Paces

Blogging for Conductive Education

Two stories. Two extreme worlds.

Andrew Sutton posts from Hong Kong his "Chinese Puzzle": "What is happenning out here is BIG, bigger than anyone in Conductive Education has ever experienced, and it will begin to effect EVERYBODY in Conductive Education over the next couple of years or so."

Meanwhile, from Vancouver, Canada, James Forliti posts "Think I oughta say something" - but seems barely able to find the words to do so, faced with "a system that is locked closed, taking advantage of their "king of the hill" position to even give CE a mumbling chance at the table."

What, for me, unites these two worlds, these two stories, is that I know so little about the deep circumstances of each. How can we learn more?

The sub-title to Dan Tapscott's book "Wikinomics" is "How mass collaboration changes everything." But you don't need to buy in to the whole Tapscott Web 2.0 world to know that blogs (one of the key collaboration tools)  more easily convey the continuing, changing, evolving richness of conductive education stories around the world than the static, one-way, read only traditional web-sites. So we learned of Buddy Bear's travails and the struggles of Xavier - initially from Andrew's blog.  I have no idea whether my letters to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Education Queensland can have had any possible effect.  It amuses me to imagine the reaction of the person who opened the letters, wondering how on earth their little local difficulty attracted a letter from someone in Sheffield UK. 

Imagine if that same person had received 10 letters, 100 letters, from all over the globe. Imagine if these letters had directed the recipient to best practice in your centre, your school, local authority, town or city - in partnership working, training, consulting parents, engaging professionals, working with conductors, research ....

A start on collaboration is to set up your own blog. What's happening where you are? Tell the conductive education world. What help do you need? Ask the conductive education world. Who are you trying to persuade? Involve the conductive education world on your side.

And, James, please post on your blog the online link to the Province newspaper article on August 3rd - and maybe we can surprise the Editor with contributions to the Letters page.

 

Xavier Response

On 24th June, I posted ("Xavier Support") a copy of a letter which I sent to Jenny Haddrell, Assistant Director-General, Education Queensland, about the future of the Xavier Special Education Unit.

I have received the following response. (Is there someone who might update the Xavier weblog with the latest news?).

Dear Mr Perrin

Thank you for your letter dated 23 June 2008 regarding recent OECD research, conductive education and the work of Queensland's Xavier Special Education Program.

I am pleased that the worthwhile work of the teachers and specialist staff at Xavier Special Education Program is internationally recognised. I have forwarded your letter to my colleagues Mr lan Hawke, Assistant Director-General, Strategic Policy and Performance and Mrs Clare Gardiner-Barnes, Acting Assistant Director-General, Student Services for their consideration. The Strategic Policy and Performance Division oversee the department's research program while the Student Services Division oversee funding and support strategies for students with disabilities.

The Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts has an active program of research which informs evidence-based decision making in policy and program development. I would encourage you to examine the department's research website as it provides information on the department's research and development priorities, research application process and summaries of recent educational related research.

If you have some preliminary ideas or a more developed research proposal I would encourage you to contact one of the above officers. In the first instance, I believe that Mrs Gardiner-Barnes may be the most appropriate contact. She can be contacted on telephone (617) 3235 4172 or by email clare.qardinerbarnesädeta.gld.gov.au

Once again thank you for your interest in Queensland education and the Xavier Special Education Program.

Jenny Haddrell
Assistant Director-General

21 today! On being the parent of an adult with care needs.

The essence of 'care' is the relationship between the person cared for and the carer.

The terms need to be used with a strong note of caution. Today, 'care-giving' carries with it a history that is suffused with notions of dependency and "otherness". Where the recipient is also disabled, that notion is reinforced with cultural views of the meaning of disability. The prevalence of the notions of dependency and "otherness" is simply illustrated by the carer who, when challenged that she had arrived early to help our perfectly healthy 25-year old daughter to bed: "Would you like to be put to bed at 8.00pm?", replied "No. But I'm not disabled". In the context of public services founded in an ethos of paternalism such a response is unsurprising. Increasingly, however, such notions are unsupportable and the delivery of public services must change, partly in response to service users demands for control and individuality of service, partly led by national policy-decisions based, for instance, on human rights agendas, which all three major parties largely espouse. New understandings of "care", new delivery of "care" needs all involved to throughly understand the primacy of the individual's right to independence and control.

Care is a personal matter. It is not a function. The 'care plan' sets out the tasks that the carers need to undertake. It is a mechanistic document setting out tasks. It is functional. "Care", properly understood, is more than the care plan. True "Care", I suggest, exists in the relationship between the givers and receivers.

It follows that it is possible to rigorously complete all the tasks on the care plan without "care".

Yesterday evening, in the 19 days since our daughter's care was reinstated, she has had 21 different carers. Leave aside that she was promised a team of 8. Leave aside that, by simple arithmetic, it could have been even worse; that in 19 days, with two visits each day by two carers, she might have had 76 different carers (less the two nights she was in respite, giving a maximum of 68).

The fact of the matter is that 21 different carers in 19 days simply cannot engage in the personal relationship which is the essence of "care". Whatever it is they are doing, however we describe what they are doing, the word we are looking for is not "care". Whatever the 'care company' thinks it is doing, whatever it's managers are managing, it is not "care".

So, revising the question above that we asked of the carer and addressing it to all the care company managers and social service delivery managers and local council contracts managers and Quality assurance managers: "Would you like 21 different people in 19 days, dressing and undressing you; washing you and attending to your personal hygiene?" And when you think of your answer to that, do not dare even to think of answering, "No. But I'm not disabled."

And lest we forget the parents in this, whose home this is, let's ask them too: "Would you like 21 different strangers in 19 days trampled through your home, morning and evening, every day?"

---------------------

In supposing that "care" is more than the functional completion of tasks, I am reminded of postings by Andrew Sutton about "love" and by Susie Mallett about "der seele" (the 'soul') in conductive education. On this occasion, my apologies for not hunting down links to their specific postings.

Still "No Voice"

It seems that Sheffield parents were a little premature in detecting a change of heart in respect of consultation, which I reported a couple of days ago.  Claire sends the following update, which I copy in full.  There is obviously considerable turmoil, but the strong sense that parents have that they are not being properly consulted clearly does not reflect well on the SEN Team. It does not take great wisdom to see that it would be a sensible course to address these consultation concerns and the concerns that parents have that significant changes are being implemented without consultation.  A contributory root cause of the current turmoil is that Sheffield does not have a Strategic Plan for the education of children with special needs. As a Strategic Plan is simply a document that sets out an agreed course of action (What? Why? When? How?) which all stakeholders can share and understand, then it might, (a) not unreasonably, be said that the SEN Team cannot know what it is doing in any planned way and (b) that it is not surprising that other stakeholders are concerned and confused. 

This lack of strategic planning compares poorly with that of the Adults with Learning Disabilities Team, whose consultation during the latter part of 2007 and into 2008, whilst not perfect, was a model that the SEN Team might consider.

It is also unfortunate that this turmoil - and apparent disregard of parents as key strategic stakeholders and partners - should be happening in the inter-regnum between the departure of former Director of Children and Young People services, Jonathan Crossley-Holland and the arrival of the new Director, Sonia Sharp.

Anyway, this is the email from Claire:



UPDATE ON “NO VOICE” CAMPAIGN

 

Thank you to all of you who have supported the “no voice” campaign. The campaign’s focus continues to be insisting on the right of parents/carers to be consulted about changes to special educational needs provision in Sheffield.

 

Unfortunately, the information we conveyed to you in our last email has since proved to be wide of the mark. The CYPD (Children and Young People’s Directorate) are not going to start consultations on the changes to the SEN/LDD service from scratch.  As far as we can understand, they are only going to consult on the fate of the integrated units. This means that they are standing by all the changes that have already been made, (ie delegation of sen budgets to mainstream, absorption of the autism specific service into a generic LDD service, management restructure etc).  We apologise for this misinformation but it is an indication of the difficulties we face in trying to obtain any information whatsoever.

 

In spite of promising the protesters last week, Ms Ludlam, (Director of Specialist Services at Council’s Children Service), has not contacted parent groups to talk.  In view of the lack of communication we have today written to CYPD, asking them to confirm/explain simple factual information relating to the action that the LA has already taken. (Copy of questions asked at bottom of this email).  The questions do not relate principally to future proposals for change, nor do they encompass parent’s concerns about specific changes.  This is because the CYPD has yet to acknowledge that there has, to date, been a need to consult parents.  So, it is necessary for us first to establish exactly what has happened to date.

 

 

HOW YOU CAN HELP

 

We have been overwhelmed by the number of parents, (representing children with autism and other disabilities), who have wanted to support the “No Voice” Campaign.  Below are suggestions for ways you can help:-

1  Write to you MP and your Councillors

If you wish to support the No Voice campaign please write to/attend the surgeries of your MP/Councillors explaining that parents have not been consulted about changes to SEN that have already taken place.  Forward to them a copy of the questions we have asked the CYPD, which are shown at the end of this email.  Ask them to ask the CYPD the same questions. ( Nb we have addressed the questions to Ms Ludlam at jayne.ludlam@sheffield.gov.uk )

 

2  Come to the “Autism Alliance” meeting

We would like to use the support we have received for the No Voice campaign, both from the “autism community” and from parents/carers of children with other disabilities, to establish a permanent campaigning voice.

 

We do not wish, ever again, to find ourselves in this dreadful situation where we are having to fight to hang on to a less than perfect service because the proposed service is much worse.  As parents we wish to be involved, in partnership with the schools, teachers and Local Authority, in “building” services that our children “need” and deserve.  We are, therefore, proposing that we set up the “Autism Alliance” as a permanent campaigning body. Whilst the Alliance’s first task will be to continue with the No Voice campaign, it is our intention that it would ultimately be the campaigning organisation for all issues affecting children and adults with autism in Sheffield.

 

Whilst this body will principally concern itself with issues relating to autism, we are hopeful that parents of children with other disabilities will come to our meetings and either support what we are doing, or consider organising similar bodies with the ultimate goal of creating a “multi-disability” campaigning group.  So, please come to our setting up meeting even if your child does not have autism.

 

We will be holding an open meeting between 7 and 9 pm, on Tuesday 15 July 2008, at the Salvation Army in Psalter Lane to set up the Autism Alliance.  We will write to you again before then with details of some of the issues we will want to address at the meeting.  Please put the date in your diaries.

 

3  Write to the Press

The “Star” published a letter (26.06.08) and a report of the protest (27.06.08) on the “No Voice” campaign.  Further letters in support of the campaign would ensure that more parents get to hear what is happening.

 

4  Petition

A number of people have asked to sign a petition in support of Parents’ rights to be consulted over changes to SEN.  We will shortly be setting up an Autism Alliance website, and will post a petition on-line. Hard copies of the Petition will also be available through the Sheffield Autistic Society newsletter, at local autism meetings, at the Aspergers Conference on 30 June, downloading from the website once it is up and running.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Thanks again to everyone who has supported the No Voice Campaign

 

Please keep in touch.  Let us know about any progress with MPs etc

 

Claire le Feuvre

Phil Cooney

 

 

COPY OF CYPD QUESTIONS TO USE WHEN CAMPAIGNING

 

A  “Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LDD) Development Paper” – Agenda item 3, 6 June 2007, Council papers

1  Is the above paper the policy document for special education needs in Sheffield?

2  If it is not, please could you tell us what is the policy document.

3  Please can you tell us whether the current policy document has been distributed for consultation to the following:-

(a)  Parent/carers (individual)

(b)  Parent/carer groups

(c)  Mainstream schools

(d)  Special schools

(e)  Integrated Resources

 

  4 In the “LDD Development Paper” you write “ ..all other developments (ie development of city-wide outreach programme/review of integrated resource provision/development of role of special schools/review of SEN transport policy), rely on the need to substantially reduce the link between Statements and funding.”  Since you believe all the policy changes are dependent on each other it would seem that you should have consulted on the proposed policy changes as a whole.  Yet, you seem to be adopting a phased consultation/implementation approach. For instance, you have consulted on the new internal management structure, but not on service delivery. Given this, how do believe it is possible to consult in any meaningful way, since any single change to an individual proposal could render the overall Plan unworkable?

 

5   In one letter about the proposal to re-structure the LDD Services you wrote “The first stage of the process is to create the management structure within LDD Services to enable work to begin on shaping frontline service delivery …”  It is our understanding that management structures should reflect effective service delivery, not precede it, and that planning is a“bottom up” (ie based on the needs of individual children) not a “top down” process.  Please explain why you have not done this?

 

B  Other consultation documents

1  Have any consultation documents relating to the policy document above been distributed?

2  If so, (a) which documents?

(b) To whom have they been distributed?

(c) Please indicate when they were distributed, the closing date for consultation and the outcome of consultation, including which groups have  access to minutes of consultation meetings.

3  We understand that Sheffield Council is to ratify some/all aspects of the LDD changes at their September meeting.  Can you tell us what exactly they are ratifying and can you confirm that none of the action  they are ratifying has already taken place.  For instance, job adverts for posts in the new management structure appeared in the Star this month.

 

C  Delegated funding and Statements

1  Have you delegated SEN funding to mainstream schools?

2  On which date did you do so?

3  What is the formula for the delegation of funds? Please include references to Paper B, “Proposals for Changing SEN Funding linked to Statements”, Sheffield Schools Forum, 19 February 2008, where it appears that delegated budgets will be assessed solely on the index of multiple deprivation, free school meals, mobility and various academic attainment tests.

4  Please explain how delegated funds relate to existing Statements.  Specifically, do Schools continue to receive monies to support individual, named children with Statements?

5  Are Statements still being written for children with special needs.

6  Are school or LA staff advising some parents that they no longer need a Statement?

 

D  The Autism Service

1  Does the autism specific service still exist.  (We understand that there was an early years service, based at Ryegate, and a schools’ service).

 

2  Is the LDD support service now a generic service?

2  If a teacher in mainstream wants advice/support about an autistic child can you assure us that an autism specialist will be available?

 

E  Integrated Resources/Special Schools

1  Please can you indicate where the policy statement is for Integrated Resources and Special Schools?

2  Have you consulted on this?  If so, with whom?

3  What is the timetable for consultation and implementation for proposals affecting Integrated Resources and Special Schools?

Just imagine IT.

Yesterday, I attended a seminar in Nottingham. The seminar is being hosted by the Department of Communities and Local Government. Their aim is the production of a Digital Equality Action Plan by Summer 2008, seeking to address the the lack of take up of digital technologies amongst certain groups. The intention to produce the Plan was mentioned in  debate on Monday, this week, in the House of Lords.

What has this got to do with Conductive Education?

In my previous posting, I expressed the view that we in the international conductive community might be able to collaborate via the internet "in ways that we can barely begin to imagine". Earlier this month, too, Ben Foulger ventured some thoughts on models for conductor collaborations.  

I have hesitated before making a contribution to the debate initiated by Ben. Partly this is so because I am an amateur in this rapidly expanding and changing field and partly because it would take me time (that I do not readily have) to assemble a systematic and well-thought through contribution.  The best I can do in this blog posting is to indicate those areas where, in my view, there is much to talk about, enjoy and explore.

There has been a seismic shift in the way people use the World Wide Web. Terms such as “Web 2.0”, “the Read-Write web”, “the social web” and others reflect the direction of this change.  Whether or not you recognise these terms, one crucial aspect of this change is collaboration.  Through collaborations, “Web 2.0” has the potential not just to shift the balance of power in relationships, for instance between those who provide services and those who receive them, but to create wholly new forms of relationship.  Ben began with ‘models’.  My limited experience is that it is essential, first of all and from the outset, to grasp the nature and significance of this change, which actually takes quite an exercise of the imagination.  For the international conductive education community, Web 2.0 offers the prospect of becoming collaborative, and thereby having impact, in ways that we are only just starting to imagine.

Most people reading this blog posting are likely, if not to be actual signed-up users, to be familiar at least to some degree with such as Facebook (which Ben proposes as one of his models), YouTube, Wikipedia (look up the entry on conductive education)and, maybe, Flickr, too - to name just some. (I signed-up with Facebook only in February this year, and somewhat warily). These are all Web 2.0 sites.  Users of these sites are no longer (as with “Web 1.0”) merely passive consumers of ‘content’ but active producers. More yet, they are collaborative producers, forming groups and interacting in ‘social networks’. Blogs, wikis, podcasts – these are just some of the collaborative tools of Web 2.0. How might the international conductive education community use these tools and these sites? On Facebook, there are at least four conductive education groups. At PageFlakes, “The Conductive Web” is an attempt to assemble and to spark interaction between, conductive education blogs and bloggers.

One direction in which I would take further Ben’s first posting of his thoughts on models of a conductor community website, would be to ask about purposes.  Ben’s imagined conductor community website would be for a ‘community of interest’, like-minded people getting together. One can imagination a similar community website for parents, or for those who manage conductive education centres and schools – with the advantage that such a community could be local or international as you wish. Facebook is for and about friends networking. (I have been much amused at what some of the younger members of my family get up to and share with their friends on Facebook – an eye-opener.)  Facebook is fun, but I doubt it is the tool for professional – or even serious – discussion.  LinkedIn, for instance, might be more appropriate, but that too is limited when it comes to discussion as a purpose. 

This blog I set up initially for Paces’ People; whilst I explored how a blog might be used, to share with those at Paces some of what was pre-occupying me as Chief Executive and to see if any themes arose. However, one unexpected consequence is the interchange with other conductive education bloggers: a community is slowly forming, bouncing off each other, inviting others to join in, through their own blogs or by leaving ‘Comments’ on others’ blogs or simply sending emails – or all three.

With Paces Trustees, we have cautiously experimented with a wiki in order collaboratively to write our Strategic Plan. People did so nervously, toe-dippingly, but the result was, I have no doubt, a better draft than would have been achieved by traditional ‘paper-passing’ means. (Paces Trustees wiki is private, not in the public domain, though we might at some point make it so).

Using Mindmeister, I have, with Paces colleagues, experimented with the creation of a visual map of “Paces – from where I sit” which is in the public domain. I am working with others to test the use of NING to bring together parents of adults with learning disabilities and the Reps on the local Council Partnership Board; and doing something similar in our local community of High Green, using ELGG.  I am curious as to how the “social bookmarking” tool del.icio.us coud become a virtual library of conductive education and related subjects open to all – but have not yet explored that.  This might seem a lot – but each project is very small. (And they are all only experiments).

My wife, Dru, is a member of The Sheffield College team which has written and launched this February a Foundation Degree in eCommunications, jointly with Sheffield Hallam University.  She is a main source of inspiration and information. For those who read, a useful book (with an educational twist) is Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts by Will Richardson. Two weightier tomes are “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler and “Wikinomics – How mass collaboration changes everything” by Dan Tapscott and Anthony D Williams.

What purposes do I have in mind at the moment? 

One idea: I’m hoping somehow to put the whole of the capital redevelopment of Paces Campus online, to invite the world to join with us. The Computer Science Department of Sheffield University has expressed interest in helping with that, as has IT4C – IT for Communities – a not-for-profit that links IT professionals with community IT projects.  I had thought of using Second Life as the vehicle for that but others have advised there are better options.

Ben might like to consider Second Life as his third potential model. It is a virtual world wholly designed by its users. There is a strong non-profit and academic presence.  How fascinating it would be to mount a conductive education conference entirely within Second Life or, better yet, linking the virtual world with the real world. (This is not fantasy. It has been done already. Just not by the international conductive education community.)

One newish idea I’ve been pondering for a couple of weeks is whether we could achieve real cross-sector collaboration between all of those professionals and parents of children with, say, motor disabilities, using the resources Web 2.0 makes available?  We have the technology!  Finally, take a look at Patient Opinion, a project that can only happen because of Web2.0.  The international conductive community could collaborate on planning campaigns; on mutually drafting documents to contribute to Parliamentary debates; on compiling examples of successful practice. We each battle alone.  Let your imagination go with the flow of Web 2.0.

My apologies if this posting is not more coherent. As Ben says of his posting, it’s just a sort of ‘brain dump’.  All I hope is that maybe something here sparks an idea with you. Then who knows, maybe we can collaborate on getting something going.

Xavier support

I have this week sent the following letter to Ms J Haddrell, Assistant Director General, Department of Education, Training & The Arts, Queensland, Australia.

Whilst fully respecting the importance of the issues Andrew rightly raises and the contributions to the short but important debate that followed, I decided that some sort of action was required.  I had an acknowledgement from the Northern Ireland Assembly re Buddy Bear,  but haven't heard further news as to whether they won the financial backing needed.  I shall be interested to follow the Xavier story further.

Most of all, I would like to contribute to a growing sense of confidence in the international conductive education community that, no matter what our internal and professional debates within conductive education, we can collaborate across the world through the internet in ways that we can barely begin to imagine.

-------------------------------------------

23 June 2008

Ms J Haddrell
Assistant Director General
Department of Education, Training & The Arts
Level 22, Education House
30 Mary Street
Brisbane QLD 4000
Australia

Dear Ms Haddrell

Re: Xavier Special Education Unit

You may be surprised to receive a letter from England in the matter of the future of Xavier Special Education Unit. However, I trust you will not find the communication unwelcome.

My simple purpose is to draw to your attention two very recent scholarly publications from the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, of which Australia is a member nation.

The first, Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy (OECD 2007), based in studies initiated by a 1995 CERI report and centering on a series of international workshops held between April 2004 and July 2006, addresses the increasing pressure felt by all within the education community for greater accountability and effectiveness and also the increasing prominence given by governments to evidence-based research in setting education policy and in allocating public resources.

The second, Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science (OECD 2007), the outcome of an international CERI project launched in 1999, aims at encouraging collaboration between policy makers, researchers and the education community “to open new pathways to improve educational research, policies and practices”:

We are all familiar with the importance of peer-reviewed, evidence-based practice in medicine, and the thoroughness with which theoretical and scientific knowledge are fused with professional experience. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of modern medical practice without its emphatic foundation in scientific research across a range of disciplines.

Like medicine, education relies for its theoretical foundation (the understanding of learning and the practice of teaching) on other disciplines, such psychology, philosophy and sociology.

Unlike medicine, however, the theoretical foundation of education is “pre-scientific” – which is to say it lacks as yet either predictive or explanatory power. How children learn is not sufficiently understood to offer a guarantee of educational outcomes. The practice of education is still an art, not a science. The understanding of learning and practice of teaching are not as yet underpinned by a secure base of scientific and theoretical knowledge. This applies as much to the learning and teaching of children in mainstream schools as in special education.

Clearly, one conclusion might be that “more research is necessary”. In the interim, another conclusion might be that for as long as we must depend upon the judgments of professionals and parents as to what works and what does not, we should value, and even celebrate, the schools we have that command the support of these same professionals and parents.

From the late 1940s, a Hungarian physician, Andres Peto, elaborated his theoretical and professional insights into learning and the practice of teaching to create a unified system of education of children with motor disorders now known in the English-speaking world, perhaps losing something in the translation, as Conductive Education. 

The Executive Summary of Understanding the Brain states: “It is possible to take advantage of the brain’s potential for plasticity and to facilitate the learning process. This calls for holistic approaches which recognise the close interdependence of physical and intellectual well-being and the close interplay of the emotional and cognitive” – precisely the position taken by Andras Peto and conductive education.

There is, of course, much more to be said about conductive education as a unified system and, speaking personally, I might well wish to debate theoretical differences with the professionals and parents at Xavier Special Education Unit. Nevertheless, the work at Xavier is internationally known, through conferences, congresses and reports. Their work brings recognition and credit to Queensland and enhances the reputation of Queensland Education.

The OECD, in its reports, confirms both how much in education practice is still to be supported by research evidence and also the challenging but still elusive potential being proposed by neuroscientists.

A bold, innovative and forwarding looking education authority might do a great deal worse that to cherish embryonic education systems and practices which appear to offer ways forward, such as Xavier Special Education Unit; to work in partnership with those committed parents and professionals; and together to seek ways of better integrating the work at Xavier into the mainstream.  Who knows, Queensland Education might consider its most valuable contribution to such a partnership to be funding a post for a full-time conductor and contributing to a research project?

Yours sincerely

Norman Perrin
Chief Executive
Paces Shefield

Hopeful signs on consultation with parents in Sheffield

On Friday morning, I went along to a demonstration by parents of children with autism, who were giving voice to their concerns about lack of consultation on the part of Sheffield Children and Young People Directorate, especially the SEN team, in the implementation of wide-ranging changes in the schooling of children with special needs. I was especially keen to meet the organiser, Claire, with whom I had spoken on the telephone earlier in the week and whom I shall be meeting next week.

I am posting Claire's report of the demonstration, circulated by email, partly in the hope  of giving it wider circulation locally, and partly to share with a much wider community who are struggling with similar issues, something of the flavour of what is currently happening in Sheffield.

(As a revealing aside: a representative of Paces School, which is the only independent non-maintained special school in Sheffield, was not invited by the SEN team to attend the meeting in question.)

Consultation with parents on strategic planning is essential to the implementation of the Government's education policy - for instance as  evidenced in Every Child Matters. (The same is true in adult services strategic planning, by the way). Slowly this message is seeping throughout local authorities and changing embedded cultures of paternalism. As one who is a strong advocate of consultation, partnership and collaboration, I am therefore optimistic that the report below brings hopeful signs, here in Sheffield, on consultation with parents of children with SEN, a road which the City's adults with learning disabilities team has already set out on, led by Richard Parrott, the Strategic Commissioning Manager, with its wide consultations at the draft stage of an extensive Strategic Plan. It is encouraging to see parents once more starting to reach out to each other, beyond the specific disability of our children, and attempting to contribute to real change.

At present, Sheffield does not have a Strategic Plan for the education and schooling of children and young people with disabilities. That is a serious omission which must be addressed by the new Director when she takes up her post.  A strategy is simply a plan. It is difficult to imagine how any local authority, let alone the fourth largest city in England, would wish to proceed to the implementation of education and schooling arrangements for children with disabilities without a plan to do so, to which parents have essentially contributed and which is widely accepted by all those it concerns and benefits.

Small signs - yet cause for some hope that we can move forward. Take a read for yourself.

--------------------------------

Today's parent demonstration went ahead as planned.  The LEA had moved the venue just 20 hours before the meeting, so parents held a protest at the original venue (Salvation Army on Psalter Lane) which was attended by the local press (look out for coverage/photo in local press) and also attended the new venue (Mega Centre) where representatives of Sheffield special schools and integrated units were handed a flyer about our 'No Voice' campaign.  (Copy attached below for your information).

We understand that, in the meeting with Mariam Haque (Head of SEN Sheffield), Jane Ludlum (Children Services) and David Dickinson (SEN Advisor, National Strategies Team), the representatives from the special schools and integrated units of Sheffield, raised the same concerns about failure to consult and the inherent weaknesses of the proposals.

As a result of the parent campaign and the concerns of the teachers and schools Jane Ludlum has agreed to 'tear up' the June 2007 paper 'Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LDD) Development Paper', prepared by Mariam Haque, which outlined the proposals for change. (See details in 'No Voice' below).  She referred to a 'blank piece of paper' re the future of special education in Sheffield.  The LEA will reconvene work on SEN in September.  A working party, together with a series of sub-committees, will be set up.  We have received this information informally, and are awaiting official confirmation from the LEA about this change of direction.

This is a tremendous result.  Thanks to all parents who have been involved in this campaign.

However, this is just the beginning of our campaign to be consulted in the planning and implementation of improved educational services for our children. We are now looking at ways to organise our campaign (both in terms of creating an Autism Alliance, and in terms of creating an over-arching Alliance of all disability/special needs groups), to facilitate and formalise our role in consultation processes.  So stay in touch!

Claire

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“NO VOICE”

 

The Campaign to stop Sheffield Education Authority making Changes to the Education of Children with Special Needs Without Consultation

 

We are the parents of children with Autism and Aspergers Syndrome, joined at today’s protest by representatives of other disability groups. We are here to draw attention to the changes made to the special education system in Sheffield for all children with special needs. These changes have been made without consulting either parents, the children themselves or (in any meaningful way) the teachers and schools who support the children.

 

It is hard to say exactly what these changes will mean to individual children with autism since there has been no meaningful consultation.*  But it seems that the following changes will, or have already, taken place:-

1. Special school and integrated resource placements will be seen as short-term options for children with autism. The vast majority of children will be expected to spend no more than 1 to 2 years in these provisions before they are placed in their local mainstream school.
2. Mainstream schools will be expected to support the complex needs of all children with autism through a SEN budget devolved from the LA to the school. The new budget does not recognise the financial implications of the existing Statements of Special Educational Needs, (the legal documents that identifies and quantifies the specialist support required for each, named child with autism).  It is the Local Authority’s policy to reduce the number of Statements issued and maintained regardless of the number of children with special needs.
3. Specialist services for children with autism (which are already extremely limited) will be absorbed into a generic service serving children with any kind of disability.  The “autism service” has already been disbanded.

 

Parents, in collaboration with teachers and schools, are the first to recognise that there is a need to improve educational services for children with autism in Sheffield, and that the ideal scenario is for children and young people with autism to be successfully and happily ensconced in their local school and community.  However, the barrier to this ideal is not organisational and structural change within the LEA offices. The real obstacles are the need to recognise that autism is a lifelong developmental condition that impacts on every aspect of everyday life, the need to recognise both the quantity and expert nature of support required to work effectively with children with such a complex condition and the need to understand that effective services are planned round the child, not dictated from some remote office.

 

It is difficult to comprehend how the Local Authority intends to make progress with such a complex matter without involving the real experts – the children themselves, their families and the teachers.

 

* See Sheffield Council papers on Agenda item 3, 6 June 2007, “Learning Difficulties and Disabilities (LDD) Development Paper”.  To our knowledge this paper, which outlines proposals for Council changes to SEN, has not been widely distributed.

Paces School - Ofsted Report: A welcome report.

Paces School was inspected by Ofsted on 14-15th May 2008, and the Inspector's Report published on 9th June 2008.  The report has delighted everyone at Paces and is one in which every single member of the School's staff team should feel justifiably proud. Those of the team who have been with us since the start in 1996/7, who have "kept the faith" during those times when the odds seemed stacked against us, have cause to feel especially satisfied with the Inspector's commendations of the School and, by implication, of their years of exceptional dedication and creative hard work. Without effective leadership, little of real quality is truly achievable. "Quality" has been the one continuous watchword of Gabor Fellner's leadership as Head of Paces School. Hopefully, the dissemination of this report will serve only to enhance his reputation, and that of Paces School, well beyond Paces Campus.

Below, you can read extracts from the Report. If you care to, you can downlead the whole Report.

Before you do so, there is one plain-seeming sentence in the Report, easily overlooked, which represents a real triumph; one that connoisseurs of the history of conductive education in the UK and elsewhere might recognise as a milestone:  "The curriculum provides a good balance of Conductive Education with the subjects of the National Curriculum in both the primary and secondary classes". I leave you to savour that sentence and to enjoy with us our sense of the real achievement of an objective we set out to reach all those years ago.

Congratulations to Gabor and to the staff team.

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Extracts
Evaluation of the school
Paces High Green School provides a good quality of education for its pupils. The curriculum and quality of teaching are good, and are helping the pupils to make good overall progress in both their educational learning and in their physical development. The pupils benefit from attending a school that emphasises their individual worth and contribution to all aspects of school life. Parents are fully supportive of the ethos of the school, appreciating greatly the work of the teachers and other specialist staff in helping their children to enjoy school, and achieve well in relation to their capabilities. The school has continued to make good progress since its previous inspection and meets almost all the regulations for independent schools.

Quality of education
The quality of the curriculum is good overall. The curriculum provides a good balance of Conductive Education with the subjects of the National Curriculum in both the primary and secondary classes, and a satisfactory link with the six areas of learning in the Foundation Stage class. .... Throughout the school, this integrated curricular approach is giving the pupils good coverage of a range of key literacy, numeracy and language skills appropriate to their abilities and needs. It is also supporting well their physical, social and emotional development.

The quality and effectiveness of teaching and assessment are good. All lessons are very carefully planned to include teaching tasks and clearly identified outcomes that ensure all pupils are suitably supported and challenged in all aspects of their physical, social and intellectual learning. Relationships between teachers, support assistants and the pupils are outstanding throughout the school. All adults show great sensitivity and awareness of the needs of the pupils, but are still demanding and encouraging of them to develop as much independence in their learning as possible; this includes their physical development.

Dore pulls plug (2) or Dore has his plug pulled

Most people who maintain blogs, I suppose, do so in the hope that our postings might spark the odd thought in the occasional reader or, better yet, tempt the reader to leave a comment.

In a welcome comment added to my posting Dore pulls the plug, (May 29th) Brainduck gently but firmly chides me on my admittedly rather loose use of the phrase 'dancing on Dore's grave' and corrects (as Brainduck sees it, to be more strictly accurate, my statement, borrowed from The Times report, that Wynford Dore had 'pulled the plug' on his various international centres, whereas, says Brainduck, Dore was forced to, having been trading (allegedly) insolvently in Australia.

Brainduck may very well be right. I simply do not know. I have not investigated the legal and financial circumstances. My chief interest in the story was to do with Dore's financial model - a business financed apparently by fees charged to individuals plus income from another source, in this case from Dore himself, in the expectation of government funding at some future date. We in the "Third Sector" or the 'non-profit' world, do not spend over much time discussing the 'financial model' by which we run our 'worthy causes'. Perhaps we should? Perhaps there are lessons for us, as we strive for a sustainable future ourselves, in the collapse of Wynford Dore's venture? The financial model of most conductive education resources that I know of derives income, like the Dore Centres, through a mix of fees-and-other-income - 'other' in our case usually being from grants or fundraising.  Is this a viable and sustainable model? What options are there? That was what I was wanting to pause and consider, avoiding joining those who, in some of the comments I read, seemed to rejoice in the closure - brought about solely by financial reasons, as Brainduck says - of the Dore Centres and in the closing off of access to a treatment that many parents believed to be beneficial to the children.

Brainduck makes another important point, quite separate from questions about sustainability and the financial model, and, moreover, one with which I wholly agree. "Evidenced-based treatments matter, because people deserve what works and can be shown to work." Brainduck also writes: "I believe everyone should have access to the best possible evidence-based treatment" and "I believe in informed consent" - statements with which it is hard to disagree. (My interest is, of course, in education rather than "treatment")

Where I do hesitate to share Brainduck's certainty is Brainduck's apparent belief that Wynford Dore is to be held responsible for the lack of evidence: "There are no excuses for not doing the research, or (as Dore did) doing it so badly that it tells you nothing about a treatment." (Immediately, I must say that I simply do not know that Wynford Dore deliberately produced and promulgated fraudulent research - for that is what Brainduck is effectively saying. I cannot comment on the specifics. I do know that there is an awful lot of poor - or 'crap' to use Brainduck's choice of adjective - research. One notable example familiar in the world of conductive education was the so-called "Birmingham Report" (Bairstow et al 1993) that did so much damage to conductive education, the effect of which still reverberates around the internet today.)

Why though do I hesitate?  Here are some 'headline' thoughts, that I would want to consider carefully, regarding 'evidence' and who is responsible for it.
1.  One major scientific process (and I am lay person so the learned ones amongst you must excuse the terminology) is to proceed from theoretical insights via research to evidential proof. In other words, do what you think right and hope the science catches up, to put it crudely.
2. "Lack of evidence" is only that. It is not proof. The collapse for financial reasons of the Dore Centres, the lack of proper research, if such it was, does not prove that there was not a benefit; it does not prove that the treatment did not work. It is only that there was a lack of evidence.
3. Almost everything that we do in education is based on the flimsiest of scientifically-based educational research. Education is 'pre-scientific', more Art than Science.  By that, I mean that little in education has predictive force.  ("Evidence in Education: Linking Research and Policy" OECD 2007). Some, no doubt, would say it should stay that way.
4. Finally, speaking personally, as a parent who saw in conductive education not just a theoretical breakthrough in understanding but a practical, lived and learned transformation in my own (then, young) daughter and others' children, and on that basis sought with others to introduce conductive education into my home city of Sheffield, by setting up actual services, I would be delighted to see proper research undertaken but Paces does not have the resources ourselves to invest in research.  I would be delighted if the Government  nationally or locally, that has no more evidential proof that what happens in mainstream and special schools for children with motor disorders actually works than we have at Paces, would be willing to undertake with Paces a major research programme - or if not with us, with the National Institute for Conductive Education.  And that, for me, is the nub of where I suspect I cannot follow Brainduck:  without the evidence, Brainduck, not unreasonably, would deny Government money to the Dore Centres and probably to Paces, as we too cannot yet "prove" that conductive education works. Without Government funding for research, there can be no evidence: without research Brainduck would have the Government withhold funding. That is a paradox to which I do not have an easy answer. However, I do not regard as satisfactory continuing to muddle on as we have been in the state education of children with motor disorders (no proper initial training for teachers and other practitioners; no theoretical - never mind evidential - understanding of pedagogy or learning or why the curriculum is as it is: in other words no-one having any wholly satisfactory reason why they are doing what they do daily in the classroom) based only on custom-and-practice and the wisdom of experience.

At this point, I would - with a huge smile - urge Brainduck to join with me in demanding the Government refuse to fund all educational practices in state schools for children with special needs that are not fully evidenced by research.

[Endnote: to be clear, nothing I have written here is intended to endorse or refute the efficacy of the Dore programme nor to pass comment on the performance of any company responsible for promoting or delivering the programme.]

 

Balls statement on Children's Plan. Commons 11 Dec 2007

As you do, I stumbled across a report on the ATL web site of a statement by Ed Balls ("Balls makes statement on the Children's Plan"). The original is no doubt in Hansard.  Can anyone direct me to any online or other source for following up each of these points made, to check on progress?

1. Teacher Training
£18 million would be available over the   next three years to help train teachers to deal with special educational   needs.   (By the way, don't you just love "deal with" and "deal with special educational needs" as synonyms for "teach" and "teach children"? This from the ATL "the education union for teachers and lecturers").
   
2. Special Needs Review
A review into special needs would lead to a review in 2009.

3. Parent Advisors
  Two new parent advisors in every area would help family education and   help those with disabled children.