Families of SEND children place shoes in education protest
Families of children with special educational needs and disabilities are calling for changes from Oxfordshire County Council.
Families of SEND children have peacefully protested for their children’s education outside of Oxfordshire County Council county hall.
On Monday 3rd November at 10:30am, families gathered to place unused pairs of shoes to symbolise many of the children in Oxford with special educational needs and disabilities who are without appropriate education or support.
The event was part of the national Every Pair Tells a Story campaign. It was ran by the SEND Sanctuary UK, a charity which provides support, advocacy and campaigning for accountability and inclusion for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Oxfordshire continues to face challenges in supporting children with SEND needs. There has been a 50% increase in children and young people in Oxfordshire with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), with the total coming to 6,500.
Families have reported waiting 30 weeks or more for EHCP decisions, 10 weeks longer than the legal timeframe. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission also identified ongoing weaknesses in partnership working and consistency of support.
Issues with SEND education support across the UK have deepened in the last five to seven years, with over 70,000 waiting for an EHCP to be processed and thousands being left without any school place.
As the Government currently prepares to roll out its SEND and Alternative Provision reforms, SEND Sanctuary UK is calling for accountability, transparency and equality.
Aimee Bradley, founder of the SEND Sanctuary UK, states that “Families want a system where every local authority follows the same rules and parents do not have to fight for what is already written in law.
“We want quicker access to assessments and support, earlier intervention and genuine co-production with parents.
“We also want accountability and transparency, more specialist SEND provisions and more training for teachers so they can properly support children with additional needs in mainstream settings.
“The EHCP process must remain a legal right for families, not something that can be diluted or replaced.”
Each pair of shoes outside the county hall had a written tag detailing their SEND child’s experience with education, their EHCPs and their treatment from the Oxfordshire County Council (OCC).
Many tags detailed their child’s extended periods out of education and the failure of schools and the council to meet their child’s EHCP.
One parent wrote that their child went to a fully inclusive mainstream primary school, but after year 6 was too poorly for mainstream education, but not poorly enough for SEN provision. Part of the child’s needs is to remain local, but there are no local options to meet the rest of her needs.
Another parent wrote “My son had cost OCC over £400k to educate. If only they had believed me when I said he wasn’t coping we’d have saved so much public money.”
Aimee Bradley explained that “we chose shoes because silence can be louder than noise. Every pair represents a child who has been failed, whether through long waits for assessments, lack of support in school or being out of education altogether.
“A peaceful and respectful action allowed parents, carers and professionals to come together in unity without confrontation. These are not angry parents. These are exhausted parents who have been shouting for years and have not been heard.”
At the end of the event, all shoes were collected by volunteers, sorted for donation and distributed to local charities supporting children and families.