Sinn Fein Launches Attack on Vulnerable Children

[Pat Mc Larnon]

I cannot see how the minister can possibly square the circle. He has said on radio the statements are going. That means the legal protection associated with them goes too. If he wants to retain the protection that the statements give what is there to replace them. They take a long time because they are thorough. They take in all the professions, that is why it is long. The child needs evaluated by all the various professionals to ensure that the child is adequately cared for.

There is a clear requirement that the report, when published, is crystal clear in the legal responsibility to ensure that special educational needs is provided. It must also be clear that current protection is expanded and not restricted. In that respect I will defer until the report is published.

[physicist]

There is a clear requirement that the report, when published, is crystal clear in the legal responsibility to ensure that special educational needs is provided. It must also be clear that current protection is expanded and not restricted. In that respect I will defer until the report is published.

As long as it is not adequately implemented and defined by a statement of condition, that is.

There is a clear requirement that the report, when published, is crystal clear in the legal responsibility to ensure that special educational needs is provided, as long as it is not defined by any statement of condition, that is.

Get your facts straight.

[johnny365]

It seems SF/IRA are still at the double speak,agianst austerity here and for it in another part of the island, how long will the media let them off the hook. SF/IRA cutting SNA in the north is no surprise, after all compassion isnt SF/IRA best side, is not that long since that same organisation wouldnt condemn the murder of children.

[hammer]

SF/IRA/Credit Suisse

[physicist]

I would suggest these will be published in the actual report. A report that will published shortly. You can of course wait to see what they are or revert to linking to BBC stories on "what if".

The simple fact is that O'Dowd is now on record in relation to statutory support.

From the education website...

A statement of special educational needs is a document that sets out the child's needs and the special help that will be provided to help meet those needs. The protection of a statement will be afforded to children whose needs are such that resources additional to, or different from those normally available in mainstream schools must be allocated. The Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs indicates that approximately 2% of children will have such needs. To decide if a statement is necessary the Board may carry out a statutory assessment.

From the Task Force survey:-

Parents need to be better informed of the statementing process and the purpose of the annual review as a mechanism to provide a continuum of provision across a range of different settings with an emphasis on integration and inclusion.

Autism NI

Statements of Special Educational Need are being drastically cut as are services and monies for disability in general. Diagnosis of autism is becoming more and more difficult to obtain, with many parents being told their children do not 'meet' the criteria for a diagnosis. The services that follow a diagnosis of autism cost money. To save that money, the state has a failsafe measure for that - don't diagnose!

Many of your children who you suspect or know have autism will not receive a diagnosis and consequently will not receive the assistance they need and are entitled to. Furthermore, as parents, you will have great difficulty 'convincing' your child's teachers and schools that your child has educational needs that are specific, unless your child has that diagnosis. It's a catch 22 situation.

John O'Dowd's agenda

1. Endoctrination - You are to blame

The Minister of Education said the main aim is to change the mind-set among parents that only a "statement" of special needs can give adequate help to their children.

2.

Floccinaucinihilipilification - You (pointing to someone without a severely obvious disability or imparment) can't be serious.

In the new system, only pupils in special schools or with serious needs will get a new "Co-ordinated Support Plan" or CSP and schools will be expected to spot most problems and provide help for children.

[ticketyboo]

From the same BBC page there is this article It is a question and answer script on why a review was undertaken. While dealing with England it is applicable to the 6 counties. It reveal that;

"Parents have long complained that they had to battle hard to get statements of SEN for the children facing the most severe difficulties."

"Special needs campaigners have said some local councils are unwilling to "statement" pupils because of the legal entitlement and possible extra costs that brings."

"At the other end of the spectrum, Ofsted said as many as half of the pupils listed on "school action" would not actually have required that designation if teaching in schools was better.

This was partly because schools were not picking up problems that could be solved through normal teaching methods early enough, and partly because they were inappropriately labelling pupils' problems, Ofsted said."


"A Commons education committee report in 2006 found the system "not fit for purpose".

And despite attempts to improve matters, Ofsted in 2010 still concluded that the system is complex and widely perceived as "unfair", with parents who are able to make sense of it having quicker and greater access to resources and support."


Clearly the system as it stood was not working.

As O'Dowd pointed out;

"Thirty-eight per cent of post primary schools were judged to fall short in their provision for special needs."


"In the future, the department plans to have only two stages on the way to getting the CSP replacement for a statement, which at the moment has five stages and is said to be too bureaucratic. The process will be speeded up with a time limit of 20 weeks, instead of 26 weeks."

"At present the statements must be reviewed every year, and that is said to be too bureaucratic and time consuming. In future, there would simply be a meeting between parent and school principal and a formal review only where one of them requests it."


These are hardly measures that would be viewed as an attack on vulnerable children.

Pat - why are you spoiling this for them with reasonable responses to an OP -"Sinn Fein launches ATTACK! on vulnerable children". In America they pay millions for this negative campaigning ************************e. Difference is, they're good at it. Let them have their hate-fest, FFS.

[ArtyisBack]

Pat - why are you spoiling this for them with reasonable responses to an OP -"Sinn Fein launches ATTACK! on vulnerable children". In America they pay millions for this negative campaigning ************************e. Difference is, they're good at it. Let them have their hate-fest, FFS.

Let me paraphrase "you are drawing attention to this Pat - shut up"

[physicist]

Pat - why are you spoiling this for them with reasonable responses to an OP -"Sinn Fein launches ATTACK! on vulnerable children". In America they pay millions for this negative campaigning ************************e. Difference is, they're good at it. Let them have their hate-fest, FFS.

So the haters include Autism NI who says these proposals are a removal of services, sometimes complete removal of services not an expansion of services. The other haters, if you will.

http://www.deni.gov.uk/appendix_3_-_..._petitions.pdf

Caitriona Ruane had the sense to turn back, O'Dowd's petty bureaucratic obsession with one budgetary overhead will see a dangerous one size fits all approach to complex non-aesthetically obvious SEN difficulties or disorders that would have otherwise be left without even the basic insight to what they have and leave teachers in the role of de facto educational psychologists or other specialists. This will stop intervention when its needed and replace it with ineffective bureaucracy., the very opposite of what O'Dowd thinks and wishes, the very opposite of the goals of removing bureaucracy.

This may even be a violation of the Ministerial code.

1.5

(vi) operate in a way conducive to promoting good community relations and equality of treatment;

Oh well John knows best, let Justice, Health and Social Development pick up the fall out, if the wrath of the Assembly, the deputy first minster, his party and his constituents don't get him first. He should pick his battles.

An interesting tipbit.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...v086p00384.pdf

Fame, power, and Asperger’s syndrome
Do all emotionally cold, single minded, autocratic odd bods suffer from Asperger’s syndrome? A professor of child psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin (Michael Fitzgerald. Journal of Medical Biography2001;9:231–5) has described these personality traits in Ireland’s first president, Eamon De Valera, and suggested this diagnosis. Professor Fitzgerald lists the six commonly quoted criteria for the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome (severe impairments in reciprocal social interaction, all-absorbing narrow interests, imposition of routines on self and others, non-verbal communication problems, speech and language problems, and motor clumsiness). (The last two are not included in the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV).) He goes on to provide an extremely unflattering picture of President De Valera based in large part on two biographies. Descriptions of the president include expressions such as odd, baffling, arrogant, an outsider, lacking in social graces, tactless, aloof, lacking empathy, and humourless. He is said to have been extremely autocratic and sure of the rightness of his own views. He was obsessed by Irish nationalism and absorbed by mathematics. (The latter interest led to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1968.) (DSM-IV refers to “preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus”;
whether intense Irish nationalism or an interest in mathematics comes into this category seems at least debatable.) He was a stickler for routine, had a liking for uniforms, and involved himself in the minutiae of government. As a public speaker he was said to be verbose, pedantic, repetitious, and condescending. Professor Fitzgerald concludes that De Valera met the DSM-IV criteria for Asperger’s syndrome.
We have all met aloof, difficult, cold fish who are “never wrong”. Do they have Asperger’s syndrome?
Does it help to say that they do? If you saw Maureen Lipman playing the part of the play agent Peggy Ramsay in Alan Plater’s play Peggy for You you will have seen a very funny portrait of an eccentric, obsessional, infuriating, but seemingly loveable character who had many of the features of Asperger’s syndrome. Making that diagnosis at the theatre made me feel clever and perhaps slightly smug but was it really much better than most people’s diagnosis of extreme eccentricity?

[physicist]

4. Longstone School campaign - 70 responses

“Every School a Good School: The Way Forward for Special Educational Needs and Inclusion” – DENI document.

1. Changes to the Statementing Process: We are very concerned about the removal of statements without them being replaced by a document with a similar legal status to ensure our children’s right to specialist provision.

2. The Annual Review of Statement: If the Statement is removed then we feel that we will not have a legal right to be part of the annual decision making process concerning our child’s education. We are concerned about the lack of detail surrounding this proposal and in particular the time frame proposed for the review of pupil’s needs.

3. Appropriate Placement for Pupils: While we agree that this process needs to be accelerated we do not see how our children would have been appropriately placed any quicker by these proposals.

A professional statement replaced by a politician's reassurance. It'd be better PR to announce this as what it is, a cut.