Newly recruited health visitors will be key to government plans to join-up services for children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities, a senior civil servant has revealed.
Ann Gross, director of early years, extended schools and special needs at the Department for Education, confirmed that the forthcoming SEN green paper would include proposals on improving integrated working.
Speaking at a conference hosted by disabled children’s charity Kids, she said: "There needs to be a better join-up between education, health and social care. We’ve got an expanding number of health visitors coming into the system, so how can we use that mechanism to join-up better?"
Gross added that the government’s call for views on the green paper in the autumn elicited more than 1,800 responses, almost half of which came from parents.
Many of those responses demanded better multi-agency assessments, earlier intervention for families and a wider choice of provision, she said.
To help provide children with SEN and disabilities with more choice, the government is planning to introduce personal budgets.
But Gross admitted that more work needs to be done in this area. "Some parents say they’re very keen to make use of personal budgets," she explained. "Others say that could be quite a difficult job to take on when they’re already under pressure, so the issue is how do we support that?"
Kevin Williams, chief executive of Kids, admitted that some of the charity’s services are "experiencing significant cuts". But he argued that professionals must pull together to find new ways of maintaining a broad range of services for disabled children.
"We need to work with all our colleagues in the children and young people’s sector to ensure that funding is best used. It may be possible to have a win-win situation whereby funding that is meeting the needs of disabled children and young people also enables services that are receiving cuts to continue," he explained.
"At the end of the day, there is no point in having funding for disabled children and young people if all the mainstream services we want them to access have disappeared."
Speaking at a conference hosted by disabled children’s charity Kids, she said: "There needs to be a better join-up between education, health and social care. We’ve got an expanding number of health visitors coming into the system, so how can we use that mechanism to join-up better?"
Gross added that the government’s call for views on the green paper in the autumn elicited more than 1,800 responses, almost half of which came from parents.
Many of those responses demanded better multi-agency assessments, earlier intervention for families and a wider choice of provision, she said.
To help provide children with SEN and disabilities with more choice, the government is planning to introduce personal budgets.
But Gross admitted that more work needs to be done in this area. "Some parents say they’re very keen to make use of personal budgets," she explained. "Others say that could be quite a difficult job to take on when they’re already under pressure, so the issue is how do we support that?"
Kevin Williams, chief executive of Kids, admitted that some of the charity’s services are "experiencing significant cuts". But he argued that professionals must pull together to find new ways of maintaining a broad range of services for disabled children.
"We need to work with all our colleagues in the children and young people’s sector to ensure that funding is best used. It may be possible to have a win-win situation whereby funding that is meeting the needs of disabled children and young people also enables services that are receiving cuts to continue," he explained.
"At the end of the day, there is no point in having funding for disabled children and young people if all the mainstream services we want them to access have disappeared."
