Tag Archives: SEND

Carers, Council reports, Covid19, Locality Budget, Roads, School Transport, Transport, Uncategorised, Woodbridge, young people, Your councillor

Woodbridge: what’s been happening in March

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Coronavirus update  The covid infection rate continues to go downwards. According to national  statistics, there were somewhere between 0 and 2 people infected in Woodbridge in the week ending 9th March. This is as opposed to 11 people on month ago. However East Suffolk as a whole has had a nearly 20% increase in new infections over the last 7 days. Do bear in mind however these are currently small figures: 6 new infections a day.

The most up-to-date picture across Suffolk is :

For up-to-date local coronavirus data go to https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ where you can search by postcode.

The vaccination programme is going very well in Suffolk. This is a testament to the hard work and efficiency of our wonderful local healthcare teams and volunteers. However, supply remains patchy. This is the one area outside local hands.

With the return of school pupils to the classroom on Monday, households, childcare and support bubbles of primary/secondary-age pupils and primary/secondary staff are being asked to take a rapid test for COVID-19, twice a week. Secondary school pupils and primary/secondary school staff will be given their tests by their schools. Farlingaye HS made the EADT for the sheer number of tests administered! (Primary school pupils will not be asked to test at this time.)

There are four ways to get a test. For more details go to the Suffolk County Council . The Woodbridge Lateral Flow testing site will be stood down from 31 March because it has been decided that home testing is more beneficial.

Caroline Page standing looking very pleased in a clearly new bus shelter with the ancient, yellow Cherry Tree inn behind her
The new bus shelter finally in place

Finally: New Bus Shelter by the Cherry Tree
Happiness is.. a new bus shelter! People have waited in the cold and wet at the bus stop by Cherry Tree Inn, Woodbridge  ever since there was a bus stop there. A total wind tunnel. It has taken me four years to negotiate and and actually get this shelter in place.  A small victory? Not for the residents of Morley Avenue! I’m thrilled!

Woodbridge Safe Streets Vigil On March 13th, Woodbridge was one of few places in the county (country) to hold a small  peaceful, safe,  sociallly-distanced police-sanctioned vigil to  remember Sarah Everard and call for greater safety for women in public places. Full details here  https://suffolklibdems.org/carolinepage/2021/03/15/safer-streets-for-women-woodbridge-holds-vigil/

Home to school transport contracts to move from Suffolk Norse to Vertas Following the end of the joint venture partnership with Suffolk Norse (triggered on the part of Norse), SCC will be moving the home-to-school transport service to the wholly owned company Vertas.

Suffolk Norse delivered a termination of agreement notice in August 2020, giving 12 months notice to the Council. The 40 home-to-school transport routes and a school swimming service will be delivered by Vertas from September onwards. The contract was not put out to tender due to the limited timescales, the legal requirement to deliver these services continuously, and the risk of redundancies if a provider able to deliver both swimming and home-to-school transport cannot be found.

Suffolk & Norfolk County Council submit joint bid for £6m flood funding Suffolk and Norfolk County Councils have submitted a joint bid to the £200 fund for Flood and Coastal Resilience, requesting £6m to invest in flood protection schemes across both counties. The proposed projects would also capture water for reuse. If the bid is successful town and parish councils will be encouraged to get involved through measures like permeable paving, water butts and ‘rain gardens’ that can cope with occasional flooding. These projects would be in place by 2027 if the bid is approved.

Consultation on proposed A12 improvements from A14 Seven Hills to A1152 Woods Lane Suffolk County Council was consulting  on proposed improvements to the A12 between A14 junction at ‘Seven Hills’ and A1152 at Woods Lane, with the stated aim of increasing highway capacity in the area and preventing future congestion.

The “improvements” will include traffic lights on every roundabout but Seckford, and have an estimated cost of £60m. The lights would monitor congestion and use ‘intelligent flow’ to adapt to changing levels of traffic. The consultation finished  on 19th March. I will post my response separately.

Cllr Caroline Page speaking via zoom: head and shoulders shot in front of bookshelves
Cllr Caroline Page proposes the motion at Full Council via zoom

Carers Database I proposed a motion to the last full council of the electoral cycle  to create a cross-county Carers database in order to help direct the Council’s limited social care resources most effectively so as to ensure that there will be maximum support for carers, particularly in times of crisis.  Wonderfully this was seconded by Suffolk’s Conservatives(although they had had no appetite for the schemewhen I proposed it to them directly last summer and the motion passed ‘by general acclamation.’ Full details here: https://suffolklibdems.org/carolinepage/2021/03/21/identifying-suffolks-unpaid-carers/

LDGI Group opposes Government’s last-minute approach to local authority grants Suffolk County Council will receive £27m for highways repairs, maintenance and drainage in 2021-22, a reduction in from £31m the previous year. This has necessitated the use of £2m of reserves to top up the grant. We feel that these cuts in Government funding make it impossible to plan long-term for road maintenance and repair. Due to the uncertainty as to whether this grant would materialise at all, some vital work has already been postponed.

Post-16 Travel Policy consultation My group has submitted a joint response to Suffolk County Council’s consultation on the Post-16 Transport Policy, which manages transport to schools and education for young people after the age of 16. This included:

  • Support for the expansion of the post-16 travel eligibility criteria for sixth form students and adult learners aged 25 and under with EHC plans, reflecting the change in age range for compulsory school attendance.
  • Support for keeping prices lower for SEND students.
  • Use of buses and trains for school transport must be supported. The needs of students and the numbers currently forced to use taxis or private cars to reach their schools must be taken into account when considering public transport. Students should be steered towards buses first, and the school transport service should support our local bus network in maintaining services to rural areas.
  • The Travel Training Scheme must be better funded, so that it can expand and promote its services

Four Years of Locality Budgets    In the last four years, my locality budget has funded an amazingly diverse array of things to support local groups and the community in general. These included:

  • Entertainment for the individual Library Reading Schemes and prizes for the associated competitions (Animal Agents, Mischief Makers and Space Chase)
  • Funding towards a defibrillator for Warwick Avenue
  • A townwide Social Prescribing leaflet
  • A tenor soloist for the end of WWI Snape annniversary  War Requiem
  • Dark figure of a woman holdong a red snow scraper with which she has scraped the pathe through the snow in the forground. Behind her is all white: a fairyland tunnel of snow covered branches with a little blue wheelbarrow in the distance
    Gritting: Caroline Page clearing the footway above the Ipswich Road with equipment supplied by the gritting scheme

    Additional bins and barrows for the Woodbridge Gritting Scheme (set up by me in 2010)

  • Advertising material: Woodbridge Farmers’ Market
  • Little City play shopping street experience for pre-schoolers
  • Plans for the interior of Jetty Lane Community Youth and Arts Centre
  • WTFC kit for the Junior team
  • Uniform jackets for Just 42 in-school mentors at FarlingayeHS
  • Benches and notice boards for areas outside the town centre
  • Funding for Woodbridge Festival
  • Promotional videos highlighting community need
  • The ‘Finish’ Arch for the Woodbridge 10k
  • Funding for Woodbridge Opera in the Park
  • Christmas presents for local children in need
  • Road trailer for the Woodbridge Coastal Rowing Club skiffs
  • Funding for Pirate Ship climbing frame, St Mary’s Primary School
  • 9 laptops to support learning for individual FarlingayeHS students in lockdown
  • Benches to improve the shopping experience in Woodbridge Thoroughfare
Council reports, Education, Jetty Lane Youth, School Transport, Transport, Woodbridge, Your councillor

SUFFOLK: What’s been going ON, Feb-March 2019

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Suffolk CC 2019/20 budget. Suffolk County Council’s 2019/20 budget was agreed on Thursday 14 February, voted in by the Conservative majority despite significant opposition concerns. This will see an increase in council tax of 3.99%, and savings (cuts) across the council’s directorates totalling £10.1m.

I am concerned by a number of these cuts, in particular:

  • The decision to remove all grant funding from Citizens Advice. This will be phased over two years, with a 50% reduction in the 2019/20 budget (£0.184m);
  • Reducing the amount spent on Housing Related Support, which supports those at risk of homelessness (£0.45m);
  • Reduced funding for sponsored bus services (£0.34m) and cessation of the provision of roadside bus timetables (£0.1m);
  • Reduction in highways maintenance, including no road sign cleaning (£0.1m), only maintaining mandatory road markings (£0.075m) and less frequent weed treatments in rural areas (£0.055m);
  • Staffing reductions across all directorates, which may result in less efficient services (£2.968m).

Suffolk CCGs to pick up Citizens Advice funding for 2019/20 As mentioned above, the budget includes a cut to the grant funding provided by Suffolk County Council to Citizens Advice. This grant will be cut by 50% in 2019/20 (£184,000) and removed entirely in the 2020/21 budget.

Thankfully, the CCGs have stepped in and agreed to provide Citizens Advice with £184,000 in funding this year, to make up for the 50% funding cut from Suffolk County Council. Although this means Citizens Advice will not lose funding this year, it does not address the longer-term problem of funding in the future. The CCGs have been clear that this funding is only available for 2019/20.

Reduction in Suffolk’s 2018/19 predicted overspend Suffolk County Council’s latest budget monitoring report suggests the 2018/19 budget will be overspent by £5.9m – an improvement on the overspend of £7.5m predicted after quarter 2.

The £5.9m overspend is 1.2% of the net budget and is made up of £3.8m on base budget and £2.1m on Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) spend.

Although it is positive to hear the overspend is reducing, I am concerned by where these savings are being achieved. The majority are due to ongoing staff vacancies at the council, particularly in social work teams. This is clearly not a long-term solution and is a dangerous false economy. Without adequate staff, the county council will struggle to properly and efficiently provide services in Suffolk.

Respublica report into housing costs Suffolk County Council £66,000. Last year Suffolk County Council commissioned the thinktank Respublica to undertake a study into housing growth in Suffolk at a cost of £66,000. The final report was published on 21 February. At just 14 pages long, it cost the authority almost £5000 per page and failed to discuss the issues in any great depth.

Ofsted inspectors conclude Suffolk’s SEND service is inadequate Inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) returned to Suffolk in January to see how SEND services had progressed since their inspection in December 2016.

Following that visit, inspectors ruled Suffolk was not effectively meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND.

In their report last week, the inspectors acknowledged that some improvements have been made, but say children and young people relying on SEND services have not yet felt the benefit.

The inspectors concluded that while sufficient progress had been made regarding governance and leadership of the strategic planning and delivery of the 2014 national SEND reforms, they ruled that insufficient progress had been made in the three other areas requiring improvement.

These were:
• the poor timeliness, integration and quality of SEND statutory assessments and plans and the delivery of subsequent individual packages of support
• the lack of understanding among parents and carers of the support available, and the inadequate quality of the local offer, including access to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), and
• lack of joint working to monitor, quality assure and maximise the effectiveness of work undertaken to improve outcomes for children.

Suffolk Free School Travel – new opt-in for funded transport Following changes to the school travel policy, which will take effect in September 2019, eligible families must now “opt-in” to receive free school transport – pupils will no longer be automatically signed up.

If a child is eligible for free transport, parents will need to apply this year and each subsequent year, even if they have never needed to apply in the past. The application window for this year is 1 March 2019 to 31 May 2019. There is more information available at www.suffolkonboard.com/optin.

I must emphasise that pupils’ eligibility for free travel is statutory, and restricted to under 8s living more than 2 miles and over 8s living more than 3 miles from their nearest school, together with some pupils eligible on grounds of disability, safety and special circumstances.

Jetty Lane Community Youth and Arts Centre gains planning permission At the end of February Suffolk Coastal District Council planning committee unanimously granted planning permission for the proposed Woodbridge Jetty Lane Community Youth and Arts Centre on 21 February. They have already awarded it £188,000 CIL funding.

When the previous Community Youth Centre was pulled down in 2017, many local groups were forced to move out of Woodbridge simply because there was nowhere to house them. The Jetty Lane site (Jetty Lane being the original name of The Avenue) – has been used uninterruptedly for Youth and Community clubs and meetings since 1949: that’s SEVENTY years! It is now the last site suitable for such a centre in Woodbridge, designed to serve the needs of the community in and around Woodbridge, designed to be sustainable, selfsupporting and affordable for community groups – and funded hopefully by charity bids.

The County Council have had such faith in the need for this project to have offered a 125y lease on the land at peppercorn rent. As Chair of Jetty Lane we are thrilled that the district council has demonstrated similar faith!

    disability, Education, Uncategorized

    Disability and education in Suffolk – the costs and hidden costs

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    The first tranche of Suffolk’s  review of its special educational provision – the consultation  -finished last Sunday. I responded jointly as councillor and as parent as the form allowed.

    We were told that the review was  focusing on the following three types of current specialist educational provision:
    1) Specialist Support Centres (SSCs) (I am in favour, indeed I would like Suffolk to establish another one in the north west of the county); 2) Residential provision in Moderate Learning Disability (MLD) Special Schools (I felt this  needed  discussion with parents as best placed to define wants) and
    3)     Alternative Provision (AP). Alternative Provision was used in the consultation as a catch-all for  ‘any provision that provides education that is not a mainstream school or academy’. It includes all provision for young people with specialist health issues, for example autism, and epilepsy which is  often provided out of county at great expense (and now to age 25 because of recent legislation). AP was also used to include  PRUs (Pupil Referral Units): facilities offering a part time or full time education for pupils who exhibit challenging behaviour. Typically pupils spend 2 terms in a PRU before being reintegrated back into school.

    We were told

    Currently the county council is experiencing considerable pressures with the number of learners with additional needs (236 currently) needing to be educated in non – Suffolk settings, with learners requiring access to Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) provision accounting for 151 of the 236 learners

    However, in the consultation, despite these remarks on the cost of out-of-county placements in general the AP question  focused entirely on PRUs (see below)!

    The third question - on Alternative Provision (that is, ) only mentioned PRUs!)
    The third question of three- on Alternative Provision – only mentioned Pupil Referral Units!)

    Now, as regards PRUs, I would not throw the baby away with the bathwater and would definitely ensure that  excellent provision in Suffolk is not lost in any rationalisation we undertake, and I was happy to respond saying as much.

    HOWEVER, I concentrated most of my response on the hidden question  of what Suffolk is doing, or rather not doing, for students – like my own child – who was fortunate enough eventually to be sent out of Suffolk because Suffolk SEND education so completely failed to provide an education for them (despite costly but unstructured, unquantified and unthought-out  ‘interventions’ ).

    This is not because of my personal interest but because of my understanding of the cost involved on the one hand, and the reasons for the cost on the  other.

    SEND covers a hugely wide range of conditions; individual schools  seem to provide pretty much what education they choose to these (clearly second-class) pupils and SCC, the statutory authority for education and social care, often has to pick up the costly pieces of their cherry-picking failure. Why should this be the case?

    Looking at this SEND consultation it seems that there may be a tendency to view the cost of premises and salaries as where cost-savings and rationalisation could be made.  I therefore urged SCC to look at the often inappropriate delivery of SEND education itself.

    For a start , why should (as ever) the needs of young people with social and behavioural problems be asked to conflict with those with health issues and cognitive deficits?

    As  example, my own child with a physical disability  was educated away from her peers  in a unit along with those with anger issues and other behavioural problems. Why?  You tell me.  Seemingly for the same reason as her current education establishment  (a specialist college outside Suffolk dedicated to her medical  condition)  is conflated with PRUs  in the reply box for this consultation.

    (And even then, PRUs who educate short-term those who can be reintegrated into mainstream school are given the whole of Box 3 in a 3 box consultation document supposedly dealing globally with educational provision for Special Educational Needs and Disability. The disabled once again become second-rate citizens?  You couldn’t make it up). It is neither fair or reasonable to either group.

    So, redressing the balance and talking specifically about educating specifically disabled young people – Suffolk’s  continuing failure  in  the field of SEND teaching and  curriculum delivery is expensive and an essential part of our problem. It is an area that this consultation document seemed reluctant to address.

    Let us not beat about the bush – I’ve heard stories of parents who treat SEND provision as if it were ‘childcare’ but I would contend that there is a lot of Suffolk SEND provision that is arguably little better than childcare: with ‘educators’  seeing little responsibility for the future of their students; setting challenges that do not challenge and awarding gold stars and pats on the head instead of a  robust and rigorously constructed syllabus looking realistically towards their future after education.

    SEND education – if it is NOT to be childcare – should be looking at the longterm future of the pupil. If it is to be effective and cost-effective , it should explore possibilities of independence, expect  the possibility of paid employment, work for realistic integration with employers’ needs , not be dismissive and patronising of pupils’ potential,  skills, capacities. ( Here, the  education, employment and discrimination sections of this blog post (click for link) although epilepsy-specific, have universal relevence.   Suffolk produced a strategy document 2015-18  last October. But non-specific optimism  is no good without teeth and this was toothless. Just like Suffolk’s current  Inclusion and Equalities strategy which completely excludes having to contemplate the situation of all the disabled people in Suffolk  and their inability to find work because they have not received adequate or even appropriate training or education  (see link). Disabled people and their problems seem remarkably invisible to the policymakers of Suffolk).

    Yet not educating, or mis-educating these young people  is at the short- and long-term expense of the taxpayer as well as the young person.  And failure to address the need  of provision in-county has greater ramifications now we have a statutory duty to provide to age 25. We have an absolute need to question and query and qualitatively analyse the outcome  of what is taught to young people with disabilities in the same way as we assess and monitor mainstream provision.

    Will Suffolk now improve the SEND offer so that disabled young people can expect the same quality and monitoring of  education  as their able-bodied peers get by right?  Not, you might say, a very big ask.  And a damn sight cheaper ask then sending them out of county, like nineteenth century black sheep to the colonies.

    We wait for the next stage of the consultation to see whether these issues have been taken on board.