Educational psychologists warn services face being overwhelmed
Jess Brown
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Services protecting vulnerable children and young people are at a "tipping point" without further government funding, educational psychologists have warned.
In a motion to the TUC Congress today, the Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) will warn that increased workloads combined with a reduction in workforce numbers will hit support for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) and mental health difficulties.
In September last year the age until which a young person can receive educational psychologist support was increased from 18 to 25 under the Children and Families Act 2014.
A survey of AEP members in June this year found that 85 per cent reported “substantial” increases in workloads in the six months prior.
The AEP welcomed the government’s funding for the training for additional educational psychologists this year from £14,400 (£14,900 in London) to £15,950 (£16,390 in London) in 2016.
Meanwhile, the number of funded training places will rise from 132 to 150.
However AEP has warned that one-off funding for the training of new educational psychologists will be insufficient to meet the needs of vulnerable children and young people in the long term.
It is calling on the Department for Education to ensure funding is available to train sufficient educational psychologists to meet the expected demand.
Kate Fallon, general secretary of the AEP, said: “Improving the rights of young people with SEN and increasing the age to which they receive support was absolutely the right thing to do.
"But the consequence is that we’re now dealing with greater demand for support with little in the way of additional resource.
“The government, to its credit, has seen there’s a problem. And of course we welcome funding being found for the training of more educational psychologists this year.
“But we can’t kid ourselves into thinking this alone will solve the problem. The demand for educational psychologist support will continue to grow.
“And if there isn’t ongoing support to train the professionals we need to meet this demand, services will be overwhelmed. If that happens, the losers will be some of the most vulnerable children and young people in our society.”
