As Salford Council cuts for next year appear to be targeting children with disabilities (see here), it has now emerged that the Council doesn't even have a register containing accurate information on these young people – in breach of the Children and Families Act which became law in 2014.
The Act states that local authorities must identify "all the children and young people in its area who have or may have special educational needs, and all the children and young people in its area who have a disability".
However, a report to Salford's Health and Wellbeing Board reveals that Salford Council hasn't done this... "Currently there is no information directly relating to this cohort of the population on the JSNA [Joint Strategic Needs Assessment), accurate records are not held by the Children With Disabilities Team and not every child with SEN is Disabled or vice versa so SEN records do not give an accurate picture".
The report misguidedly states that "In February 2015 a judicial review against
Warwickshire CC ruled that the LA should be keeping a register of disabled children", whereas the Act came into force in September 2014.
Meanwhile, the report also reveals that, since 2013, the Council has been approached three times to sign the Disabled Children's Charter and has still not signed it.
The Charter, developed by Every Disabled Child Matters and the Children's Trust, Tadworth, contains seven commitments to improve the lives of disabled children and their parents. The first of these commitments is to "have detailed and accurate information on the disabled children and young people living in our area, and provide public information on how we plan to meet their needs..."
Other commitments include to "engage directly" with disabled children and young people - and their parents and carers; to set `clear outcomes' to meet and to be accountable for whether those outcomes have been met; and to "provide cohesive governance and leadership across the disabled children and young people's agenda..."
Locally, five Health and Wellbeing Boards, including Manchester, Bury and Rochdale, have signed up to the Charter but a report to next week's Salford Board recommends only that it `notes' the Disabled Children's Charter, `agrees in principle to the concept of signing the Charter' and `agrees to work towards signing the Charter in March 2015, to be compliant by March 2016' – by which time the cuts to services for children with disabilities will have been made.
In the meantime, Salford City Council still has no complete record of how many children with disabilities actually live in the city...
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