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Katy and I are here today from Equality, Participation, Influence and Change. Known as EPIC
We are a group of young people that have come together to discuss how the Children and Family
bill will affect other disabled young people. And today we are interviewing the Minister,
Edward Timpson about some of the changes and to ask him how these changes are going to
affect people with disabilities. Is it true that throughout your life your
parents fostered children and if so did this influence your career at the Department of
Education? Well, it is right that my parents fostered
when I was going up. I am the third of three children that they had and when I was six
years old my parents started fostering and we fostered children with all sorts of difficulties
and difficult starts in their own lives, which included children who had been born addicted
to drugs, children who had some mental health problems and also children who had disabilities.
One that I particularly remember is a young man who used to come to us once a month for
some respite care. Who had down syndrome and used to bring a lot of joy into our house.
He was a big fan of Shaking Stevens. He used to love watching the wrestling on TV. But
what it taught me was that although he had those disabilities that he had to live with,
that he had a lot that he had to offer as well and so I think by understanding that
from an early age and being able to help as well in trying to support young people who
do have a disability or a Special Educational Need that I could see the importance of making
sure that they get every opportunity to fulfil their potential as they grow up and move into
adulthood. How do you think the changes that are being
made will benefit disabled young people? Well one of the things that parents and young
people have told me has been the problems in the past is that they have not felt that
they have been involved in the whole process and delivery of support through their education
and what we want to do and I hope these reforms will bring about that's exactly what they
are designed to do is to bring more control and choice for young people and their parents,
including for young people making them in a stronger position when they reach the age
of sixteen and beyond, to request an assessment, to appeal a decision and so that they have
far more influence and it's far more family facing. What I mean by that is the family
and the children involved have much more of a say and are consulted more widely and more
often so that right from the very beginning they feel they are much more in control of
what then happens and that they feel they know where to turn and the whole system is
more transparent and all those who are meant to provide them with that support are more
accountable for what they do. Rich: With local authorities taking control
of education funding we run the fear that the student's requirements will be over
looked by the cost of the provision. How will you ensure this won't happen?
There's two main ways of making sure that the money that goes to local authorities and
it's round about, over five billion pounds, is spent on special educational needs by local
authorities and that will remain broadly consistent and will actually go up post 16. The first
is to put additional duties on local authorities so that they have a duty to cooperate with
the health service and within local authorities between education and social care but also
that they have a duty to jointly commission those services so they have to work much more
closely and effectively with other services so that rather than them all thinking separately
and delivering their services separately they are doing it in a much more coherent way which
will mean that the outcomes which is what we want to concentrate on for young people
will be the focus of everybody's attention and one of the ways that you as a young person
and parents as well will be able to influence that more is through personal budgets so that
you will be able to use some of the money that's made available to make decisions
about where you feel the best service is out there for you to benefit most from.
With more people being educated in mainstream schools, what provision is going to be available
to support them, like careers advisers don't always know what's available to disabled
students after they've left school? Well one of the strengths of moving to a 0-25
system is that the points of transition shouldn't be as bumpy and disjointed as they have been
in the past and that right from the very outset of you having an Education, Health and Care
plan, built into that plan will be a collective assessment of what outcomes you should be
aiming for by the time you leave education so that people are already working through
those transition periods to the same plan rather than you moving from one system to
another which has caused problems in the past. The other way of making sure that you understand
what is out there for you and when you are looking at having to further your education
, your opportunity in the future is through the new local offer which every local authority
will have to produce with consultation with young people and parents so that sets out
in a very transparent way all the services that are out there to support you including
moving on into employment so that there can be no doubt as to what is the potential for
you to move on from your education in to a successful future.
Is there still going to be funding available for those disabled students that want a place
at a residential college where they can gain qualifications as well as improve their independence?
What we want to do is to make sure that young people have as much choice as possible as
to where they continue their education that includes residential colleges, independent
special schools and so we actually have a much wider choice out there and we've built
into that Academies and Free Schools as well so that when you request as you can in the
new reforms that we are bringing in as a young person over the age of 16, you can request
both an assessment but also a particular school or college in which you think would best meet
your educational needs as well as all the other support you require so I think it actually
puts you in a stronger position than you have in the current system by widening that choice
out for you and putting you in a position to make that request and also challenge a
decision if they don't follow through what your request is.
At the moment no one seems accountable for issues relating to disability. How do you
ensure the voice of the disabled person will be heard?
Well one of the big changes that we are making through the Children, Families Bill is that
for the first time, both young people over the age of 16 and as well as what we are piloting
for children going forward is that you will be able to as I said before request an assessment
of need for yourself and you'll also be able to challenge a decision that's made
that you don't agree with by if necessary go all the way to a tribunal so that is very
much making sure that your voice is heard much more loudly and much clearer than it
has done in the past but also through the whole process of assessment that there is
going to be duties on local authorities to consult and involve you as a young person
throughout all of that rather than you feel things are being done to you rather than you
being able to have a say as to what you say is best for you, so the whole system is being
designed to have a much more young person, family centred approach so that there can
be no doubt in your mind as to what has been done on your behalf, what needs to be done
on your behalf and if it's not done how you can hold education, health or social care
more to account and one of the things we are working on very hard particularly with the
health service is how they can be more accountable to you and how you can be more confident that
when they assess you to have a particular clinical need that they will fulfil the provision
of that need as it's set out in your plan or if you don't have a plan that it is much
clearer and transparent through the NHS mandate and through the new clinical commissioning
groups who's responsible for providing you with the services that you need.
We've touched on it previously but I'd like to just understand your thoughts on,
in terms of the sooner someone's needs are known, the sooner they can act to access the
right support they need. How will the reforms identify their disabilities earlier?
Well there are a number of ways that we'll be able to do that with the reforms. The first
is by bringing in a new health development check at the age of two and a half so if a
developmental problem is identified at that point then it's a much earlier point than
it has done in the past and then action can then be taken but over and above that, where
the health service do identify that a young person between the ages of 0-3 so particularly
before compulsory school age, has a disability which is almost inevitably going to mean they
are going to need extra support at school and have some form of special educational
need that they then communicate that to the local authority, to the social care department
and to education so they can start to do the work before the compulsory school age hits
so that there is no gap then in putting in place the support that's required but also
as a consequence of that, identifying those children and I'm thinking of for example
of a child who may be on the autistic spectrum that the earlier you can identify that and
get the support in place the more likely it is that they are going to be able to fulfil
their often high educational attainment throughout their education rather than it being identified
at a much later stage but we'll also be making sure that any plan that's put in
place is properly reviewed in the same way that it has done in the past so that you can
keep on top of any identified need however early that has been identified to make sure
it's still relevant and that people aren't just assuming that what they've identified
at the very start is how then everything will then continue into the future.
What would be your message to the young people who can sometimes feel isolated because of
how the system works for them? Well there's nothing worse than feeling
excluded or isolated from society, particularly when you feel that the support that should
be there isn't being provided so what we want to change is that experience that too
many young people have and that they are far more included both in assessing what's needed
for them but also in making sure that it's then given to them and that they feel part
of society and that's very much what I hope this Bill will achieve and that's why we've
ensured through yourselves and through the EPIC group that young people have been at
the heart of putting together and giving us their experiences so that the Bill and the
regulations and everything that follows from it will bring about the culture change that
we sometimes find difficult to bring about and that all people who come into contact
with disabled young people understand the huge contribution they can give to society
but they can only do that if they receive the support that they need and that is the
message I will continue to send out there and I'm sure you will to.