The Special Needs Jungle have completed a Coronavirus and SEND survey after hearing parental accounts of risk assessments being utilised by schools during lockdown preventing children with SEND returning to school. They wanted to determine how widespread this was, as well as other experiences of families mid-pandemic.
Their report claims that “75% of schools ignored Government risk assessment guidance during the lockdown, with parents and young people often left out of the risk assessment process.”
“Where families have had good support, the positive effect on the whole family is clear. It is wholly apparent that no one expected “service as usual”, but many families received little or nothing from their child’s school. While children with EHCPs were allowed to go to school, most families found this was made “very difficult, if not impossible.”
For children and families left at home, education was often not tailored to their needs and therapies were stopped, while some parents are now being told that their child will receive “extremely limited education from September.”
Fazilet Hadi, Head of Policy at Disability Rights UK said “Government, local authorities and schools need to do a whole lot better. A good start would be to co-produce risk assessments with parents and young people.”
