Evidence, Short Breaks, Respite & a Guardian Angel 11th March 2017
Dear All We open with national news, and then move onto meetings about local respite and dates for support groups…
Call for Evidence The deadline for contributing to the Lenehan Review is fast approaching (17th March 2017). SEND Family Voices will be able to submit a local response using our own evidence base.
If you would like your views to contribute to this, please reply to this e-mail by Tuesday 15th March. Here follow some snippets from the very readable review: “These are our children and they are known. They occur in every area and they often follow a well-trodden pathway out of their local authority area, never to come back” (page 3) “These children are a part of our community, not external to it.” (page 4) “23. One service said “Success needs strong commissioning relationships. Key to these is a strong parental engagement and models based on being respectful to families” (page 14) “27. In many areas, each agency believed that the other should be more engaged, more proactive, more responsible. This was even the case when I [C Lenehan] spoke to all partners in a locality” (page 15) “32. The system has a number of built in barriers which restrict access to supportive interventions.” (page 16) “48. When children are diagnosed with cancer we rightly assign the child and family a keyworker who stays with them through their journey. If we support that group of children, we should be able to do the same for this group.” (page 19) 80. One parent said: “I’ve struggled to get £18,000 of care for my son in the community. I can’t get any more so he is moving to a placement costing £200,000. What happened to the middle? 81. There is something fundamentally wrong with a financial system that appears to reward crisis but disincentives early intervention.” (page 29)
You can read a copy of the full review here: https://www.afclocaloffer.org.uk/blog_articles/943-these-are-our-children-a-review-bydame-christine-lenehan-director-council-for-disabled-children