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    1. BestButtons on

      Some highlights:

      > England’s SEND crisis is spiralling because millions in taxpayers’ money is being “sucked” out of the system by private agencies charging rocketing prices for “superficial” assessments of children’s needs, The i Paper has been told.

      > Professionals working in the SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) sector say that reports needed for sought-after education, health and care plans (ECHPs) have **doubled in price in the last year** to as much as £1400 in London, pushing local councils towards bankruptcy.

      > They warn they are increasingly being conducted remotely – **sometimes from a different continent** – by locum educational psychologists without prior knowledge of the children, their schools, and the local resources that might be available.

      > The County Councils Network – which represents 36 local authorities – said The i Paper’s findings underlined the need to “fix the increasingly broken market for SEND provision”.

      > “Councils have faced dramatic and yearly increases in the number of young people on Education, Health and Care Plans,” a network spokesperson said.

      > “With councils facing spiralling expenditure that threatens to bankrupt them, and families facing increasingly longer waits for support including assessments, something will have to give.”

    2. HopefulLandscape7460 on

      Bizarre how every problem is somehow blamed on profiteering. Were businesses less greedy in the past or something?

    3. There are over 600,000 SEND kids. Anything to do with them is going to cost „millions“.

      Is it £2m? That would amount to about £3 per child.

      Is it a lot more than that? They need to say so.

    4. No-Potential-7242 on

      We’ve had years and years to train more staff. This situation is exactly like the NHS shortage, where agencies are paid an absolute fortune to supply staff. We should have started training more people the day after the referendum. The first batch would have graduated before the pandemic.

      This particular situation could be solved by training retired NHS staff to do the assessments. Similar to hiring retired teachers to do exam marking, there would probably be many takers because the work would not be physically grueling. If there are reasons why that wouldn’t work, then I am confident there are other solutions that don’t involve handing over vast amounts of taxpayer money to extortionate private businesses.

    5. Signal_Soft_3827 on

      Maybe if they reduce waiting lists for NHS assessments below the 18-24 months that it’s taking in some areas people wouldn’t need to go private

    6. Competitive_Pen7192 on

      I wager this is the case across the board with stuff.

      Private firms with lucrative government contracts extracting blood from the tax payer for as little as possible.

      It’s partly why the UK isn’t doing so well economically. The money’s swallowed up.

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