Children with learning disabilities and the transition to adulthood - Margot calls for change

Margot James visited Old Park School as part of her month focussing on adults and children with special needs. Her account of the visit follows:

First of all what did I learn about what needs to change?

• Children in Dudley Borough get less money spent on their education than in neighbouring Sandwell; thanks to the unfairness inherent in the Government’s central funding of local government formula.
• A new target system coming down from Whitehall is threatening schools who take children with more severe learning disabilities.
• Parents are fearful for their children’s future. There needs to be more information to help parents make choices as their children near school leaving age. And there are well founded fears that the options for supporting young adults with learning disabilities are narrowing.
• Specialist provision by Colleges is patchy, there is good practice but some of it is under threat.
• We need to tread carefully in the path towards direct payments.
• We need to retain some day centres for adults with learning disabilities.
• There needs to be more training for professionals who come in to contact with children who have disabling illnesses.

Recent History

Thanks to action by Dudley Council taken following intervention by David Cameron, according to the former chair of the ‘Dudley Special School Protection League’, Dudley still have six specialist schools for children with learning disabilities. Many other parts of the country succumbed to government policy at the time which forced through the closure of many much needed special schools.

Old Park School is testimony to what can be achieved through leadership and passion. As soon as you walk in you feel the care and commitment for these vulnerable children. The school went into special measures shortly after Head teacher Gill Cartwright took over in 2004 and is now a good school with many outstanding features. The school also gained Specialist Status in Communication and Interaction in September 2008.

It’s not all about money, but it helps

Gill and her dedicated team of staff together with deputy head Jonathan have turned the school around with far less money per pupil than comparable schools in Sandwell. Sandwell has a huge grant from central government compared to Dudley.

There are 115 children at the school, which specialises in the more severe end of childhood learning disabilities. Walking round the school and observing classes it is evident that every child is treated as an individual. The walls in one class are lined with photos of each child and what they are trying to achieve. All children have realistic and highly individual targets. Goals like being able to sit unaided for five minutes per day. Although progress is painfully slow, most children are moving forward. Except for a few like one little boy who started out as a baby with a normal range of abilities, developed as expected for a few years and then suddenly deteriorated. His parents have not yet been able to get a diagnosis of their son’s declining state of mental and physical health. It is desperately sad and although most of the school tour was genuinely uplifting there are moments when you just have to fight back tears, faced with the loss and grief that some parents must feel.

Targets that are based on ignorance and centralised control

Through no fault of its own Old Park School will probably fall down the inspection league due to the new inspection regime that came into place this September. All special schools, including those at the more severe end of the spectrum will be measured against new progress targets. These targets will be unattainable for most pupils, bad for staff morale and incomprehensible to parents.

The Department for Children and Families have decreed that all children have to make two ‘P Levels’ progress over one key stage. Evidence collected from schools in many parts of the country show that children with profound and multiple learning difficulties might achieve an improvement of just one ‘P level’ over the course of their entire schooling. The new targets are a dangerous pipedream and completely wrong for special schools.

I wonder if in the future the fact that special schools, being unable to meet these targets, will find themselves compared unfavourably to mainstream schools and the improvements they are able to make with children who have mild learning disabilities?

Under this target driven Government we might find ourselves fighting for the survival of the special schools all over again...

Transition to Adult services

Some teachers at the school are extremely concerned for the future. I have long been aware of the feeling of many parents that once their child is eighteen it is like walking up to a cliff. Suddenly there seems to be hardly any care and support on offer. According to some the options for parents are getting narrower as budgets get tighter and tighter.

I am starting to feel that the race towards direct payments in this sector, as if they are some holy grail guaranteeing all affected families greater choice, control and independence, is highly suspect. For a start the payments will be less than the cost of the care needed, I think that can be almost guaranteed. Secondly, not all, but many families and their affected children want a sense of community, a daycentre which has highly trained staff, activity and a personalised care programme for each client has a lot to be said for it. We should not be in a rush to close such places down. Those Conservatives like me with a long memory of health and social care policy do not want to have to relearn the lessons from so called ‘Care in the Community’ applied by our own government to mental health all over again...

As far as possible opportunities for children with learning disabilities should mirror those available for children in mainstream schools. There should be possibilities for part time learning experience at local Colleges for example. Teachers at Old Park speak highly of the open courses run by Halesowen College for a day a week whilst the child is still at school. Similarly there is usually one run by Dudley College although there are question marks over its continuation this year. A question mark that I shall be looking in to. I am all too aware of the sudden funding crisis that has gripped the Further Education sector in light of the Government’s disastrous loss of financial control at the Learning & Skills Council.

Definitely there is a need for more information for parents when their children are at a younger age about what might be possible for their future development and support once they leave school. In some areas, like Dudley, it is likely that more is available than is generally known about so information and communication should be improved.

Photo: Margot visiting Old Park School with Head Teacher Gill Cartwright.