Children with Special Education Needs and Disability Abandoned by Schools during Lockdown

Tue,28 July 2020
News Equality & Rights Health & Social Care

Coronavirus and SEND Education: 75% of schools ignored Government risk assessment guidance during the lockdown.

A new report shows the extent to which children with Education, Health and Care Plans and their families have been neglected during the coronavirus crisis. Instead of risk assessment being used to support children to receive education, they were used to prevent children returning to school.

Parents and young people were often not included in the risk assessment process. Parents found themselves being dissuaded from returning children to school and faced barriers such as lack of transport and special provision. For children and families left at home, education was often not tailored to their needs and therapies were stopped.

This research report follows that produced by the Disabled Children's Partnership, which showed a similar picture. Unfortunately, these problems are not over, some parents are now being told that their child will receive extremely limited education from September.

Fazilet Hadi, Head of Policy at DR UK said "The educational, health and care support received by thousands of children with additional needs has been utterly abysmal. To learn that inadequate provision will continue into next term is truly shocking. Government, local authorities and schools need to do a whole lot better. A good start would be to coproduce risk assessments with parents and young people."

For more information visit the Special Needs Jungle website.