Crisis in Special Needs Education – Teaching Assistants made Redundant as Central and Local Govt argue over Funding
There was a thoroughly depressing piece by Fran Abrams in the Guardian’s Education Section on 11th April 2017, headlined ‘Schools battle to support special needs as teaching assistants lose jobs’ – ‘Pupils are at risk of being turned away from mainstream schools as classroom support falls victim to budget cuts’. To read it, which I […]
Inspiring stories at Scotland’s first Learning Disability Awards
The best, in not the only extensive coverage of Scotland’s newly established Learning Disability Awards was in the Daily Record. The full report is available via this link – but perhaps we may just quote its opening words “MUCH is written about the struggles and challenges faced by those living with learning disabilities. But a new awards competition is shining […]
SWAN Children -‘I just want to know what’s wrong with my child’
The issues around securing a diagnosis for your child will be familiar to many parents. Most (including the author of this post) will have an anecdote or horror story to tell about the process. I was reminded of the problems around diagnosis by an article by Chris Evans in the i newspaper on 22nd May, also available […]
Manifestos – Part 3
Well another day another manifesto launch, again as with the others I read the Conservative Manifesto from cover to cover looking for references to people with a learning disability but again I didn’t find much
Manifestos – Part 2
Yesterday saw the launch of the Liberal Democrat manifesto and I will try to cover the relevant points as I did with the Labour Party. I have to say that there were not many references to learning disability so I’ll do the best I can with the limited resources offered. The full manifesto can be […]
Manifesto time again!!!
Well I didn’t think we would be doing this again so soon after last time but who am I to expect that 5 year fixed term parliaments should actually mean that! Once again I am going to read all the manifestos for the main political parties for references to learning disability and specific policies that […]
Easy Read Election Resources
In connection with the upcoming general election, United Response (support and care provider) has made a number of resources available in Easy Read format, for people with learning disabilities. They are available from the United Response website under the theme ‘Every Vote Counts’ In view of the registration deadline, 22nd May, perhaps the first resource […]
Public Accounts Committee Report: DoH Failures in Community Support
The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee has been monitoring Department of Health’s efforts in moving people with a learning disability out of mental health hospitals and into the community. Two years ago the Committee found that progress had been poor but was promised improvements. It has just published its latest findings (26th April) in a report entitled ‘Local support for […]
An Expert Guide to Mental Capacity and the Right to Vote
We have just received what appears to be a pretty definitive guide to learning disability, mental capacity, and the capacity and right to vote in the upcoming election. This may be useful to you or someone you care for. Written by Lucy Series, it is a blog posting entitled ‘It’s that time again’. If you read […]
PIP debate delayed
An early victim of yesterday’s election announcement appears to be the promised debate on the PIP amendments, scheduled for this Thursday, which we cited in our news post of a few days ago! The following exchange took place in the Commons yesterday: