Anna Sabine

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate. With limited time, I would like to raise a very specific issue. My constituency of Frome and East Somerset falls under both Bath and North East Somerset council and Somerset council, and there have been instances in which children’s specific cases, claims or tribunals have fallen between two different systems. One of my constituents wrote to me about their child, who is 14 and has central nervous system lupus, epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and visual and sensory processing disorder. All the child’s needs were documented by an educational psychologist, who recommended an EHCP. Despite the medical recognition of the need for an EHCP and despite the diagnoses, Bath and North East Somerset council and Somerset council went back and forth for over a year about which local authority should take responsibility for the EHCP, because the child’s parents were separated, with one living in each authority, and the child’s time was split evenly between the two. That cannot be an uncommon occurrence, yet there were delays and stress for the family while they waited for their case to come to tribunal. The child’s mother estimates that he has missed 1,100 lessons in the 15 months that it has taken to resolve this issue. Many local authorities are, of course, under immense financial strain and I cannot see how this situation can be resolved until the Government relieve councils by providing extra funding and by making EHCP applications as simple and straightforward as possible. We are better than ever at diagnosing additional needs, but the system is woefully under-resourced to support children to thrive.