My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF. I, too, am delighted to be speaking in favour of Amendment 219, which can bring about the transformation of education—much of our emphasis today has been on education—and, importantly, health and social care services, which is needed to make them truly inclusive for families with disabled children.
I strongly believe that the starting point for looking at the reforms to SEN in this Bill should be that a disabled child has just as much right as every other
child to be involved in their community, to be visible in their own community and to have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers. Despite some very welcome reforms to support for disabled children and children with SEN in the Bill, I fear that the right of disabled children to participate in their community will not be sufficiently realised through the Bill. This concern is shared by UNICEF and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, noted.
There is compelling evidence that families with disabled children currently encounter huge difficulties in accessing support in their community. Indeed, Scope’s recent Keep Us Close report found that a mere 14% of families with disabled children said they could get all the support they needed in their local community. Therefore families which already face immense challenges on a daily basis more often than not encounter a closed door when it comes to ensuring that their children enjoy the same opportunities as other children.
The Government previously stated in Committee on the Bill in the other place that there are already duties in place to ensure that appropriate provision is made for children and young people with special educational needs and disabled children and their families. However, such duties are clearly failing to achieve their intended purpose. Although the Equality Act 2010 requires organisations to be proactive and responsive in ensuring that the public services that they provide are inclusive and accessible, the reality is that services for disabled children are often developed, planned and commissioned separately from other community services, and consequently miss more strategic opportunities to create joined-up support and a more inclusive society. Parents are confronted with local activities and services that are either inaccessible, or a lack of support services to enable disabled children to join in with local activities such as youth groups or even simply playing in the park with their peers.
The Government need to set out a clear strategic direction and create a strong imperative for local authorities to focus on accessibility of local services, and that is exactly what the amendment would do. Although a number of local authorities undertake excellent work alongside families with disabled children to ensure that their needs are met by mainstream services—notably Suffolk, Leeds and Blackpool—not all local authorities are as progressive. Many local authorities and voluntary organisations want to provide more inclusive and accessible services, and the amendment would help to give them a chance to do that.
Such a duty on local authorities and NHS bodies would not have to be burdensome. Disabled children and those with SEN more often than not do not need hugely different or specialist services. With small changes to an existing service, we can make them accessible and inclusive for disabled children. It is not about providing more and separate services, but, rather, targeting current provision in the most effective way.
Indeed, making services accessible and inclusive for disabled children is just as much about changing attitudes as it is about making physical adjustments. It is about breaking down many of the fears and misconceptions
about what inclusion means and ensuring that services see children simply as the individuals who they are—forcing services to think more creatively about how they can meet the needs of families with disabled children and allowing the 1.7 million disabled children and children with SEN to reach their potential.