DfEE Green Paper (22/10/1997) - Working with parents

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2 Working with parents

Parents and families

1. Excellence in schools explained the importance we attach to parents' role in helping children learn. This role is nowhere more crucial than for the parents of children with special educational needs.

2. For many parents, learning of their child's problems will be a devastating blow. Nothing can entirely remove the pressures they will face, but much can be done to share them. There is no reason why any parent should feel the sense of not knowing where to turn which has been the experience of too many. In all our actions bearing on special educational needs, we shall take account of the effects on parents and families. We recognise that some parents will need support from a range of statutory and voluntary agencies if they are to help their children to flourish.

3. This is a strand running through this Green Paper. Its implications are discussed in more detail in some of the following chapters. Here we highlight three dimensions of parents' involvement:

choice;
entitlement;
partnership.

Choice
4. We want children with SEN to be educated in mainstream schools wherever possible. And we want to improve the way in which mainstream schools are able to meet special needs, so that most parents will want to choose a mainstream education for their child. But, as Chapter 4 explains, we will maintain parents' present right to express a preference for a special school place for their child, where they believe it necessary. And we shall ensure that, in opting for a mainstream school, parents of children with SEN have an increasing degree of real choice.

Entitlement
5. We want all parents of children with SEN to be confident that they know what the school will do to meet their child's needs. Chapter 3 explains that we want to improve the monitoring of school-based SEN provision, examining the case for a contract between school and parents for some children. As such measures improve parents' confidence in what the school will deliver, and as schools become more confident in their own capabilities, we expect the present emphasis on statements of SEN to diminish. Indeed, we want it to do so: for some children at present, it is tying up resources in procedures, without producing real gains in support. But we unequivocally accept that the safeguards which are at present provided by statements - and in particular their guarantee of entitlement for children with complex special educational needs - must remain. All our measures will be designed to protect, or to enhance, the rights of vulnerable children and their parents.

Partnership
6. The knowledge parents have can help schools make the right provision for their child. Many schools and LEAs already spend much time working with parents. But sometimes this dialogue begins too late; sometimes it never gets started. When this happens, action to tackle a child's needs is delayed.

31/08/2000