Angela Deckett’s Weblog

Last year, we carried out a massive consultation with deaf children and young people. We asked them what they wanted from us, and what they thought we should be doing next. Over 1,400 deaf children and young people responded. We trawled through the responses, and managed to come up with some key things that deaf children and young people want from NDCS, and some things that they think are important for government and local services to prioritise. You can read our Change Your World consultation reports here.

However, the purpose of this post is to tell you that recently, the results of our consultation were discussed in the House of Lords. Lord Morris of Manchester asked “What consideration they have given to the key findings of the National Deaf Children’s Society’s recent survey of the needs and views of deaf children and young people as they affect government departments; and what action they will be taking”.

Lord Adonis, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families responded, outlining the existing government initiatives that already work towards involving parents of young people in planning the provision of activities and events for young people. Personally, I felt that whilst it is always positive to involve service users and their families in planning, our consultation results were quite clear in highlighting that deaf children and young people want to have their own say.

The message from deaf children and young people was inspiring. We are so often led to believe that young people just want to sit around, playing playstation, wearing hoodies, and that they couldn’t care less about local services, politics, or anything else for that matter. But that is not what we got from our young people!

We found that they wanted to meet other deaf children and young people, that they wanted to meet more hearing children and young people, that they wanted more in their local areas to do, they wanted to have a say in local and national provision, they wanted services, whether it is education or youth services to listen to them. I therefore feel that the message is clear, deaf children and young people want to be involved. Have a read of the House of Lords written response and let me know what you think of their answer.

The Bercow Review report has now been published. It highlights some of the findings from the review, including parents experiencing a postcode lottery service, having to fight for assessments, then having to fight for appropriate support, and provision disappearing (often at secondary school age). These are all things that parents have raised with us at NDCS, so it was good to see them acknowledged in the report. NDCS responded to the consultation as an organisation (you can read the response here).

The DCSF press release says that the bulk of the report deals with improving service delivery at ground level. With the development of a Communication Council, a Communication Champion, and National Year of Speech, Language and Communication, the government is stepping up to the challenge of improving services. With £52m being invested in this, mostly focussing on early intervention, I am sure that many of us are looking forward to the improvement of speech and language therapy services for children, both deaf and hearing.

The DCSF report Special Educational Needs in England: January 2008 has stated that the numbers of children with statements of special educational needs has fallen across schools in England. However, at the same time, children with special educational needs who are not being put forward for statements has risen (see the Guardian article for more information on this). This, to me, could indicate that there are now a larger number of children who are potentially not getting all of the support that they need in school.

Lord Adonis instead suggests that the number of statements is falling because more and more funding is being given directly to schools. This could be really helpful to families where children are in schools who are experienced or well supported in delegating this funding to the various types of support, but some schools may not be in the best position to decide how funding should be spent, especially if there is a lack of specialist support at the school.

This links in with my last post on involving parents. If funding is being given directly to schools to decide how to spend it, it is a great opportunity to work closely with parents (who are, after all, experts on their children) to ensure that their children are supported.

On the other hand, an ATL article has argued that schools are often not receiving the funding they need to be able to support pupils with special educational needs adequately. These mixed messages are confusing. Do you have any views on how this should work, or any experience of allocating funds under the various circumstances?

A new document has been published by CentreForum and Policy Exchange which suggests that parents should be at the centre of decisions when planning support for children with special educational needs (SEN).

Learning the Hard Way: A strategy for special educational needs outlines suggestions for improving support for children with SEN. It outlines many interesting ideas, including addressing the imbalance between mainstream and special schools, giving parents more choice when choosing the most appropriate school for their children, and raising numbers of specialist teachers in schools.

However, the paper has been criticised by Every Disabled Child Matters for focussing too much on parental preference, and not enough on the children themselves. You can read the full article outlining these criticisms here.

NDCS places the child at the heart of decision making (click here to read about the vision and values of NDCS), so I can understand these criticisms on one level, but also think that giving parents more choice and empowering them to make decisions about support for their child is a positive step in the right direction. What do you think?

Some exciting new research is to be conducted at the University of Manchester looking at what deaf children are taught about sex and relationships. This is particularly relevant now, with the current governmental push to focus on children’s social and emotional development. The research will ask parents of deaf children what they know about their children’s sex and relationship education (SRE).

The aim of the research is to make SRE more accessible for deaf children. The researchers suggest that whilst deaf children may have a literal understanding of the words involved in SRE, they may miss out on some of the more subtle uses of the words, and more indirect information that is passed around between children and young people themselves.

I think that this research is really important. As the research team has said, a lack of knowledge and understanding of sex and relationships can make people more vulnerable to abuse. If this research is successful, it has the potential to contribute to deaf young people being better equipped with knowledge and a heightened understanding of their own emotions when entering into sexual relationships.

What do you think about SRE for deaf children? If you have any thoughts on this, please leave a comment.

In my last post I discussed the issue of how children are deemed ‘able’ to be able to take part in special educational needs appeals processes. I have since found this article which elaborates a bit more.

The author says that a child is able to appeal if “the child is deemed competent to appeal, and can show signs of awareness of their own circumstances as well as an ability to recognise the choices available to them”.

I would still be interested in finding out how exactly they are going to be able to measure this. I am sure there will be cases where children and their parents will feel that they are able to appeal, but where professionals disagree. That is just my personal opinion. If you have any information about this, or any thoughts, leave a comment!

The Welsh Assembly Government is considering involving children with special educational needs in SEN tribunals appeals processes. They are proposing that children who have gone through the special educational procedure to determine the level of support they are entitled to will be able to appeal against the decision themselves, if they are able to do so.

This idea signifies a positive move to encourage children and young people with special educational needs to be directly involved with the processes that affect them and the services they receive.

My question is how do you decide which children are able to and which children are not able to take part in appeals processes? This may be something that comes up in the consultation (which is yet to open), and is something that needs to be considered carefully. Often, people have different ideas of how participation works, to what level, and who is able to participate. I am going to be a curious observer of how this consultation goes. You can read about the proposed ideas in this BBC article.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families has opened a consultation about the status of Special Educational Needs Coordinators, looking at what qualifications and experience should be required of them, especially when considering that SENCOs are responsible for coordinating the provision for SEN pupils.

SENCOs can be a crucial link and source of expertise for deaf children and their families in getting the right support at school. NDCS often stresses the importance of a SENCO having the skills to ensure that other school staff have the relevant knowledge and skills to be able to support deaf children in their school and work with them appropriately, and act as an important link between parents and the school.

The National Union of Teachers is campaigning to get the professional status of SENCOs recognised, and for SENCOs to be required to have qualified teacher status, as they believe that “it is not appropriate for staff who do not hold qualified teacher status to make provision across the school for pupils with SEN and advise on teaching and learning strategies”. I think that this campaign is an important step in the right direction, but I also think that experience and knowledge play as important a role as qualifications do, and that the DCSF need to recognise this also.

You can find out more about the consultation, and how to have your say, on the DCSF consultation website. It will be very interesting to see what happens as a result of this consultation. What do you think about this issue, are you a parent of a child with special educational needs who has had experiences with a SENCO? Are you a SENCO yourself with views on what should be required of your role? I would be very interested to find out what you think!

A BBC article highlighted new guidance for schools on disability bullying, but questions whether it is enough. The new guide for schools was launched at the Aiming High for Disabled Children conference. The guidance has been welcomed, and it is hoped that it will help schools tackle this issue, but some are arguing that whilst this is a good step in the right direction, it is not enough.

You can read the reactions of Emma-Jane Cross from Beatbullying on the BBC arcticle. She highlights that we need to recognise that the responsibility of tackling disability bullying lies with everyone throughout the community, from teachers, to parents, to children and young people themselves.

I would be really interested to find out what you think about this. Are schools dealing with disability focussed bullying well enough? Do children understand the issues around it? Is there more that professionals could do to work with the wider community to lessen disability focussed bullying? Is there something that organisations like NDCS could do to support this? Let me know what you think.

The BBC have recently achieved 100% subtitling on all of its 7 main channels. This is fantastic news! Imagine what a difference this has made to deaf children. Susan Daniels, Chief Executive of NDCS gave a speech about her views and personal experiences as a deaf person of a lack of subtitleling at the celebration event for the BBC. You can read this speech on the NDCS campaigns pages, as well as the NDCS position on this.

The BBC’s achievement is fantastic, but there is still a lot of work to do to make sure that subtitles are more widely available. Professionals who work with deaf children have an important role to play here. Professionals who work with deaf children will have good understanding of the needs of deaf children, and why it is so important that deaf people have access to the TV programmes that they want to watch. NDCS is running a campaign to work towards better subtitling, and you can get involved by writing to your MP, or encouraging parents to fill out a short survey to tell us about their experiences.

I am sure that many of you have your own views on this, why not leave a comment to let me know what you think!