Black special needs

Parents reveal struggle to get assessment and support, The Voice reveals.

BLACK BRITISH children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are being failed by the education system, according to leading campaigners and parents.

SEND can affect a child or young person’s ability to learn and impact behaviour, ability to socialise and can influence a child’s reading and writing ability, understanding and concentration levels, depending on their diagnosis.

In the United Kingdom, a landmark study by Oxford University, found that Black Caribbean pupils, including those with mixed heritage, are twice as likely to be identified as having special needs compared to their white peers.

A lack of understanding of cultural differences, racism from teachers and ineffective classroom management are among possible factors cited in the report as possible reasons for the over-representation.

A Department for Education (DfE) report published in June 2022 into SEND of pupils in Britain found Black Caribbean pupils have the second highest percentage (5.4 per cent) of pupils with an Education, Health and Care Plan, with only pupils of an Irish Traveller background having a higher rate.

However, many Black parents say despite having these legal plans they are still facing challenges getting the right support for their children – which is having repercussions on their education and development.

Natasha Lynch, pictured below, is a mother-of-four from Shepherd’s Bush, west London, whose children are aged 20, 14, five and two. Her five-year-old son, Natai, was diagnosed with autism two and half years ago. She initially thought with the relatively early diagnosis things would be straightforward, but she says she has been left with more questions, as she has not been told where exactly her son is on the autism spectrum.

Ms Lynch’s son is non-verbal and uses some signals to communicate with her.

She told The Voice: “He has a certain level of understanding, but he’s very repetitive. If I clean the room he has to have toys scattered on the floor.

“Anything you tidy up he has to come and mess it back up.”

Fight

Ms Lynch, an entrepreneur with a successful events business, said she had to “fight tooth and nail” to get an EHC plan for her son – which was only granted three months ago.

She said: “I had problems getting him into a school, and when I finally got him into school they would only take him for two hours because they said they couldn’t deal with him.”

She then moved him to another school and said things were looking up. But on his first day, she was called and told “it’s a bit much”. “He’s in full-time now and they have bought in a one-to-one to work with him, she’s amazing.

“She’s a young Black girl, who’s only 19. She’s with him all the time, so I feel confident,” she added.

The mother-of-four says she has seen a “huge improvement” in her son since he started school and was given the extra one-to-one support.

Although he has a school place, she said she is still struggling especially during school holidays, as her two-year-old daughter has been given a nursery place but Natai stays at home.

“There’s no support for Natai in the holidays, there’s no day centres I can take him to, no activities,” she explained. The places for children like Natai seem to always be fully booked already.

“It’s hard because I can’t do activities with my older kids because there are certain places that I can’t take him, he won’t go on public transport, it’s difficult to balance it,” she said.

She added: “He tries to climb out of the window, he doesn’t have any sense of danger, he will run out into the road.”

Ms Lynch previously worked with children with special needs, and believes this helped her to spot what she describes as a “delay in her son’s development” – which prompted her two kids and I just knew this is not right.”

Ms Lynch said she was trapped in a “vicious cycle” before eventually finding a suitable school for her son.

“They were saying he couldn’t have a EHCP plan unless he was in a school setting, but no school would take him, government need to do more. Black children with SEND are increasingly likely to be permanently excluded from school for behaviour which is a result of their condition rather than malicious intent. to go back to her doctors and request further tests.

Meanwhile, some Black parents are not requesting assessments because they don’t want their Black child labelled, which puts them at additional risk of exclusion due to the lack of diagnosis and extra support.

When Natai was one, she returned to work and he was being cared for by a childminder but Ms Lynch knew “he just wasn’t developing right”.

She said: “I noticed he wasn’t saying any words and had long beautiful hair that he had ripped out with his hands.

“He was biting his hands and was just doing things that I had never noticed with my other so I couldn’t get the plan and funding for him.”

Under immense pressure, she said she wrote to local MPs, her doctor and social services for assistance.

She maintains that schools had spaces but just didn’t have the capacity to deal with her son’s needs.

Ms Lynch believes there is a lack of funding to cope with the growing demand for children with SEND and says the

Another Black mother, who spoke to The Voice anonymously, revealed that her son, Simon (not his real name) was permanently excluded from primary school at the age of six because of behavioural issues but was later diagnosed with ADHD and autism.

Esther Thompson, (not her real name) from London, believes racism, discrimination and a lack of teacher training in SEND is driving schools to wrongly label Black children as badly behaved rather than support parents to find out what the real issue is.

Simon has attended four primary schools – three mainstream and one specialist