Paces

She's leaving home: cuts, mortality and independent living

Some subjects are just not easy to write about.

One's mortality, for instance. 

How many times over the years have I heard parents of severely disabled children express their worry about what will happen to their child once they themselves 'depart this stage"?

I am minded of this by an article in the Irish Independent and the distressing story of a Mum and Dad forced to give up looking after their daughter at home and to put her into residential care because the funding is no longer available for her to be cared for by them at home and attend a day centre each day.

Inevitably, it seems, the Independent journalist blames 'the cuts': "'Idiotic' cutbacks force family to place disabled daughter in care". 

Aside from the obvious question about whether this in the long run will save the Irish Government any money at all, the cost of residential care being what it is, there is something else.

I was 66 when my daughter moved out of the family home and into her own home with two other young women. She was 29.  That was 18 months ago.  She comes home to us every weekend. It has become increasingly obvious to us, her Mum and I, that since then our capacity to care for her full-time had we continued to do so, would have become almost impossible.

Siobhan Powell is 29 years old. Her Mum, Johanne, is 59.

Clearly, the breaking up of the family home on the basis of the cost of transport to a day centre is an absurdity and a cruelty, the sort of which is all too frequent.

But the day is relentlessly coming when the family will have to manage things differently; when Siobhan may have to live elswhere than the family home. It is the same for all of us: Timor mortis conturbat me.

The issue here is not "the cuts", as "foolish" as they are but the apparent lack of any process to manage transition from where the whole family are now to where they will, in due to time, perhaps shortly, need to be. 

Such matters are managed no better in Ireland, it seems, than in the UK.

 

About nothing much ... and everything SEN, maybe

Not long awake. Contemplating the snow falling outside again. Do I set off before or after the early rush? First, a cup of tea. Read the newspapers online. 

I'd not previously taken notice of the Pupil Premium. It's for "disadvantaged" pupils not specifically special education, though there must be pupils "with special educational needs" who are also "disadvantaged". Setting that puzzler aside as I couldn't work it out without breakfast, I checked out a couple of pages on the DfE website.

That brought me to the Education Endowment Foundation, like the Pupil Premium, something else I was only dimly aware of. It is, it says of itself, "an independent grant-making charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement, ensuring that children from all backgrounds can fulfil their potential". All very well.

I hesitated over "Independent", one of those popular contemporary words that increasingly mean less and less. Take it out and is there any discernible difference? I suppose the EEF copywriter is trying to say that it's independent of the DfE from which, as far as I can make out, it gets much of the funding it gives out in grants, so if Ministers or DfE pull the plug on that, what price "independence"?  

I hestitated, too, over "fulfil their potential", that phrase, in various guises, that appears everywhere in educational thinking. It always strikes me as such a limiting phrase, as though potential cannot be transformed by inspirational teaching. Surely, what education is seeking to achieve is to transform the potential of all pupils? Anyway, leaving behind the untransformed EEF copywriter, I read that the EEF has funded 56 projects so far, some with very considerable grants, indeed. Fascinating. Well worth a look. "The EEF funds projects that it believes have the potential to raise attainment among disadvantaged pupils, and evaluates their impact through robust and independent evaluations. This section provides an overview of each project." Part of me is excited by these projects. Part asks, if projects such as these are needed, some of which seem pretty fundamental to good teaching as I understand it, what has been going on in our schools all these years? Stepping back and pausing before moving on, I wonder what the EEF's 56 projects would tell a researcher about the concerns of the modern 'educationista'?

And so to Ben Goldacre. The EEF Welcomes Ben Goldacre Report Building Evidence into Education. Bringing up children has long since struck me as essentially a messy business, all rather hit-and-miss, susceptible to waves of fashion. No matter how you professionalise upbringing as education or schooling or teaching (to be carried out only by 'qualified' teachers, of course), it remains, in essence, a messy business, into which research and evidence can offer only limited insights.

That's no case for not asking questions, of course, and seeking answers. Getting the questions right, would seem an important starting point. All of which rambling around these links and pages left me with a question.  According to the recently published "The Tail", one in five children leaves school in England without basic literacy and numeracy skills. These, I'm guessing, would be the same 'disadvantaged children whose potential the EEF is seeking to fulfil. Another puzzler not to be solved before breakfast is the extent of the overlap between these one-in-five disadvantaged pupils and the one-in-five pupils with special educational needs. Are they separate or different or overlapping?

Because my question - "just asking" - as they say on twitter - is whether or not there is a similar pot of funding for projects working with teachers in schools across England, and to "evaluate their impact through robust and independent evaluations", for special education, and especially for those nearly 3% of children who have Statements of Special Educational Need, soon to become the widely-welcomed Education, Health and Care Plan?

If there is such a pot of funding, then those of us working in conductive education settings - and the parents - would be glad to know of it. Perhaps you would let me know? 

Time for breakfast.

 

Fight to save Independent Living Fund goes to High Court

From Channel 4 News "Disabled living fund changes challenged at High Court"

This afternoon, in the High Court, a legal fight begins to prevent the closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF).

The ILF is a £320m fund that helps around 19,000 people with severe disabilities to live independently, and these five men and women - on behalf of thousands of others - are challenging the Government's decision to scrap it from 2015 and devolve it to local authorities instead.

One of the claimants is 73-year old Anne Pridmore, who has cerebral palsy and needs 24 hour care. I've lived in this house for 47 years and didn't expect to have to campaign to stay in my own home at my age.

She has a rota of personal assistants who help her with everything from getting up, to eating, to going out - and to the loo. At the moment, half of that is paid for by the ILF, the rest by the Local Authority.    

Read More

My daughter, Sarah, and her two friends who share a house of their own, with a rota of support like Anne, depend on ILF income for continuing to live in their home.

"If we can't afford for people to be disabled, what's the plan?"  The Guardian

"This is about the most severely disabled people in society, people whose disability brooks no ambiguity, having money stripped from them until they can no longer live dignified, fulfilling, stimulating lives."

"Those with the greatest needs comprise 2% of the population yet are taking 15% of cuts. That's more than a loss of dignity".

 

So what's a Chief Executive worth in the voluntary sector?

As a member of the NCVO, we recently received our 'Member Edition' of "The UK Civil Society Almanac 2012". What a treasure trove of civil society data it is.

I'm tempted to quote some statistics ... "Did you know, for instance ..." but will resist the temptation. Except for one statistic. Pay and Chief Executives. So how much do you think the average Chief Executive gets paid? While you ponder that, bear in mind an often quoted statistic that a salary of £51,000 per annum would put you in the top 15% of UK salary/wage earners. (Average pay for drivers of petrol tankers, I read over the weekend, is £45,000 pa)

The NCVO produce the Annual Voluntary Sector Salary Survey in association with XpertHR. The survey covers over 150 charitable organisations and analysises salaries for a range of responsibilities within the voluntary sector.

And Chief Executives? What did you guess? Well, according to NCVO/XpertHR, the median total earnings of a Chief Executive in the voluntary sector in 2010/11 was .... £71,907.

"Median" means there are as many whose earnings are above this as below it, which is pause for thought itself. "Total earnings" though, I'm not sure of. Bonuses? Perish the thought! Share allotments? Unlikely. Pension payments? Quite possibly.

And just in case you are wondering, no, I don't get anything like the median. Nothing at all like it in fact!

Two very welcome visitors

Belatedly .... Thursday saw two very welcome and special visitors to Paces.

In the morning, one of Paces' oldest friends, Graham Moore, Chairman of Westfield Health. Graham it was who in 1994 attended our very first public meeting, where we announced our intent to bring Conductive Education to Sheffield and set up our own centre. As Graham tells it, he just couldn't believe what we were planning to do, couldn't see how we could possibly succeed - and decided he'd better help!  On Thursday he offered his help again, and that of Westfield Health, with our plan for refurbishing the old craft workshops as three new classrooms.

By contrast, the afternoon was spent with a new friend, Mike Chitty.  It proved to be one of those all-to-rare afternoons when, after lunch together in the Campus Cafe, we settled down just to talking about what interested us: three of us from the Campus and Mike. We are looking to build on this in the New Year with some work that could benefit our adult group.

Thanks to both Graham and Mike. The world seems a better a place.

 

Transition/Hardship Fund announced

Andrew Sutton's latest blog post points to potential opportunities for CE in England from the announcement of a £100m Transition/Hardship Fund.

I have just posted the following as a Comment to Andrew's post. I hope to return to this brief post later, to revise and amplify it. For the moment ....

"Andrew, as I assume others will, I have requested further information about the Transition Fund. However, in following the link to the Third Sector website, I read:
"Money likely to be targeted at medium and large organisations that can play a bigger role in delivering public services".

Medium and large organisations. Ho-hum!

You recently posted a piece about CE and strategic thinking. Today, I heard the news that three local councils in London are to collaborate so as to achieve costs' savings and efficiencies. (It led me to fantasise about the four South Yorkshire boroughs doing the same, for the benefit of people locally.) Is this a model for the future?

If local councils can do it, how about CE organisations coming together (a strategic move?) to position ourselves as a "medium to large" nation-wide organisation able to bid into the Transition Fund in 2011-12?"

Free School update from Paces

While we wait for a response from DfE to our Proposal to establish a Free School, I can report an excellent Governors' meeting yesterday that reviewed all the pros and cons, from various points of view.

For everyone, the pros, for a special school like Paces School, outweighed the cons. Indeed, the cons were largely confined to issues of uncertainty to do with the future of Government SEN policy.

One issue that we agreed we had not seen debated elsewhere, especially should a Free School serve more than one local authority, is that of financing transport: dealing with which, on the ground, Paces has considerable experience that could be of benefit to DfE civil servants.

Coincidentally, in today's "Independent" is the story "The Price of Freedom" of Tim Moat's experience seeking to set up a secondary Free School in the Holgate area of York. I couldn't help reflecting on how much they still had to do - and how our experience as parents having set up Paces School from 1996 might be useful to them:

"In less than five months, the campaign boasts a 10-strong steering committee, four of them teachers, and 25 parents have signed a commitment in principle to send their children there. Last week the school took another major step towards becoming a reality when it received a positive assessment on its initial application, and began to settle on a possible site for the school."

And then again, their strategic and funding expectations:

"To begin with there will be 40 children, in two classes of 20, so that after five years the school will have reached a capacity of 200 – a size that will allow the staff to know all their pupils by name. The school will be staffed by two full-time teachers and a teaching head, spread across all the subjects. It will be "academically ambitious" though "not an exam factory", and there will be an emphasis on vocational studies able to meet the demands of a changing workplace. The money to renovate the premises will come from a £50m diverted fund of central Government money."

Not a special school though. We would very much like to see a special school - particularly Paces School, of course - included in the list of those invited to work towards a September 2011 opening.

Can CE keep a cool business head?

To the hairdresser's with Sarah this morning. Chance to catch up with local news in the Sheffield Telegraph, our weekly paper.

On the front page, news of the cancellation of the move of St Luke's Hospice to new premises and the fear of redundancies; beds will be cut from 24 to 20, in an attempt to reduce the charity's deficit this year from £1.3 million to £700,000. 

On the back page, news of Sheffield Wednesday's struggle to avoid administration or worse, with some suggesting that a take-over is the only hope. Reports suggest the club's debt totals £30m and a winding up petition brought by HM Revenue and Customs was avoided this week only by the Co-Operative Bank putting up £780,000, to buy the Club time to find an investor or other solution. Apparently one possibility is a fans-backed revolution headed up by Sheffield MP David Blunkett.

Reading this dismal news, I was reminded that earlier in the week I had read of the difficulties facing Prince Charles' Charities Foundation as a result of a downturn in the profitability of the charity's trading subsidiaries. Originally gift-aiding profits to the charity, the companies now find themselves dependent upon the charity for survival. (I cannot provide you a link to the story in The Times as Rupert Murdoch will not allow me since he put up a paywall.)

These are not insubstantial enterprises and although Sheffield Wednesday's woes might be longer standing than the economic downturn, we might well feel that better economic times would encourage more positive solutions.

Straws in the wind? Lessons for us who manage conductive education charities and enterprises? Can CE keep a cool business head?

Free Schools - a chance for conductive education?

Andrew Sutton has reported the DfE announcement of the opening of the process for making Free School applications, so I will not repeat it here.

The first step is little more than a relatively straightforward 'expression of interest': the completion of a "Proposal".

I have begun drafting a Proposal from Paces. 

If your conductive education centre is thinking of making an application - and now is the time - I'd be more than happy to help you do so.

Alternatively, I understand that applications proposing "groupings of schools" (definition not yet clear) would especially be welcomed. So if your conductive education centre might be interested in some sort of partnership application, I'd be happy to talk with you about that too.

Paces has successfully gone through Registration, Approved status and Non-Maintained Special School status with DfE and we have quite a lot of experience we are willing to share.

I can be contacted on PacesCEO@googlemail.com or 0114 284 4488.

Catching up on some good news

Life as Paces CEO has been a bit hectic over the past couple of months or so. Which explains why I've not posted as often as I would have liked. Funny thing that - the more stuff happens, sometimes, the less easy it is to write about - never quite reaching the moment when there's something to say. I'll maybe have some time to give it a go when we are in Pembrokeshire this week. That's not a promise - we've no reliable internet connection!

Some good news has slipped by though. Towards the end of March, I posted here that being at Paces then seemed a bit like one of those 'change' moments when we hold our breath waiting for something to happen. Well, one thing did happen: we secured a grant toward the repair and refurbishment of the former craft workshops at the back of Paces Campus. The plan is to open these as three new large classroom spaces for Paces School. The grant came from The Social Investment Business, to whom we are immensely grateful. And if that is not enough good fortune, it's great to be able to say that KeepMoat plc, who have supported Paces with 3-year sponsorship of our Families Support work, have already pitched in with a commitment to help us wring as much value from the grant as possible.  More later.

Now for a short holiday.