I usually enjoy John Crace’s frank views and commentary, but was stopped in my tracks when he said the bill for special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision was rising “thanks both to better diagnosis and to some parents gaming the system” (Labour picks on kids as Farage reaches for his human punchbag, 7 July).
Sadly, when the government is challenged as to why it is not providing thousands of children with an adequate education, it often resorts to victim-blaming, implying that parents are exaggerating their children’s difficulties, and I’m astonished that John has regurgitated such nonsense.
As the mother of an autistic child who needs a high level of care in his school environment, I have to fight tooth and nail every single year to prove that he still has high needs and still requires specialist provision. This is true of many thousands of parents with children in the system.
Does John really believe that there are parents in enough numbers who are successfully exaggerating their children’s special educational needs and disabilities to have caused a notable increase in the bill for Send provision? Please.
I ask him to do some research and instead ask why the government keeps letting these vulnerable children down before pointing the finger at parents who are simply fighting for their children to access education, the same as any other child deserves in the country.
Suzanna Nolan
East Molesey, Surrey
