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).