity in that regard from the education authorities that I work with.
At the moment, the bill does not highlight the needs of those children or the need for integrated working and a multi-agency approach.
Nursery education presents an opportunity to get involved at an early stage and to iron out many issues that might become more major when the child goes to school. It is important that action is taken early in a child's life.
Felicity McElderry mentioned that some people face a fairly horrendous four-year waiting list for occupational therapy. Is there also a resource problem in relation to current demands across the other specialisms?
A recent document with a long title, "A Scottish Executive Review of Speech and Language Therapy, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy for Children and Speech and Language Therapy for Adults with Learning Disabilities and Autistic Spectrum Disorder", reported on the difficulties with the level of provision.
Children are not waiting for years for physiotherapy assessments, but there are problems with regard to consistency of input. We may do an assessment and we may be able to establish a programme of care, but it might be as much as six weeks, or more, before we can revisit that child. We therefore rely heavily on auxiliary or parental support to implement programmes of care.
I have two questions. First, are you in favour of removal of compulsory assessment? Secondly, do you support replacement of the record of needs with a co-ordinated support plan?
Yes, I support the change away from the record of needs to a co-ordinated support plan, because the record of needs was very prescriptive and health biased. The co-ordinated support plan has the opportunity to be much more agency orientated, with the parent and the child being central to the plan so that they are in charge of how it develops.
Do you favour the removal of compulsory assessment?
In the main, yes—although it is important that parents have the opportunity and the right to request assessments, and that it is quite clear that they have that right if they wish it.
Does that represent the views of all three witnesses?
I have some concerns about the co-ordinated support plan. If it removes some of the bureaucracy and time delays involved in the record of needs, that will be entirely helpful. I agree that it is more family and parent focused. However, I have some concerns about education authorities' being fully aware of which children might need those plans. It seemed from the earlier submissions that one criterion for those plans was that there should be multi-agency involvement from outside the school. I would be very concerned if that were to preclude early involvement of therapies, at the level of IEPs or even earlier. Early preventive involvement—help or sometimes just advice to teachers on whether it is appropriate to refer—may be a good way of preventing later problems and may avoid the need for a CSP later on.
In relation to the removal of compulsory assessment, we would support anything that moved more in the direction of the assessment path's being determined by a broad knowledge and understanding of the sort of services and support that different people can offer. We would look to the code of practice to develop that knowledge so that there was something explicit about how, for example, speech and language therapists could have a role in X, Y or Z.
Could I just clarify the reasons why there are considerable waiting lists for some therapy services in different parts of Scotland? Is that the result of staff shortages?
It is the result of a range of issues. Staff are in short supply, but posts are also in short supply. In the main, posts are not funded by health authorities to meet demand, but there are certainly some difficulties in recruitment because of the overall shortage of trained therapists. There are also difficulties as far as children's services are concerned, particularly in occupational therapy in terms of pre-registration training for working with children. There are also difficulties in postgraduate training. Therapy services often have, if you like, to try to grow therapists once they have started work, which entails a lot of supervision, support and in-house training. That puts demands on already small and restricted services. There are a number of factors that affect the situation.
Was the shortage of specific posts recognised in the review of therapy services?
I think that it was recognised to some extent. We clarified that in our response to the review. In some cases it was felt that the vacancy rate was not very high, but there might be only two therapists in post in the service, which makes the situation very different from considering vacancy rates in services that have much larger staff numbers.
Are you satisfied that, under the bill, there is adequate provision for youngsters prior to their leaving school for when they leave school?
I have to say that I am not satisfied that that is the case. My concerns about that go back to the point about education authorities' knowing what services to enlist to move youngsters on to independent living and to give them all the skills that they will need for further education, employment or even work experience. There is a big shortage of support for those youngsters once their needs have been identified and there is not much clarity about the services that young adults might use when they are moving on.
From a speech and language therapist's perspective, post-school provision is not good. I work with adults with learning disabilities and so have to receive young people when they come into the adult services. Edinburgh has next to no provision of speech and language therapy in the further education colleges to which young people might go. The adult learning disabilities service is pretty stretched; I believe that that is common to the rest of Scotland. Obviously, I am just talking about children with learning disabilities, but there are problems.
There is no duty on FE colleges in the bill.
No.
I have been working alongside Brian Kirkaldy on revamping how we progress children on to the adult sector. We have started much earlier with children—between 12 and 14—and we have taken a multidisciplinary approach. When the child approaches the transition, we start to bring in some of the learning disability services to do particular activities with them. They might introduce the child to Jabadao sessions or take them to a leisure centre where activities are taking place, or they might introduce them to further adult education. It is a different way of approaching the system, but it has to start early. A 12-year-old might not be due to leave school for years, but planning has to be done way ahead.
The bill says that a year is the minimum.
It says a year, but that would be too late.
Is it generally understood that a year is not long enough from the point of view of the three specialisms that are represented before us today?
More than a year is needed to prepare a child who has major comprehension difficulties for such a major life event as leaving a secure community where they might have been for up to 12 years. They need to experience new environments and get the opportunity to meet new people. That obviously involves a lot of co-ordination.
I want to pick up on Fiona Hyslop's point on tertiary education—although further education and higher education are not within the remit of this committee. Is there an issue to do with the adequacy of resources at that level compared with school level?
Yes. It is a huge issue.
I would like to finish the answer to the previous question. Because occupational therapy services are in such short supply, much emphasis has been placed on early intervention with young children. That is seen as the most effective use of resources. When youngsters move on to secondary school, they often do not receive services at all. We would like there to be a longer lead-in time for transition. It is not that those youngsters should be accessing services all the time—that may not be appropriate—but when needs arise, there should be services that offer long-term planning to support them through transition.
My understanding of the issue may not be correct and I do not have the paperwork with me, but I thought that the legislation would require the plan to be complete at least a year before the child left, rather than its being started a year before the child left.
We have to understand and highlight the needs of young people. The services must be needs led and we have to consider the required outcomes. As it stands, I do not think that the bill will improve the situation. I agree that the bill should be more explicit.
Could those issues be addressed in the code of practice?
Yes—perhaps so.
You all spoke about the lack of clarity in lines of accountability and responsibility. That lack was thrown into sharp relief during consideration of appeals tribunals. How would your services respond to an appeals tribunal? Currently, the education authority has to appear before an appeals tribunal, but if the service concerned were one that your organisations provided, how would you be represented at that tribunal? Would you respond directly to the tribunal or to the education authority? Have you considered how the bill will affect that?
In all my working years, I have never been involved in a tribunal, so it is difficult to know how we might respond. If things had reached the stage of a tribunal, it would be an indication that our multi-agency working had not been effective enough and that a parent had real concerns. I would hope to support the parent as much as possible, to be open and honest, and to be as helpful as I possibly could through the process. Are you asking me how much time appeals tribunals might involve for our service?
No. My experience—I do not know whether it is yours, too—is that the amount of time that children get with a therapist is a bone of contention for many families and parents.
That is a key point, which gives me the opportunity to pick up on something that Anna Boni said. Just because we work for a health body, that does not mean that we apply a medical model. We apply the social model of disability. To suggest that because of our employer we do not have a broader spectrum reflects a misunderstanding of evidence-based best practice. We frequently encounter that difficulty.
I assumed that Anna Boni's points were directed not at people like you but at people like us and at parents and teachers, because we automatically assume that a medical model is used and that you will be measured according to the minutes that you give a child. Let us assume that we spread the word and people understand that you can provide an effective model of care based on best practice and experience. There will still be disputes—often caused by a lack of understanding—and those disputes will end up being resolved at a tribunal. That is the point that I am making. We can work towards ensuring that they do not go to a tribunal but, when they do, how will they be resolved? How will the tribunal assess your service's input to a child's care?
The question relates to who determines the best way forward for a particular child. Every therapist has to be registered with the Health Professions Council. In order to be a registered practitioner, one has to apply the clinical guidelines that have been developed through evidence gathering and professional consensus. The guidelines may state the best way of dealing with a child with certain difficulties and I would hope that the tribunal would recognise the authority of those guidelines. I do not want to undermine the status of lay people, but what we do with children should be based on clear evidence, rather than on what people would like to see happen.
I appreciate that, but parents will go to tribunals when their child who has been getting an hour with a therapist every week does not get that hour any more. That can be for various reasons. It may be nothing to do with the fact that the child does not need the therapy; it may be because no therapy is available or because of waiting lists. Have you thought about how you respond? Do you go to the tribunal in person? Do you wait until the education authority tells you what to do? Do you have a duty to the tribunal? It is not clear how the tribunal's decision directly impacts on you.
That is made clear in the bill, although the tribunal does not seem to have the power to make a decision on other agencies' input. That is a concern and it could be frustrating for parents for the reasons that you describe.
On that point, it is my understanding that health boards would not accept a private assessment that was produced by a family and that such an assessment would not be recognised by therapists. Am I right about that? The bill will place a duty on local authorities to take account of independent assessments that are produced by parents to justify their child's needs. I could be wrong, but I think that, when a parent has such an assessment made, it tends to be rejected not by the education authority but by the health professionals, who will say that it does not reflect their professional judgment. Is that the case, or am I misreading the situation?
If an education authority had an independent assessment made of a child who it knew was having physiotherapy, speech therapy or occupational therapy locally, the authority would refer that assessment to the local supplier of the service.
I am talking about parents who have a private assessment made of their child.
I take it that those parents would say that the assessment was evidence for increasing therapy.
Exactly.
If a director gets such a statement, they often go back to the health authority for its opinion and the two opinions are considered together. We would also consider where the assessment had come from. We would take cognisance of assessments that are done by bona fide groups such as Bobath Scotland, but in other cases we might say that the knowledge base of the group that has made the assessment is not as sound as we would like it to be. We are often asked for our opinion on independent assessments.
There is sometimes recourse to my organisation and probably to those of my colleagues as well. We represent professional bodies that have independent advisory services that authorities can use if they find it difficult to make a decision on what they view as conflicting advice.
I want to flag up the fact that we are building into the bill the right for private assessments to carry more weight than they have done in the past. I worry that that might be a source of conflict.
In some cases, there is already conflict. Private therapists have different motivations and might recommend a particular line of therapy that would not necessarily be recommended by a public sector therapist. There are different motivations on both sides. Although we would not want to restrict anyone's access to any therapy that they wanted to take up, we would seek reassurance that those therapists were properly registered and accredited by the Health Professions Council in partnership with a professional body.
You are saying that there is an element of discretion based on the expertise of the person and your knowledge of them, for example.
Yes.
Our good practice would recommend that the child and the family be kept at the centre of the procedure so that we do not end up with various professionals fighting over the child. Problems can arise, however, and we recommend that the therapists involved communicate with one another. They might have arrived at different findings for good reasons—the timing of the various assessments, for example. Some of the issues can be resolved through communication.
Will there be sufficient resources in schools to pay for the work that you will need to do, given that additional support needs will be identified and that there will be more demand for your services? How do you feel about the facilities that exist? Should we examine that area?
Facilities are woefully inadequate in many cases. Often, the only place where I can work is the medical room, which has a bed in it and other equipment, as well as lots of stuff that the school stores in there. It is difficult to get a flat area in which to work with the children. Working in the classroom is encouraged and we do that as much as we can. Occasionally, however, especially with children who have attention problems, we have to work outside the classroom.
I agree that, often, the physical resources that are available in the school are not conducive to effective therapy. The access strategies are welcome. A big part of that, for us, relates to communication in the school. That means that a lot of work will go on in relation to indirect therapy as well. Indirect therapy is about training, supporting and providing guidance to the teaching staff and the teaching assistants. The time available to provide that, through one-to-one discussions, training sessions and staff support sessions, is pretty tight. That causes a few problems.
Facilities vary a lot and are limited in some places. The access strategies give us great opportunities to ensure that people use facilities properly and get advice from therapists about what might be needed. Because therapists will not use the areas all the time and would not expect to have space set aside for them permanently, the areas that they use could, if they are designed well, be used for a variety of other purposes.
Convener, I hope that we can suggest that the code of practice—
We will discuss our conclusions in due course. The point has been taken on board.
I read Felicity McElderry's comments about assessment and intervention. I ask her to elaborate on her views on more complex assessment needs and the guidance on that issue that she thinks is required in the code of practice. What does she mean by more complex assessment needs?
I was referring to children who have been somewhat overlooked in the past, such as those who have developmental co-ordination disorder, one element of which is dyspraxia. As well as their motor needs, those children often have associated language needs and difficulties with aspects of perception, and they frequently run into problems with self-esteem and psychological functioning, particularly those who are cognitively able. Although if one met such children they might superficially appear not to have a major disability, they often have complex problems that affect all aspects of learning in school. The evidence shows that we can do a lot to help that type of child—not only those with that specific diagnosis—particularly if we intervene early, but we must ensure that they are not missed.
Is there existing good practice on the issue that we could examine?
There are examples of local good practice that would illustrate my point.
It would be worth while if you could provide some information about that.
I will ask the question about schools that I asked the previous panel of witnesses. I dare say that the involvement of therapists in different schools, situations and local authorities varies substantially. Is there a preference for the best way in which to do that? Is it best to have people stationed in schools or for them to be responsible for a number of schools and to visit them from other headquarters? Is there a best way in which to achieve a feeling of working together?
We could provide the committee with information on existing models of good practice throughout the country.
That would be helpful.
We hope that the provision of occupational therapy services will be flexible. Things are changing and there is more possibility for the relocation of services, perhaps within community schools. We do not want people who provide services to be based in a centre that is seen as a health centre from which they go out to work in schools. If anything, such centres are simply a resource base. Multi-agency approaches and interdisciplinary working take place on school grounds.
Is the arrangement whereby people serve a discrete cluster of schools, such as a secondary school and associated primary schools, helpful?
That can be helpful, but therapists tend to follow the child. The arrangement you describe could be helpful when children move from a feeder primary to a high school. However, children often go to a mainstream primary, but because they need a little more support in secondary school, they go to a school with a different catchment area. In such cases, the therapist tends to follow the child.
We are discussing a complex area of work. We try to ensure that the teams in our service are as integrated as possible, which means considering integration between OTs who work in social services and those who are in health. We bring together the skills of both so that only one therapist sees the child, which is much more cost effective and much better for working with families and teachers. Within the teams, we aim to have specialists on particular matters, such as adapting school buildings. Team members can call on specialists within their team to provide support with a particularly complex piece of work relating to a child.
Thank you very much. That is helpful. The committee is grateful for your input this morning and there are one or two points that you might come back to us on. If, on reflection, there are points that you want to let us know about, we would be grateful if you raised them. Your input on the bill has been helpful.