15 September 2016

It’s been a while since my last post, during which time there’s been some interesting developments.  Firstly, and most importantly from our family’s perspective, Nicholas has started at school, including transport on the minibus.  The driver is friendly and the guide is clearly trained and compassionate, Nicholas loves the bus, has got to know the people he is with, he sits happily in his secure harness and has arrived at school safely and able to access the education provided (he goes to sleep most afternoons on the way home, and arrives home ready to party long past bedtime, but that’s another story!).  It’s great.  It’s an example of how the provision of suitable travel arrangements for a disabled child by the local authority can allow that child to access education, and the child’s family to live something like a normal life, including working and contributing to the country and the economy.

But there are wider developments too.  Some good things from Birmingham City Council, some not good things.

Let’s start with this. On 8 September 2016, the Council’s education director Colin Diamond was interviewed by BBC WM’s excellent Adrian Goldberg at around 8 am.  I’m attaching a link to the interview, but the BBC don’t keep material on listen again forever, so I’m also transcribing it below.  Key moments were:-

• Colin Diamond accepting that over the summer the Council got it wrong in lots of cases and declaring that lessons have been learned from the near-blanket refusal of suitable transport assistance to new applicants for this academic year, and that they’ve learned from this episode to make sure this is never repeated as such.  Also confirming that this doesn’t meant the end of minibus travel for children who need that level of support, and that the Council has renewed its contract with the minibus providers (although he doesn’t say for how long).
• Colin Diamond admitting that a lot of it is about saving money.  I have said this SO MANY TIMES and I will say it again until everyone within the Council has it written on their heart in letters of flame: The duty to provide suitable transport arrangements in the Education Act 1996 is NOT A QUALIFIED DUTY.  It’s not something that the Council can do if they feel they have spare cash.  It is something they MUST DO.  Admitting that they are reshaping the service according to a need to save cash is admitting that they are fettering the discretion when deciding how to fulfil that duty, and is setting themselves up for a judicial review.
• Colin Diamond saying that in the cases discussed (including ours), the wrong decisions were rectified immediately.  Funny that, because I distinctly remember a month going by before the decision was overturned.  And it was a long month of campaigning and working out whether and how we could survive without my income.
• Lots of talk by Colin Diamond about training up young people to travel independently on public transport (and said young people articulating how great this has been for them), which makes me wonder whether anyone is actually going to be prepared that another kind of autism exists and must be catered for. Kids like Nicholas who are very unlikely to ever be able to articulate anything, let alone gratitude that they’ve been trained to navigate the million interactions needed to take a damn bus.  Kids like other children I know who are older, verbal and much more able, but who have anxiety and aggression such that it would be disastrous to require them to take a bus.  It’s not the autism people want to talk about, but it’s the autism we live with and the Council can’t make it go away by ignoring it.
• Colin Diamond spectacularly refusing to take presenter Adrian Goldberg’s 2 express invitations to apologise for the distress caused to families who bore the brunt of the disastrous policy.

At the same time the Council (particularly Colin Diamond over twitter, but also his team at the new shiny travel assist) have indeed seemed quite responsive and interactive and keen to engage parents in shaping how the policy will be implemented in future years.  Both Colin and Travel Assist have expressly invited the input of parents, and invited me directly to input into future developments.  That said, none of this has resulted in any concrete discussions or sharing of documents at this point.  Even Brigid Jones, the Council Cabinet Member for childrens services who has the dubious distinction of having presided over both the 2013 and 2016 special needs transport debacles, said at one point that she’d like to meet for a coffee (a date which I very eagerly await).

And today, a fascinating article from the Birmingham Mail http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/em-schooltransport-lead-11885595, where Neil Elkes has uncovered the origins of this summer’s disaster – a consultant’s report for which the Council paid £27, 000 and which clearly made suggestions that would be a safeguarding disaster and which local SEND hero, councillor Matt Bennet rightly dismisses as nonsense.  I’d love to know who commissioned this.

Brigid Jones also comments here on the subject, promising a full post-mortem on what went wrong and stating that the process has been hugely frustrating (I’m sure you can imagine how much sympathy I’ve got for those frustrations).  Can’t wait to hear a time commitment for this post-mortem.  While we’re at it – was there ever a post-mortem on what happened in 2013?

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Transcript of Colin Diamond interview: “BBC WM’s Adrian Goldberg (AG): You may remember a story we covered a couple of months back, about families in Birmingham struggling to get the right arrangements for their kids to get to special schools – we’re talking about travel arrangements.  A number of families were offered free bus passes for their children who in many cases were autistic or had special needs. Lisa Grego spoke to us and said that she was effectively being asked to give up work so that she could take her autistic son to school:

[Clip of Lisa Grego interview: Lisa Grego: “Autistic children in general, and Reece in particular, need calm, consistency and routine.  They can be startled by loud noises, Reece has a very particular phobia of flies at the minute so that can send him into a meltdown.  Busy public transport can be quite stressful for him. You know, it’s not regular, it’s busy, it’s noisy.  So this is really making him struggle with changes at the moment”.]

AG: And then we heard from Rosalind Bolton from Bournville. She set up a blog to raise awareness about the problem after her severely autistic 4 year old son was offered a free bus pass to get to school:

[Clip of my interview: Me: We’re one case where I would have to give up work.  We jointly provide for the family so that’s going to have a massive detrimental effect on our financial situation.  Also nobody would ever be able to deposit our other child at her setting.  This is absolutely catastrophic for us.  They didn’t send us the letter saying “By the way you can’t have any transport assistance except you can have a free bus pass” which it took me a while to process because he’s only 4, he’s going to be free on the bus for the next 2 terms anyway.  But they didn’t send us that letter until the week before the summer holidays (..) The local authority has a duty to provide this.]

AG: Now both those cases have been resolved but parents have told us they are concerned about what will happen in the future.  Colin Diamond is the executive director of education at Birmingham City Council.  Morning Colin.  Underlying this was the proposal that some of the school buses would be effectively removed and replaced with something called the Travel Assist scheme which would leave in some cases severely autistic children to travel on public transport.

Colin Diamond (CD):  Not exactly – and good morning, I’m delighted to join you this morning.  Travel Assist is the name of the overall scheme, and that embraces the minibuses, the bus passes that we just heard the parents talking about and other forms of assistance.  So Travel Assist is what we call our policy.  Just listening to the parents there I’m glad that those two cases were resolved over the summer.  The great majority of cases of concern have been resolved ahead of the start of term.

AG: But you take the overall point that there was a thrust towards using fewer minibuses and direct transport, and more children were going to be encouraged to use the bus.

CD: The thrust is towards helping young people in the long term become independent travellers. So when they grow up in Birmingham, we want them to be able to travel around in the city just like you and I do, to be able to use the buses, use the trains, use the trams.  That’s what every parent wants ultimately for their children.  Now I do accept that the cases we heard about their, very young children, on the autistic spectrum, that’s probably not realistic in their cases.  That’s why we’ve reviewed this, we didn’t hang around. Once we became aware that the wrong decisions had been made we rectified it straight away.

AG: So what have you done that’s different, what have you changed?

CD: What we’re changing is, before hand, if your child went to some of the special schools in the city (bearing in mind we’ve got 27 special schools overall) there has historically been a blanket entitlement to minibus or taxi travel.  What we’re saying now is, each family, each case, each young person, they need to be reviewed individually, because we think we’ve moved on from the days when automatically every child that goes to a special school would travel in a minibus.  Some of those children already do travel on the bus. We’ve got people trained up to help the young people.  Our neighbours in Sandwell have been doing this for longer than us and we’re learning the lessons there.  And I’ve seen some great videos where the young people themselves say, thank goodness, thanks for training us.

AG:  And people might say, look, it’s a good thing if people can learn to be more independent even if they have a form of autism, that is a good thing.  Would you accept though that the application of that new policy was done too enthusiastically, should we say.  That you got it wrong in quite a lot of cases.

CD: Yes.  Yes, I think that some of it perhaps was a bit over-zealous.  I think that the notifications went out just at the beginning of the summer holidays and that was bound to be a cause for many parents, I’ve been in touch with them myself on twitter, they know that.  I think we need to look at two things that lie behind this, Adrian.  One is the fact that they are absolutely on the right track to look towards maximising independence for young people in the city.  We want them to be independent brummies like everybody else.  The other thing is, I have to say about Birmingham City Council but it’s true of all other local authorities, is that we have to save money.  It would be disingenuous of me not to mention that.  We have to save a few million pounds here out of a budget that’s around 15 million pounds in total.  So we have to look at better ways to get the taxpayer’s money better used in the city.  Birmingham City Council is really under the cosh in terms of the spending cuts it has to make and we have to do our fair share.

AG: But not at the expense of  very vulnerable youngsters.

CD: No.  Some of the parents were saying to me, does that mean you’re taking away specialist transport forever,  does that mean you’re taking away the minibuses.  No, not at all.  We’ve renewed our contracts with the minibus suppliers, all of the special schools are now back open for the autumn term.  On day 1 of any new term there’s always some routes – new routes – being worked out, it’s always a little bit chaotic shall we say on day 1.  It beds in very soon.  We’ve deliberately built in a little bit of spare capacity just in case there were some parents who hadn’t got the message that transport arrangements were being changed.  I’ve got additional specialist officers working with the transport team.  We’ve got all the bases covered at the moment.

AG: Okay.  And Colin, you’ve been good enough to admit that you got it wrong in the application of the policy.  Even though people might understand that underneath there was a good motive.  Would you like to apologies to the parents who were distressed and disturbed?

CD: We would never set out to disturb or distress anybody.  We want to work with the parents, the families and the young people themselves to get what’s right for them in the long term.

AG: But you did distress and disturb some because they came onto this programme.

CD: Yes, and we saw that in the local and national newspapers.  As I say, I’ve been in touch with many of them myself on twitter.  Now what happens is if they contact us they get a very rapid response from the team.  We’ve dealt with virtually all of the outstanding cases.  We’ve learned from the episode, I think that’s the really important thing, to make sure this is never repeated as such.  But we still will continue with the policy of travel assist, which moves on from the days when every child automatically went on a minibus.

AG: Colin, I really appreciate your time and your honesty this morning.  [End of interview].

While it’s available, the interview can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04555dn#play

Some answers, more questions

It’s now 9 August 2016.  Lots has happened over the past 4 days.  The Birmingham Mail published an article about the transport cuts (link below over the weekend, there was a meeting with Councillors and representatives from the Council (and specifically Travel Assist) on Monday evening, and every day I’m hearing of more Stage 1 Appeals being successful and children being awarded specialist transport (e.g. the minibus that was the only safe option for Nicholas, and which Travel Assist did eventually agree to provide).  This is all great news!

At the same time, a teacher at one of the other ASD-specific schools in Birmingham tells me that all the reception age children at their school applying for transport were given “personal travel budgets”.  That’s when the Council offers to give you some money towards transporting your child to school yourself. In most cases it doesn’t deal with the issues that make transport a problem in the first place, and most if not all of these families will be appealing.  This is not great news.

The Council published a helpful “factsheet” today, as a response to all the outcry.  It’s here: http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/travelassist (link at the bottom of that page).

I’ve put inverted commas around the title factsheet because although there are some really good things to pull out of it (all stage 1 and stage 2 appeals will be dealt with before the end of the summer holidays, and the Council state that there is also additional capacity built into the transport fleet to accommodate eligible young people.  So clearly they’re preparing to reverse an enormous proportion of the flawed initial decisions which are still emerging), parts of it are disingenuous to say the least.  Key points on an initial reading:-

• The document announces that: No, there is not a new policy.  Which is curious, because three paragraphs later it states: There are two reasons for the changes being made to Travel Assist, and describes how the system is different this year from previous years.  You don’t have to be an expert in administrative law to grasp the fact that any systematic change to an approach or to considerations taken into account when assessing something is a change in policy.  If you, as a public body, are doing something differently on a routine and systematic basis, it’s a change in policy.  It looks as though the Council genuinely believe that as long as you don’t write something down in a public document and call it a policy, it’s not a policy.  Unfortunately for them, Courts don’t agree.
• They admit that the fact that they have been inundated with appeals (so many of which have led to them reversing their initial refusals) is because their initial decisions were based on this factor: Travel Assist has a significant savings target (over £2million) so changes do need to be made. We are considering a range of options to deliver these savings, which are not solely related to specific modes of transport.
• The Council’s duty towards eligible children in the Education Act 1996 is not a qualified duty.  They have a duty to provide suitable travel arrangements.  There’s no caveat in that legislation that I’ve seen which says that you only have to do it if you feel you can spare the money.  So on the information they’ve put out it looks as though the Council has acted unlawfully and fettered its discretion (i.e. takes into account factors it should not have taken into account) in reaching these decisions.
• The Council also has a duty to collect domestic waste from people’s houses.  I note that it hasn’t proposed that instead we should all be responsible for taking our own waste to the tip because it doesn’t fancy paying for that anymore  (I hope it’s clear that this comparison is to point out the flaws in the Council’s logic in trying to save money by refusing to perform essential functions, not in anyway to denigrate disabled children or make degrading comparisons).  Of course they can make efficiency savings in terms of how they run services, but not in terms of whether they meet their duties.  They can’t reconstrue the word “suitable” in the legislation to mean “cheap“.
• There’s a section on what factors the Council will take into account when assessing applications.  They say that these will include extraordinary individual circumstances that may arise as a result of parent/s attending work or looking after other siblings.  I’m not sure what they mean by “extraordinary” here.  Surely a situation where one or both parents work, and any parent not working looks after siblings, is the most ordinary situation in the world.
• If this needs to be extraordinary, what do we have to do to achieve extraordinariness? Do we have to have extraordinary jobs? Do the siblings have to in some way be extraordinary? This is manifest discrimination: children without disabled siblings don’t need to meet some opaque standard of extraordinariness in order to be looked after by their own parents.  Parents of non-disabled children don’t have to have jobs which are similarly extraordinary by some unspecified standard in order to have the right to work and provide for their families. (I should declare an interest here: I’m fairly sure that whatever standard you use, my job isn’t extraordinary and nor is my husband’s.  But I like doing it and as a family we enjoy not starving, wearing clothes and having a roof over our heads).

The most obvious concern here is what they are setting up for the future.  They may be backtracking this year, but they’re setting out clues for the direction of travel.

We want to continue to work closely with schools and other stakeholders to improve our communications over the next academic year….  We are considering a range of options to deliver these savings, which are not solely related to specific modes of transport.

It isn’t spelled out, but what this clearly says is: we will manage the communications aspect of this slightly less disastrously, but we are progressing with massive cuts to the provision of transport to disabled children.  These will include but not be limited to modes of transport.

As I suspected, this isn’t over.  It may be just the beginning.

Birmingham Mail article – http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/severely-autistic-children-denied-school-11710237

5 August 2016

On Wednesday 3 August at lunchtime (after I’d called his office four times) the Transport Manager called me back.  He said he’d seen that the OT had cancelled our appointment, and that he’d arranged for a different OT to attend on Thursday 4 August., so our agreed timeline wouldn’t be affected.  I appreciated him sorting this out.

The OT duly came, she saw Nicholas trying to get out of the car through the front seat and getting stuck because his motor planning isn’t up to it, and I showed her a photo of how he can slump down in his infant car seat and almost slither out of it (for the avoidance of doubt, for anyone reading who doesn’t know about this type of autism: this isn’t naughtiness.  Nicholas doesn’t yet have the understanding to work out an instruction like “stay in your seat”).  I explained to her exactly why the a journey involving 2 crowded buses and taking at least 50 minutes each way would cause him massive sensory issues and the behaviours that would result.  It was all stuff I’d put in our appeal form (though of course I could provide more details in the context of a half hour long chat).  I wonder how much the Council pay to have highly trained OTs visit parents so they can essentially verify the extent of their children’s disabilities, which is what it felt like.  I wonder how many minibuses that money could pay for.

(Lets not get started down that road though: there are a seemingly infinite amount of people employed by Travel Assist to deal with the confused and unhappy parents who call and call and call again trying to get some clarity on what’s happening with their appeals and tell them how the people they need to speak to are in meetings and unavailable.  Again, if parents were just believed and children’s needs taken seriously in the first place, that’s a lot of staff costs that could be saved right there).

On the following day, today, the Transport Manager called me.  Travel Assist agree that minibus transport with a five point harness is the safest transport for Nicholas in the circumstances.  They’ll review the harness aspect once he’s started at school (I got the Transport Manager’s assurance that they won’t take that as a second opportunity to review the minibus aspect).

I’m beyond relieved.

I’m still angry.  I’m so angry.  And here’s why:

Firstly, this has been a massively stressful experience (and I’m under no illusions that it won’t be a yearly battle).  The Transport Manager, when promising me that he’d confirm it all in writing, said it might be on Saturday because he’d got so much to do he’d be coming in the next day.  I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be sympathising with him: I didn’t.  Partly because we’ve seen what those guys get paid (see post dated 25 July 2016) so he can cry me a river.  But mostly because I’ve been working on Saturdays and late in the evenings too.  Not at my actual job (which has suffered over the last month, and I dread to think how many management hours have been wasted whilst senior people discuss how they could manage the situation if in September I could only work 4 hours a day for a while).  But at blogging, researching, crying, worrying, working out how to use twitter, talking to councillors, MPs, journalists.   I’ve been working all hours because the Council wouldn’t meet their statutory responsibilities towards disabled children.

So even though the right decision has been made for us, for now, it’s come at a huge cost to my family’s well-being.  And families with disabled children? We are not the families with time and energy to spare.  We are the families who are already dealing with difficulties lots of people can’t imagine.  (This isn’t a pity party, and our children bring us huge joy and gratitude.  It’s an explanation of why the cost of the Council’s multiple failures is so high and so shameful).

But secondly, and far more importantly, I’ve mentioned before that this is a much much wider issue.  On the same day I heard this news, a friend of mine with three boys got the response to her application for transport for her youngest (who’s turning 4 this month and starting school in September).  He’s autistic too and going to the same special school his autistc middle brother attends. Their neurotypical eldest brother attends a mainstream school.  The middle brother is provided with minibus transport to the special school.  The youngest brother has been refused transport.  The bus which will literally go to his house and take his brother to school, won’t collect him (this is a child not unlike Nicholas).   That family is now starting the nightmare battle that we have been facing over the last month.  Even if the Council make this right at Stage 1 Appeal, if it takes them as long to sort out as it did for us, school will be starting before this family hear what on earth they are supposed to do in September.  Yet other families are still waiting to hear the initial decision, or still waiting to hear the results of their Stage 1 Appeal.

So this isn’t over.  It’s over for us, for now (or it will be when I see the decision to award minibus transport with a five point harness in writing).  But for other families this Council policy to refuse all applications for supported transport from new applicants as a blanket policy is still going strong.  It is unsafe and it is unfair and I strongly believe that the decisions to consult, as well as the failure to consult on what has been a massive shift in policy, is unlawful.

I’m in touch with a lot of other parents affected by this.  I’m expecting information in response to FOIA requests which might be interesting.  I’ll update this blog as and when I have more information.

 

 

 

 

2 August 2016

This evening the Occupational Therapist who was due to come and assess Nicholas the day after tomorrow emailed to say she won’t be coming.  She’ll call next week to discuss rescheduling.

This means that there’s no way we could get an appeal to a decision made following an OT visit in by 11 August, as the manager I spoke to at Travel Assist expressly and in writing assured me we would.

It means that effectively we have no right of appeal, because by the time the Council deigns to make a decision that we can submit an appeal against, as far as I’m aware there will be no time left for councillors to consider that appeal before school is due to start.

It means I’m wondering whether I need to hand in my resignation tomorrow and start my proceedings to sue the Council for the loss of earnings.

(I don’t want to do this.  I like my job and we rely on the income.  Also, I have a three month notice period so the Council’s initial wrong decision, and now massive breach of the time-limits set out in their own policy in conducting the Stage 1 Appeal, mean that even if I do that, Nicholas wouldn’t be able to start school until the beginning of November. That’s right: Birmingham City Council are genuinely preferring to deprive a child of 2 months of education rather than to abide by their own policies and honour their own employees’ express promises).

It means I’m furious because another parent whose children were refused transport, and whose appeal itemised the same needs that triggered the need for an OT assessment as ours (necessity for a 5 point harness) has been told that her children will receive transport and the OT assessment can follow.  This is absolutely the right decision and I’m so pleased that the Council has recognised it in her case, but the inconsistency of their approach and refusal to follow the same rules for all children is staggering.

t means that I feel like an idiot for believing for a single second in the assurances that the manager I spoke to gave me last week, and for daring to feel that we might be able to breathe again.

It means I’m at least glad that I didn’t believe them quite enough to take the pressure off, and extremely glad that there are a couple of press items on this due to appear over the next 10 days.

It means that the application for judicial review which looks increasingly likely is practically writing itself.

 

 

#saving money! Part 1

Today a fellow campaigning mum made me aware of a tweet published by a profit-making company called Sherwood Therapy Services (STS) on 30 June this year.

For a bit of context, that date was a week before we received the letter saying that Birmingham City Council would provide a free bus pass for our severely autistic, non-verbal, incontinent 4 year old (already free on the bus because of being an infant) to take 2 buses to travel over 3 miles each way to get to school – presumably on his own, as there was no provision for a carer, or recognition of the fact that both parents work and he has a sibling in a different setting.

They’re at @TheTeamSTS on twitter if you’d like to check it out.  If not, here is the photo.  The text reads: “Birmingham OTs demonstrating creativity and innovation with school transport.  saving money! #COT2016

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This copy of the photo isn’t clear but the version on twitter is much clearer (I’m not 100% sure on some of the figures but you can clearly read the text in the bubbles).  It specifically refers to children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, to the children in the city whose needs require them to have an EHC plan.  It has a jaunty picture of a money bag with a dollar sign on it (the kind that villains have in cartoons).  Perhaps that was meant to be a humorous touch: forgive me if I’m not laughing.  It details the costs savings that will be generated by the proposals presumably being discussed.

It’s very instructive.  Particularly in combination with the text of the tweet: particularly the hashtag.  It shows very clearly the focus of the Birmingham City Council OTs who are being so “creative and innovative” with school transport: #saving money.

I’ve no way of knowing what services STS provided to Birmingham City Council.  I don’t know in what way or to what extent they may have been involved in the process which led to, as far as I’m aware, literally every child who is starting at a special school in September 2016 in the city being denied any actual assisted transport. I don’t know how much Birmingham City Council may have paid STS for any advice or services, and how much assisted transport that money might otherwise have paid for.   I might know more on this in a week or so, when the response to requests for information that I and fellow campaigners have put out under FOIA 2000 start to come back.

In the meantime, I’m not going to be let my anger at this apparent pride in their involvement with these cuts, which have already been so devastating for so many families, lead me into territory with the potential to be defamatory.

I’ve checked out Sherwood Therapy Services’ website (link below), and their mission statement states that they “aim to provide practical solutions to maximise skills, independence, confidence and personal satisfaction to enable the individual to reach their potential“.  I’ve no reason to think that they aren’t genuinely aiming to, an in many cases, succeeding in achieving this.

But STS, I refer you to the “blog” section of this website, in particular the entry under 25 July 2016, which talks about Birmingham City Council’s stealth agenda to move to “independent travel arrangements”.   I refer you to the obvious truth that the removal of vital services does not remove the necessity for them.  I’d be really fascinated to understand the therapy services which could enable a non-verbal autistic 4 year old, with next to no understanding of the world he lives in, who doesn’t reliably pick his own house to go into when coming down the road, to manage a succession of buses across the city.

To reiterate, there may be some disabled children for whom a more independent travel option than assisted transport in the form of a minibus is possible.  There may be some now, that option may become appropriate for some children in the future.  If that’s the case, then (in close collaboration with those children, their parents/carers and educators – the opposite of what the Council has done here) then an option which can facilitate that independence would only ever be a wonderful thing.

That is not what Birmingham City Council is achieving, or even pretending to seek to achieve, with these cuts.  Cases are not being assessed against the needs of each child, but on the desire of the Council to save money at the expense of those children.  And from your choice of hashtag, I kind of wonder whether you might know that.

 

http://www.sherwoodtherapyservices.com

 

 

2013 -Deja vu

So this isn’t the first time in recent years that the Council has decided that disabled children should be the ones to suffer for the need to make budget cuts.  A similar thing happened in 2013.

I’ve spoken to people involved then, and read some interesting articles (links below).

It seems that back in 2013, 79 parents were told that their severely disabled children should get bus passes and go on the succession of buses it would take most of them to go to their school – for journeys that were far longer than anything that non-disabled children, whose needs can be met at local mainstream schools, would be expected to make at that age.  These decisions were collectively challenged by the governors at the school where the first lot of parents received the news. The Council took legal advice concluding that to press ahead with the policy would breach the Education Act 1996 and the Council would likely face a legal-aid funded challenge by way of judicial review.  The Council then reversed the policy and agreed to provide transport for the affected disabled children so that they could get to school and access education.

At that point, Birmingham City Council’s cabinet member for children and family services Brigid Jones said that disabled children should not have suffered.  She added that “the decisions not to offer specialised transport are in no way consistent with the policy agreed by cabinet”.

Ms Jones hasn’t responded to any of my tweets or emails.  But I’m desperate to know what’s changed now.  Why, three years later, under the same policy (but applied in a very different way), the opposite is true and the decision has been taken that disabled children should suffer.  There appears to be only one reason: a reckless disregard for the lives of disabled children and their right to education, and the determination to make budget cuts at the expense of the most vulnerable.

The second article below refers to the legal advice that the Council received at that time.  I haven’t seen that advice (and am not sure how the writers got hold of it!) so I’m relying on the article here, but the advice seems consistent with what I have recently learned about the law around this.  Apparently it said:

• the council risks breaking guidance school transport must be “stress free” for all children, particularly those with disabilities.
• The Education Act 1996 makes it clear that local authorities cannot insist on parents providing transport for children with disabilities.
• any expectation that children with autism could cope with travelling to school on public transport with or without an escort is said to be unrealistic. Most of the children involved have little sense of danger, may run out into busy roads and would be unable to cope in a crowded bus or train.

Again, what’s changed, Birmingham City Council? The law hasn’t: I and many other parents can surely tell you that the limitations placed on an autistic child’s ability to understand and process instructions and to function safely in the world around them certainly hasn’t.

Looking at that article, the only thing that has changed between then and now is that cuts to services mean that legal aid is more difficult to come by.  Can it  be such a calculated, cynical and desperately cruel move on the part of the Council that they have decided to try this policy again in a climate when they consider they’re less likely to face a legal challenge?  I don’t want to believe that that’s the case: I’ve seen no evidence to suggest there’s any other explanation.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/home-to-school-service-disabled-spared-axe-5160637

Lawyers circle around council’s withdrawal of school buses for disabled children

26 July 2016

Developments today.  In response to my third phone call to chase, an Education Transport Manager called me at lunchtime.  He said due to some of the points I’d made in my Stage 1 Appeal (like that Nicholas reacts badly to strangers and requires a five point harness in a vehicle) made him consider it necessary to send an Occupational Therapist out, next Thursday on 4 August, to assess Nicholas’s needs and what transport would be appropriate.

Honestly, I’m not sure what to think about this.   My first thought was to wonder whether, given the way the Council has acted so far, and what we’ve found out as this process has gone on (more on that later), this is a delaying tactic.  The Transport Manager assured me not: that the date marked for Councillors to review Stage 2 Appeals is 11 August, so my appeal will be reviewed then regardless of whether the Stage 1 Appeal decision is made now or following 4 August.

Then I set about explaining to him that what an Occupational Therapist might witness with seeing Nicholas in the middle of the morning in his own home, with just his sister and me and one stranger, is very different to what would happen on a bus at the end of an overwhelming day being jostled by strangers.  If he, and the OT, couldn’t have figured this out then they’ve no business working in the field of special needs provision – and for what it’s worth, the Transport Manager seemed relatively genuine to me: but I’m not taking anything for granted here.

So for me, for now, it’s a period of waiting and worrying.  Wondering whether I should be trying to make arrangements for September on the basis that I simply won’t be able to be at work for more than 4 hours at a time (but what arrangements? my employer is supportive and I’m incredibly lucky that way, but they still need me to do my job).

For others, it’s also a waiting and worrying game.  I spoke to a lady on twitter who was told on the phone that her son has been refused transport, but who still hasn’t received a letter confirming this, so she can’t even start the appeal process.  I called in at our nice local doctor to collect a letter in support of my Stage 2 Appeal, and the practice manager said they’ve done a fair few of these letters over the last few weeks.  Until this year, she couldn’t remember ever having had to do one for these purposes.

Out of courtesy, at the end of our conversation, I mentioned to the Transport Manager that I was doing this blog and due to be on local radio tomorrow morning to raise awareness of the issue .  He said (a bit wryly, I thought) that he knew.  Maybe this blog and my entry into the world of social media is working, and that’s why he’s at least sending the OT along instead of rejecting it outright? Maybe it’s the opposite, and they would have actually given us appropriate transport assistance if I hadn’t annoyed them all by doing this?

I don’t know.  But while this battle is ongoing, I’m not stopping.  Other autism parents I know, one of whom has autistic children who have been refused transport who are heavily into social media in a way that I am very much not, are also on the case.  So it looks as though this is going way bigger than just me, just like the issue is way bigger than just me.

25 July 2016

10 working days have elapsed since I submitted the Stage 1 Appeal to travel assist – the time within which their own policy states that they will make and communicate a decision.

I’ve emailed them, and I’ve called twice.  Nobody has responded to my email, nobody has got back to me following my phone calls.

I’ll phone them again tomorrow, on the hour.

In the meantime, a friend sent me a useful link to this job advertisement: http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=BCC_Vacancy_C&childpagename=SystemAdmin%2FCFPageLayout&cid=1223525008441&packedargs=subtype%3DVacancyDetail&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FCFWrapper&rendermode=live

 

I’m not sure that the link is working  – not sure why – so here are key points:

A salary of up to £51,422 per annum will be paid to a team manager at travel assist.  This person will be “supporting the move to independent travel arrangements” and needs to be able to “demonstrate commitment to the inclusion agenda“.

The advertisement talks about the employee “developing independent travel provision options while continuing to manage the current service“, so it’s slightly ambiguous as to how long the current service is intended to operate (this is an 18 month fixed term contract).  But “the move to independent travel arrangements” doesn’t look good.  It suggests what we and other parents and interested parties have been suspecting: that this year’s refusals are the start of the Council drastically reducing, and possibly withdrawing altogether.  There’s been no consultation around this massive policy shift, as far as anyone I’ve spoken to can tell – a policy decision which surely required consultation and an impact assessment, if ever one did.

It’s hard to see what the Council can mean by “independent travel arrangements”.  It may be different for the older, higher functioning children and I’d love it if it were true for my son one day.  But there is no travel arrangement they can suggest which will offer very young and very disabled children any amount of independence.  These children are hugely dependent, and removing the services which support them will not make that fact go away.

I can only imagine that they mean that the travel arrangements will be independent of the Council. The Council will cease to provide support and will pass on all the responsibility for enabling children to physically access education to parents and carers, despite the statutory duty upon the Council to do this and the fact that it will be physically impossible for many parents and carers to do.

This will not give disabled children any degree of independence.  It will render some families, like ours, dependent upon the state.  The only independence that I can see is for the Council, to be independent of its duties to the most vulnerable inhabitants of the city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background

We’re a family of four, a mum, a dad, a 4 year old boy and a nearly 18 month girl.

Our 4 year old son Nicholas is autistic.  This has a massive impact on all our lives –  sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes “what even is happening?!”.

This isn’t a wider blog about autism though: this blog exists solely to document the struggle that we, one family among many in Birmingham UK, are facing in trying to secure provision of a safe and accessible way for our son to get to the special school that he’s starting in September 2016.

My hope is that  Birmingham City Council staff, city Councillors and press/media will find it a useful source of information.  I’m just going to document the facts, and do my best to keep how I feel about the way disabled children, the most vulnerable of vulnerable groups, have been treated to one side.  The facts speak for themselves here.

So a bit of background to the issue.  Nicholas will start at a special school in South Birmingham for autistic children in September 2016.  Nicholas’s autism is so severe that mainstream school is not an option (he doesn’t speak at all, or understand language, for example, and toilet training is a distant dream): but this is a wonderful school and we’re lucky he has a place.

We know a lot of kids who already go to the school and they all get there the same way: a school minibus with appropriate seats and harnesses, and trained guides, collects them from home and takes them to school, and vice versa in the afternoons.  In May the school helped all parents of children due to start at the school in September to fill in the forms applying for transport.  We documented our childrens’ needs, and why public transport (particularly when it’s long and complex journeys as are often required when your child needs to attend a school a considerable distance from their home) would be impossible for them.  The focus is rightly on the needs of the children, but we also mentioned the impossibility of getting siblings to other schools or settings without suitable minibus travel for our disabled children; and for us, and for many other families, the fact that both parents work.

On Saturday 9 July, I received a letter from Travel Assist, the bit of Birmingham City Council which deals with transport services, saying that to assist with travel for Nicholas they were offering us a free bus pass on West Midlands Travel buses.  It took me a while to process this: I wasn’t sure they could actually be suggesting that a severely autistic child with no way of processing instructions and very little control over his body, should be subjected to a 2 buses each way journey in rush hour, taking well over an hour of what would be overwhelming, incomprehensible agony for him – and that a parent should take him each way, making it absolutely impossible for that parent to do anything like a day’s work, let alone also get his sister to her setting. Not to mention the fact that, for all but 3 months of the 2016-2017 school year Nicholas will be free on the bus anyway, as he won’t yet be five.

Conversations with other parents and Nicholas’s school confirmed that apparently that’s exactly what the Council were suggesting.  In fact, it looks as though there’s not an application for transport to special schools for children starting in 2016-2017 which hasn’t been refused by the Council. They’ve slashed the budget.  The education of disabled children and the well-being of their families is, apparently, an acceptable casualty. And crucially, the mass rejection of applications raises the question of whether the Council has covertly decided to phase out transport to special schools.

So, of course, we appealed.  All the parents are appealing on behalf of their children.  I’ve seen my local councillor and MP, and lots of other parents are doing the same.  I’ve sent emails to Brigid Jones, the Councillor for Children, Families and Schools.

In my appeal I documented the difficulties that Nicholas would have if we attempted to undertake such a bus journey with him twice a day, particularly when he’s already tired and overwhelmed in a way that most people with no experience of autism can’t even imagine.  I pointed out that he’d arrive at school, if at all, in no fit state to learn anything. I pointed out that the effects would be unpleasant, perhaps actually dangerous, for anyone else on the bus.  I pointed out that it would be impossible for us to get his sister to her setting, that I’d have to quit my job (and neither of our jobs are that secure, due to the economic instability in the country at the moment).  It’s an awful situation for us: it’s worse for other families I know whose children have been refused transport, who may now face losing their sole income.

Now I await the outcome of the Stage 1 Appeal, which is due on Monday 25 July (10 working days after the Council received it). I’m not optimistic.  I know that the Stage 1 Appeals are reviewed by the same department that made the original decisions, and that they have no budget with which to overturn any decisions.  I also know that other parents, when they have spoken to staff at Travel Assist, have actually been told that all Stage 1 Appeals will fail.  (Of course this negates the whole purpose of having a two stage appeal mechanism).

But we have to get through this to get to Stage 2 Appeals, which are considered by councillors.  And in the meantime, I’m talking talking talking about it.  Perhaps naively, I’m hoping that the councillors who decided to slash the budget for the safe transport of disabled children did so because they genuinely didn’t understand what they were suggesting, or how it would affect these children and their families.  If they did understand it, then – consciously or not – a decision to disregard the needs and rights of disabled children, people who literally have no voice, relies in part on the expectation that this sort of decision won’t be fought.  Together with other parents, I’m making sure it will be fought.