Speaking at yesterday’s Policy Forum for Wales Seminar on Additional Learning Needs in Wales, where he Chaired the first session, North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood stated that his mail bag is “inundated with correspondence from parents whose children’s needs are not being currently met” and said it is vital this changes.
He also referred to his personal experience of having to fight for his own child’s Statement and said he is therefore “very conscious of the need for the ALN Act to work”.
He said:
“In addition to Chairing a number of Assembly Cross Party Groups, including those on Disability and on Autism, I was a Member of the Committee which produced the reports that provided the foundation for the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018 - or ALN Act.
“I also have lived experience as a parent who had to fight for my child’s Statement 17 years ago in order to access the special language unit otherwise denied to him – and who then had to use the Statement to force the Local Authority to meet its statutory duties to my child. I am therefore very conscious of the need for this Act to work.
“In the Second Assembly, the Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning Committee found that the current ‘process can be adversarial, frustrating, stressful and complicated for parents’ and ‘an unequal system’ where ‘more vocal and able parents are able to utilise the system more than others’.
“My mail bag is inundated with correspondence from parents whose children’s needs are not being currently met; including Autistic parents who have been battling with their Local Authority and Health Board on behalf of their autistic children; where the autism awareness claimed by public bodies is contradicted by their continued failure to identify and meet my constituents’ communication needs as autistic people; despite my constituents’ stated need to discuss ‘the continued lack of effective advocates, needs assessment, and effective joint working by Health, Social Services and education”.
Mr Isherwood stressed that the ALN Act will bring an end to the current distinction between school led interventions and local authority issued Statements, integrate the separate legislative arrangements that exist for pupils in schools and post-16 students in colleges, and make provision for universal, statutory IDPs (Individual Development Plans) for all children and young people with ALN.
He said: “It is anticipated that the Act will be implemented, through a mandatory phased approach, between September 2020 and August 2023. Statements will be converted into IDPs between September 2020 and August 2022 – with other plans being converted over three years to August 2023.
Mr Isherwood also referred to the fact that the Act requires Welsh Ministers to issue an ALN Code.
He added: “The Welsh Government states that ‘anyone exercising functions under the Act or the Code will need to involve children and young people at every stage of the process, with their views, wishes and feelings listened to’. The code will therefore need to fully embrace Co-production - with professionals and pupils or students working side by side to remedy deficiencies in the current special needs/Additional Learning Needs system in Wales.”