What is this blog about: Specialist Teachers in Brighton and Hove’s Learning and Support Services are under threat

Brighton and Hove City Council is proposing a redesign of its Learning Support Services, consisting of the Autistic Spectrum Condition Support Service (ASCSS); the Behaviour and Inclusion Learning Team (BILT); the Community Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CCAMHS); the Language Support Service; the Literacy Support Service; the Pre-School Special Education Needs Service (PRESENS) and the Sensory Needs Service (SNS).

Hundreds of children with Special Educational Needs in Brighton & Hove currently rely upon the specific guidance, hands-on support and training that specialist advisory teachers provide to themselves, their teachers, their pre-school settings, their schools and their families and carers.

Under these proposals five support of these teams, those for Autism, Language, Literacy, Sensory Needs and Pre-school, will have their capacity reduced by 50% of their teachers. Moreover, the teams will be deleted and turned into a generic Learning Support Service with advisers rather than teachers. Each team currently provides a phenomenal breadth of specialist knowledge and experience enabling the children they work with to live and learn with their mainstream peers. We believe that the current proposal to axe five teams and replace them with 12 generic SEN advisors, no longer recognised as teachers, will not work. There will be far fewer advisors, meaning that children with educational needs and disabilities, and their families, will receive drastically reduced and less effective support.

Children with special educational needs and disabilities deserve the skills that these expert teachers bring. Generic advisors cannot possibly do the job of specialist teachers, and hundreds of children will suffer as a result. In the long term, this supposed cost saving restructuring, which will be implemented in April 2016, will cost the council more. As when the understanding of these children’s special educational needs and disabilities becomes diluted in schools, many more children will begin to fail in mainstream settings, and this will have a huge cost impact on Brighton and Hove City Council.

We cannot let this happen to children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in Brighton & Hove.

Please help us save specialist teachers in Brighton and Hove by sharing your stories of how we have supported your child.

Please send us your story using the comments box below or by emailing to:

saveourspecialistservicesbandh@gmail.com

CLICK ON THE NAMES OF THE SERVICES (Autistic Spectrum Condition Support Service (ASCSS); the Language Support Service; the Literacy Support Service; the Pre-School Special Education Needs Service (PRESENS) and the Sensory Needs Service (SNS)) IN THE MENU AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE TO SEE ALL THE STORIES RELATING TO a PARTICULAR SERVICE   OR CLICK ON THE TITLE OF A BLOG POST TO SEE A PARTICULAR STORY THAT PARENTS AND CARERS HAVE SHARED

Thank you.

The members of the National Union of Teachers in Autistic Spectrum Condition Support Service (ASCSS); the Language Support Service; the Literacy Support Service; the Pre-School Special Education Needs Service (PRESENS) and the Sensory Needs Service (SNS).

Progress made in consultations with Brighton and Hove City Council on the need for specialist teachers/advisors – but an agreement on the roles of pre-school SEN teachers/advisors has yet to be reached.

The representatives of the Brighton and Hove Learning Support Services’ National Union of Teachers’ groups, Brighton and Hove NUT’s Divisional Secretary, Paul Shellard, and Brighton and Hove NAHT’s President, Adrian Carver, had a ’round table’ conversation last Monday (9/11/15) with Tom Bewick, Chair of Brighton & Hove City Council’s Children, Young People and Skills committee, Pinaki Ghoshal, Director of Children’s Services, Regan Delf, Jo Lyons and the councillors Emma Daniels, Caroline Penn and Maggie Barradell.

This long and productive meeting resulted in a number of changes to the redesign of the new Learning Support Service: The Local Authority is now prepared to consider allowing the Literacy Support Service specialist teachers to continue to offer a traded service, as they do now. This will mean that some of their posts may be funded by trading their service with schools, potentially resulting in fewer losses of specialist teachers’ posts. However, The NUT would like to see no reduction in the number of specialist teachers in the new Learning Support Service.  It was agreed that the new redesigned Learning Support Service will not start until September 2016; which will allow the existing Learning Support Services to complete the commitments that they have made to children, schools and pre-school settings for this academic year. The Local Authority has also made a commitment to co-produce the design of the new Learning Support Service with representatives from the existing Learning Support Services.  The Local Authority has agreed that there will be specialist teachers for Literacy, Language, Autistic Spectrum Condition and Sensory Needs in the redesigned Learning Support Service, although these teachers will not be paid on the Teachers’ Pay and Conditions of Service. The NUT will continue negotiating about pay and conditions of service for the specialist teachers in the new Learning Support Service.

However, the Local Authority has made no commitment that there will be specialist teachers/SEN advisers for children in the Early Years within the new Learning Support Service.

All NUT representatives for the existing Learning Support Services, along with the NUT Divisional Secretary and the NAHT Brighton and Hove President, urge the Local Authority to include specialist pre-school teachers in the new Learning Support Service. There is a very clear rationale for having Early Years as a specialism, even though this is an age phase rather than a specific need. The rationale for maintaining specialist Early Years SEN teachers/SEN advisers includes the following differences between the early years and the school years:

1. Pre-school SEN teachers work in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Need-specific SEN teachers work in the National Curriculum years. The Early Years Foundation Stage legally requires practitioners in the early years to provide education holistically. The skills, knowledge and experience required for delivering the Early Years Foundation Stage teaching and learning are very different from those required for statutory school age teaching and learning.
2. Pre-school SEN teachers work with a very large number of children whose specific needs have not yet been identified. Need-specific SEN teachers currently work mostly with children whose needs have been identified.
3. Pre-School SEN teachers work predominantly in private, voluntary and independent pre-school settings. Need-specific SEN teachers work in maintained schools. The skills, knowledge and experience required for supporting workers in pre-school settings, whose level of qualification is mostly at level 3 (87%) of the Regulated Qualifications Framework (RGF), is very different to the skills, knowledge and experience required for supporting teachers in schools, whose level of qualification is mostly at Levels 6 and 7 of the RQF. Those with RQF level 3 qualifications require a much higher level of support to work with children with complex special educational needs and disabilities.
4. Pre-School SEN teachers are ‘Area SENCos’ who co-ordinate SEND provision in Private, Voluntary and Independent settings when statutory processes are required, such as the statutory assessment of children’s needs under the SEND Code of Practice 2014. PVI SENCOs do not have the necessarily qualification to co-ordinate this assessment. Need-Specific SEN teachers do not need to coordinate SEND provision in the schools in which they work, as maintained schools have Special Educational Needs Coordinators with RQF Level 7 qualifications, who coordinate statutory assessment themselves.

For these reasons we urge the Local Authority to include pre-school specialist teachers in the design of the new Learning Support Service.

Eight stories about the successful inclusion of children with Autistic Spectrum Condition in mainstream as a result of the work of the ASCSS (and PRESENS)

Anonymous.

We sought a diagnosis for our son when he told us that he wanted to die, aged 8. He said that he was always being shouted at by his teachers and that it would be better if he wasn’t there. Several months and a lot of heartache later, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and we started our journey to understanding and communicating better with our son. I attended Time Out classes, run by S (of the ASCSS) and specialist Health Visitors at Seaside View. I thought S was wonderful – she was so incredibly knowledgeable and compassionate and I lapped up all the invaluable information she taught me and the 6 other parents who attended the course with me. The best part of the Time Out course was learning how my son views the world, why he does the things he does and thinks the way he does. Most importantly I learned how to communicate with him and our relationship became closer again. School became easier for him by then, the shouting stopped and sensory breaks started, he became happier. I attended the ASCSS coffee mornings, where I learned more about ASC in a supportive and inclusive setting.

My son’s transition to secondary school was too much for him, I had to collect him from school on the second day as he was so distressed by a fire alarm practice, being in a strange environment and hardly knowing anyone. He then became a school refuser and I just couldn’t get him into school for the next few days. M (of the ASCSS) arranged a meeting at the school with the SENCO and a TA, which my son also attended as he trusted M, and together they set out a plan to help him build up his confidence go to school. It took over a term to get him to access the full curriculum but, with M’s expertise and advice to his teachers, he gradually added a subject a week to his timetable and started relaxing. However there was one lesson that he was close to melting down in and frequently refusing to go to. The teacher was convinced that he just wasn’t stimulated enough, that he needed to be right at the front of the class and become more involved but my son was getting more and more panicky about the lessons. Mary supervised a lesson and discovered that the teacher (who was very well intentioned) hadn’t realised that my son had shut down, that the sensory input he was receiving was way too much. That teacher wouldn’t have referred my son to a specialist advisor under the new system because she thought she was doing all she could. During my son’s school refusals, and there were many more than the first few days, I relied heavily on M for advice and support and I’m sure that if she hadn’t intervened my son would not have been able to access mainstream school and would end up in a specialist setting, costing the local authority far more. He talks to Mary once a term and she keeps him on the right path and listens about any concerns he may have. He knows that she’s there to help him when needed and this matters a great deal to him.

 

Michelle and Samuel’s story

My son Samuel was born almost nine weeks early, which meant that he suffered a developmental delay which, we were told, would begin to level out around the age of two.  As Samuel approached three, we became increasingly concerned by the gap between Samuel and his peers, which appeared to be widening rather than closing.  We were extremely fortunate to have a wonderful SENCO at his nursery, who also saw that he was struggling and referred him to PRESENS, who were quickly able to provide specialised one-to-one support for Samuel at his nursery, and who set us on the path to Samuel’s ASC diagnosis.  When Samuel was formally diagnosed at five years old, we were not surprised but devastated nevertheless, and at a complete loss as to who to turn to for help.  At that point, the ASCSS stepped in, observing and assessing Samuel at school and providing expert support to his teachers which in turn enabled them to help him.  On a personal level, the ASCSS also gave me support, knowledge and direction through the Time Out course which it runs in conjunction with specialist health nurses from Seaside View, and through the regular coffee mornings it holds to support and inform the parents/carers of children with ASCSS.  It was here where I made friends with other people in the same situation as me, where I learned everything I could about my son’s condition and strategies to help him, and us, cope with his difficulties, and where I could listen to talks and presentations by other autism specialists and organisations that offer support, and where I learned about the local authority’s duty of care to my son.  The ASCSS has empowered me to become the best parent I can be to my son, and has enabled him to access education in a way that he could not possibly have done by himself.  Samuel, his family and his teachers will be dependant on the ASCSS in so many ways throughout his education, and it is unimaginable to think that he and hundreds of other children like him may have to countenance a diminished service as a result of proposed funding cuts. Children with special educational needs and disabilities have the same rights to education as everybody else, but if the organisations that exist to help them are not properly resourced, those children are facing a bleak future.  I sincerely hope that our local authority will reconsider these proposals and not take steps to reduce the service provided by the ASCSS and other essential support services in Brighton and Hove.
Maggie and her daughter’s story.

My daughter is now an adult, but without the support of the ASCSS she would never have coped so well with her Aspergers’ diagnosis. There was no support given from CAHMS at all after diagnosis, in spite of four hour meltdowns at mainstream school on a regular basis, but A [of the ASCSS] explained things to her and set up a friendship group, all of which helped and made a difference to her. How can they even think of losing all this expertise that children so desperately need? They are not taking into account the long term effects of good support, that make a difference later on in life too.  My daughter has also accessed the Youth Service and for nearly a year had a one to one Youth worker, C, help raise her confidence and give her support in going out and volunteering. You can’t quantify results like this in a tick box culture and cost cutting exercise. But the long term benefits have been immense to our daughter.

Jennifer and Emma’s story .

I’m horrified at the planned cuts.  I’m sure you’ve had lots of people reply with their stories but I’d like to add mine.  It’s not particularly “high profile” but I think it highlights the impact that the ASCSS makes on a daily basis.

My daughter has high functioning autism and it is not always obvious that she has a disability.  Because of this, her teachers tend to forget that she can struggle in the classroom environment.  Emma tends to gradually withdraw from the class, not engage/participate and becomes a “blank wall” as one teacher put it.   Last year, when Emma started in year 6, her teacher didn’t seem to understand her disability.  She dealt with her in ways that only served to isolate her further.  S from the ASCSS went into the school and gave the teacher some training.  It made a massive difference!  Emma responded well and ended up achieving Level 5 in all her SATS.  Had it not been for S’s intervention, I think Emma would have struggled in her final year at primary school.

Emma only received her diagnosis 18 months ago.  The ASCSS has been wonderful in helping both me and Emma in dealing with the ramifications of the diagnosis. A took Emma on a transition visit to her new secondary school in July.  She was so reassured by the visit and how Alex made her feel.  In fact, she has settled into life at secondary school amazingly well and absolutely loves her new school.  I am so grateful to A for taking time out of his busy schedule to spend time with Emma and liaising with the SENCO.  It’s these small examples of things they do everyday for so many children that makes a massive difference to not only the children but their classmates too.

 

Laura and Alex’s story.

My son Alex (4) has only just recently been diagnosed with ASC. The early invention that he has received so far from PRESENS has been so crucial for him and I don’t think we would have got such an early diagnosis if it were not for T (PRESENS and her close workings with Alex and his preschool. Her support and expert knowledge has made sure that Alex did not, in her words “slip through the net”.  Because he is high functioning, I believe that without specialist knowledge from people like PRESENS and the ASCSS, children like him will not receive the early diagnosis and structured support that they need in order to make their transition to school a happy one. PRESENS have also supported me and helped me to get my head around this diagnosis which is a life changer for all my family. The transition to school for all parents, including those without a special need, is one that stirs up anxiety and fears about how their child will settle in and what the future holds for them. After Alex’s diagnosis I felt somewhat reassured that throughout his school life he will be supported by the ASCSS and that as he grows and develops and his needs change that they will be there to advise and assist with any hurdles that come his way which undoubtedly they will. Now this service is being drastically cut, what support can I expect for my son from a diluted service with no specialist knowledge available for us to make sure his school years are successful socially and academically, which is what every parents wants for their child don’t they? Alex is just starting his journey into education and so far he is thriving thanks to the support from PRESENS and ASCSS, my heart feels heavy at the prospect at this being taken away from him.

 

Anonymous.

I don’t have a long story. My interaction was the ASCSS has not been extensive. Sometimes a 10 minute telephone conversation (which is what I had) was all that was needed. But that telephone involved someone who really understood the issues involved. Most parents worry a bit about their child transitioning to a new school; it’s a whole different level of anxiety when you know your child doesn’t even recognise familiar faces – he can’t tell who is friend or foe or stranger. And of course there were other issues too – sensitivity to noise and significant communication difficulties. Your colleague talked me through the options and how the service could help with that transition. I felt calmer and as a result kept my son at his small independent school and saving the council thousands of pounds. Thank you all for your help. I would prefer my name not to be used.

PRESENS link together services for children with physical disabilities (e.g. Cerebral Palsy)

Our son was born just before 30 weeks and for his first year we assumed his physical development was delayed just as a result of his prematurity. However, when he was just over 18 months he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. He’s received support from Seaside View to help progress his physical mobility as much as possible but the amazing work of the PRESEN service has also been invaluable to his development. For many parents of children with special needs there is an overwhelming maze of different teams to navigate. The PRESEN service have helped us focus on what our son needs and has been phenomenal at linking together all of the different parties to create a plan which works for him. Without our dedicated, and expert, PRESEN support, we would have struggled to coordinate the input required to get him to a mainstream pre-school, which is now setting the path for a smooth as possible transition into reception. Without this support, he wouldn’t have got the focus and understanding needed to do this and we wouldn’t have known the right questions to ask and when. The PRESEN service are ensuring he gets access to the same resources and education as his non-disabled peers and helping him to reach his full potential. Every child deserves this.

Mum

Children with Dyslexia will be let down if there is no Literacy Support Service

I am extremely concerned about the proposed moves to disband the Literacy Support Service in Brighton and Hove, as this service has proved to be a vital resource for my son.

My is 10 years old and was diagnosed as Dyslexic 3 years ago. I have had to fight very hard to secure any support at all for him, but the Literacy Support Service has enabled him to grow in confidence and flourish at school. Without their help, he would have been left to drift, unnoticed by his school teachers, and become even more disengaged with education.

Unfortunately my experience has shown that you cannot rely on schools to provide appropriate support (as is proposed), and by cutting this vital service, these children will be left at risk,  unable to achieve their potential.

I have had various statements / press releases forwarded to me that suggest that there seems to be some shift for children with autism or  visual / hearing impairment, but there does not seem to be a clear plan for those with Dyslexia / Literacy difficulties.

Dyslexia is recognised as a disability under the Equality Act 2010, and by reducing Literacy or Dyslexia support, you will be discriminating against dyslexic children and the adults they will become, as their ability to manage the effects of their impairment will break down.

I am concerned that dyslexic children, who are otherwise quite able, will get left behind with these proposals, as they will not be considered to be in “the greatest need”. My experience has shown that you can not rely on schools to provide effective support or correct advice to dyslexic children and parents.  My situation became so disheartening that I have actually just moved my som to a different school for year 6. He is now at a school where the dyslexia provision has been wonderful. I have also had to pay for private dyslexia tuition because his previous schools provision was so weak.

This specialist support is the reason my son has improved so much –  he is now attempting work that he just wouldn’t have had the confidence to even try previously.

Without a clear approach, staffed by specialist teachers who are properly trained, dyslexic children in Brighton and Hove will be left to drown at school. This is so short sighted, because these kids are actually quite bright, but they need specialist help to learn in a way that suits them. With this help, they will achieve their potential, be more engaged and better behaved in class, and be able to contribute to society in the most positive ways in the future.

How can we ensure that Dyslexia is not forgotten in Brighton and Hove, and that a strategy is in place to support these children with an understandable criteria to access this support?

J, mother

The Literacy Support Servive is essential for supporting transitions to key stage two

My son has just started junior school in Brighton.

Anxious about the transition to year three, over the summer his reading and writing have both regressed to the standard he was at in year one.

In infant school he was lucky enough to receive regular support and is a child who needs to “over learn”. Without this continued specialist support, I fear that he will be lost in the crowd – unable to keep up with the expected level for his age, already being so very far behind his peer group.

He is positive and receptive to extra support, without it – as the summer break demonstrates – he becomes anxious at being perceived “babyish” by his peers and fabricates ideas of bullying.

He has no label of a specific learning difficulty, he’s just a bright and sunny little boy to whom letters mean nothing as yet. The cuts in Literacy Support Service will seriously impede his progress in learning to read, write and, no doubt, the impact of this on other school subjects as well as his morale.

He needs more help than I, as a parent, can give him and the class teacher will be far too busy to give him the time and attention he needs to progress.

It seems that cutting the Literacy Support Service is already decided, but there is the faint hope that stories like my son’s will make it obvious what a false economy cutting the service is.

Yours sincerely,

C, mother

Support for adopted children from the Literacy Support Service

May I take a few moments to congratulate what the Learning Support Service has achieved at our son’s schools thus far… Our middle child was adopted at 16 months, and has attended the mainstream education provision within Brighton & Hove City…

Our three adopted children placed by the Local Authority have complex issues. Numeracy and literacy are the main reasons why they struggle in mainstream. Our middle son is receiving the expert care and attention of the literacy support service within the school setting.

Without this service we can categorically state that our 8 year old would still be unable to read or write what little he can. The deliverance of this specialised service is done in a timely, appropriate and expert manner, by staff who are properly qualified, over vary many years, and have much training, who are highly motivated and posses a wealth of expertise which is second to none.

Very sadly you would be mistaken to opt in for “shortermism” as a cost cutting venture now; to then end up with teens who are still unable to read and write and are passed through the education system like a sausage factory with no basic skills to remain in mainstream;  having to then to implement emergency high value measures at a latter date to get children to attain their potential goals, is a flawed and costly strategy.

The primary school teachers are stretched to their limits trying to meet; goals, parents expectations, delivering the national curriculum and endless standards, most are simply firefighting and managing; not having the time or expertise in teaching the children who require it most, these children need the expert intervention of the Learning Support Service now and in the future.

Support for children with dyslexia, from primary to secondary school, from the Literacy Support Service

We have recently become aware that proposals have been announced to do away with the Literacy Support Service.

Our son was assessed and diagnosed with Dyslexia by this service and has been supported by a teacher from the service for the past year at his Primary School and through the transition to his current Secondary School.

This service has been invaluable in terms of enabling him to fully access the curriculum, supporting his school with access arrangements for his SATS and to give him all the necessary support including specific targeted vocabulary work, mind mapping and technical advice as to what devices and software would best match our son’s specific learning needs.

We appreciate that there is a serious budgetary deficit within Brighton and Hove, but we sincerely hope that for the sake of our son and many other children served by the Literacy Support Service, that this proposal can be reconsidered.

The story of a boy with senori-neural hearing loss supported by the Sensory Needs Service

Our son was diagnosed with a severe sensorineural hearing loss just after his second birthday. The Sensory Needs Service became involved straight away. His Sensory Needs Teacher worked with us at home, offering strategies for supporting our son and helping him to tune in to sound, listen and develop his language skills  as well as encouragement and hope (based on her expert knowledge and experience). When he started Nursery she was there on an ongoing basis, equipping them with the skills and strategies they needed to support him.

Our son is now in year 4 at a mainstream primary school. He is a popular boy, loves school and is doing well. His Sensory Needs Teacher has been supporting him right through his school path, and without her he would not be included in the way that he is now. Her ongoing advice, support and feedback enables his teachers and staff at the school to understand his needs and to make sure that his learning environment is one which he can be a part of, and play a full part in. To recognise specific challenges, advise specific strategies and train teaching staff requires the expertise and experience of a specialist teacher.

At the beginning of a new school year, with a new teacher, our son’s FM radio mike was not functioning. This enables him to hear the teacher’s voice directly into his hearing aids. It is essential equipment because hearing aids work best in a quiet environment within a two meter radius, and beyond that speech can become unclear and can blend in with background noise. Our son did not feed this back- he was possibly not aware what he was missing out on. His teacher reported that he was not engaged in his learning and was spending long periods daydreaming and staring out of the window. His Sensory Needs Teacher identified the problem and we were able to get it sorted out. This had an immediate effect on his engagement with learning.

On one occasion another parent told us that her son had said that he no longer bothered talking to my son as ‘he never listens’. This parent spoke to her son about hearing loss but also flagged this up to us. As a result, my son’s Sensory Needs Teacher in consultation with us went in to that class and through teaching and role play gave the children some further deaf awareness training. All the children were reminded how to make sure that my son (and any other people they meet who are deaf) knows they are talking to him and are aware of the difference that having a hearing loss makes. This has had a big impact on our son’s quality of life.

I feel that the proposed re-structuring of these vital services has been proposed by those who are not fully aware of how our specialist support teachers work, and what a difference they make to the lives of so many children and their families. Our child, and many others, are successfully included as a result of the knowledge, skills and experience of our specialist teachers. To withdraw this level of service or water it down, would make it impossible for the needs of our child and those like him to be met. Both long and short term outcomes would be affected.

G and A

Petition: Don’t cut children’s rights to a specialist teacher in Brighton

Please sign our petition here: Don’t cut children’s rights to a specialist teacher in Brighton

The story of a delighful little boy with cerebral palsy, cortical visual impairment and social communication needs supported by PRESENS

Here is the story of a delightful young boy who has Cerebral Palsy, Cortical Visual Impairment and Social Communication Needs. This story was written by his father.

Our son was born 3 months premature weighing less than a kilo (just over 2 pounds). He also suffered a bleed into his brain and had a procedure to try to remove the toxins of this bleed. While in hospital the doctors warned us that there was a 50% chance that he would have quite severe physical or cognitive disabilities, but compared to those odds we have, in some ways, been lucky.

Our son, now 4, can walk, talk and is coping well within a mainstream nursery. But he only started walking independently at 3 with the help of splints. He has problems with his vision. His speech is often very repetitive and out of context with what’s going on around him. While he can be interested in other adults and children he is very socially awkward and only recently started recognising people by their name.

At almost every stage of his development, our son has needed additional support to help get him to the next level. And every professional on this journey has always said that the earlier you can intervene to help a child like ours, the better the long term impact. As a parent this means that you are constantly worried about whether you are doing enough for your child right now.

When our son was around 2 years old we faced a dilemma. On the one hand we knew that his social development was delayed and that he would benefit from being with other kids in a nursery (especially as he has no siblings). However, we were also worried that the nursery might just sit him in the corner rather than putting in the extra effort required to get him properly involved. PRESENS have been key to solving this dilemma.

Not only did PRESENS help us get the additional funding for our son’s one to one support, but even more crucially, our PRESENS teacher goes into the nursery to run highly tailored sessions with our son and to help ensure that the nursery staff have a good program of things to do and ways to interact with our son that help bring him along. These ideas have helped our home routines too.

Every term we revise the program of help for our son and our confidence in this process is precisely because an experienced PRESENS teacher is involved. As fantastic as the nursery is, they simply would not be able to develop the kind of highly tailored program of help that a child like ours needs.

PRESENS gave us confidence to put our son in mainstream nursery and the PRESENS program of help within nursery has been fantastic for him. The outcome for our son is that we are now confident that he can, with similar support, do well within a mainstream primary school next year. And because he’s doing so well, we’re also increasingly hopeful that one day he won’t need any significant support when he goes to secondary school, and who knows, maybe university one day.

Our son has been lucky because PRESENS have been there for him every step of the way. But what about the next generation of children? Even if these cuts to PRESENS are reversed in the future (as they would in any decent society) the impact of the cuts on the children affected in the next few years could be permanent.

If you want to tell the story of your child please use the comments box below or email your story to: saveourspecialistteachersbandh@gmail.com