This essay is going to examine and explore how different strategies are used to protect and maintain positive health, social and educational outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities. These paper is also going to focus and discuss on various themes in the body of this paper such as identification and early intervention, multi-agency working and finally, the voice of the parent or the child. These themes are relevant since they will reveal how the health, social and educational needs for these children with special needs and disabilities will be protected. This essay will conclude by revealing the significance of the mentioned themes in encouraging and protecting the rights and needs for children with special needs and disabilities.
This paper will majorly focus on special educational needs and disabilities among children. It is essential to familiarise with the meaning of these terms for proper writing of this paper. Special educational needs have different definitions from different scholars though the meaning is the same. According to Ellis and Tod (2017), special educational needs refers to children with learning problems and disabilities which make it harder for them to compete with their counterparts. Florian (2016) defined special educational needs as a situation when a child is hindered from making use of available learning facilities due to a disability. Disabilities are physical and mental attributes that are viewed as a problem which is supposed to be fixed by different institutions such as the medicine (JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS, 2017). According Row (2016) disabilities are limitations which are imposed on various individuals by the social constraints.
This paper will focus on different legislation that was formulated and implemented to resolve the problems associated with protecting and maintaining positive health, social and educational conditions for children with special educational needs and disabilities. These legislations are as follows; The Children and Family Act of 2014, The SEND Code of Practice of 2015, Salamanca Statement of 1994, The UNCRC of 1989 and lastly, The UNCRPD of 2006. The Children and Family Act 2014 became law on 13th March 2014 after obtaining royal assent. The Act was mainly concerned with England, but some measures applied to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. It stated the following to the adopters: under this act, adopters were allowed to foster children during the wait for formal court approval. Adoption agencies were no longer supposed to search for a perfect ethnic match between the potential adopters and children and this was to minimise delays that were associated with finding adopters for vulnerable children. And they were to receive similar rights like the birth parents as from 2015 (Penna, 2017). This Act also stated the following towards the improvement of the welfare of children with special needs and disabilities. A new education system was going to replace the existing special educational statements. Services and rights available to children with these type of special needs were extended. Lastly, more support was to be provided by schools to children with medical conditions. The SEND Code of Practice 2015 was enacted in 2015 and it explained the role of the health bodies, local authorities, schools and colleges in the provision for individuals with special educational needs under part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 (Tutt and Williams, 2017). This code of practice replaced the special educational needs of 2001 (Tutt and Williams, 2017). Salamanca Statement 1994 was a legislation for protecting the rights of individuals with special needs and disabilities established in 1994 from a conference held by the Government of Spain and UNESCO to further the goals of education to all children (The Salamanca statement and framework for action on special needs education, 2016). It also aimed at the foster establishment of schools to serve all children especially those with special educational needs. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 1989 is a global agreement ensuring equality in children despite their difference in religion, race and abilities. Under the terms of the convention, children had the following rights. The right of survival, protection from violence and access to education which enable them to fulfil their potential (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) explained, 2016). The Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (UNCRPD) 2006 is a global human treaty of the United Nations to protect the dignity and the rights of people with disabilities. Parties to the convention are expected to protect, promote and ensure equality of person with disabilities and any special needs in all aspects of life (Daniels-Simmonds, 2016).
This paragraph will focus on the Identification and early intervention theme. Children are unique in their different ways. They have their weaknesses and strengths. The development and progress of children are according to specific sequences which might vary in pace for various children. It is normal for children to excel in particular areas an experience difficulties in other areas. If a child experiences or displays challenges and problems in various developmental areas and start showing significant depreciation compared to other children of their age, it’s advisable for the child to be assessed by a professional for their mental capabilities. These children progress vigorously in the early years of their growth and development and various changes in their body are physically expected to change and this must be experienced in a year or even some months. This can make it difficult for the experts to make the correct diagnosis of the growing children conditions. The malleability of difference in childhood development and growth makes early identification and intervention significant. Early identification of complications in early child’s development and learning are necessary since it enables parents and people to understand, support and assist the disabled children’s with their learning needs. According to Palmer (2016) children, additional requirements can be identified in two phases, which are, the before school and anti-school. Before school model, is where a child educational needs are identified before they get enrolled in schools. In this phase, additional requirements for children are defined in the following ways. These children are diagnosed with disabilities during the period of their births or before they leave these hospitals. Through development checks conducted by various public health nurses, voluntary bodies or private professionals. The second phase is the anti-school that recommend a three-stage process that is used for identification and assessment of special educational needs of children by the schools and teachers. The learning capability of each student determines the time taken in each stage. The first stage is coordinated by the teachers and carried within the regular classrooms. The second stage involves the coordination of activities by the teachers and the learning support. The last step consists of professionals that use detailed assessments and developmental intervention programmes. And is meant for children with complex needs and their progress are considered inadequate despite the carefulness in planning interventions.
Different individuals are used in the process of identification and assessment of special educational needs among children. Teachers are involved in the identification of disabilities and special educational needs among various children. This is achieved through observations of different student’s behaviours and their educational performances. Different student’s behaviours such as facial expressions and body gestures are used in detecting disabilities among children. Parents are also involved in this process of identifying additional needs among their children by detecting any signs of abnormalities among their children. Professionals such as the doctors and nurses are also involved in the identification of special educational needs among the children through diagnosis. Identification of child’s special educational needs and disabilities are faced with numerous challenges. During the younger age of the child’s life, it is difficult to identify any educational or specific disabilities such as difficulties in speaking. Disabilities diagnosis are expensive and some parents are not capable of affording these expenses and lastly, some schools do not have necessary resources to be used by these disabled children.
Early intervention is systems of coordinating services which promote the development and child's proper growth. The current legislation about child's early intervention advises that intervention should occur at the earliest time as possible to detect any form of disability to a child and try to resolve the problem if possible (Herrman, 2016). Early intervention has the various benefits. They assist the child in making the most of learning through play where a child develops necessary skills for problem-solving, socialisation and communication. It reduces the need for specialised institutional support to children during their schooling years by increasing their academic readiness. And lastly, these interventions allows families to assist their children in reaching their maximum potentials. Early interventions also have various challenges to infants such that it is not approved that early intervention is capable of improving development outcomes to infants with severe lesion of the brain (Herrman, 2016).
Multi-agency working are process of working and dealing with young people and children who are identified as having unmet needs and require support from various agencies. Multi-agency working is involved in providing seamless response to individuals with complex and multiple needs. It is also a unique contribution to preventative and early intervention services since it has confirmed itself as being an effective way to address various cross-cutting risks factors that cause severe outcomes for young people and children. Multiple models for multi-agency working have been formulated at the local level in the development of multi-agency projects and initiatives. Multi-agency working are grouped into three models. And these models are multi-agency panel, multi-agency team and integrated service (Gasper, 2016). In multi-agency committee, these practitioners remain employed by their home agency where they network regularly to discuss issues related to children additional needs and how they will benefit from these multi-agencies. The multi-agency team is a formal configuration which consists of practitioners who are recruited into the group. The team has a leader who work for a common purpose and a common goal. These practitioners may also maintain links with other home agencies through training and supervision. These model focuses and engage with universal services at different levels such as in young people, family and in school work. The last model is the integrated service which involves working together with various individuals in a collaborative way where different functions share similar locations. The management structure under this model facilitate integrated working. The benefits of multi-agency operation vary from that of having a standard language glossary for effective communication to that of practising advice on setting up services and working out to resolve various challenges.
The origin of multi-agency working approach is not a new development. The foundations of multi-agency working were laid in the 1980s during the Thatcher government years (Gasper, 2016). The children act of 1989 approved and recognised the legislative requirements for various collaborations and activities by the inter-agencies about the young people and children who were requiring professional’s assistance to aid them in their better working. In the 1990s voluntary and private sector organisations joined these multilateral partnerships and these led to the development of multi-agency operation (Gasper, 2016). Development of multi-agency working led to an increase in work overload and fatigue due to increase in multi-agency working activities leading to increase in demand for more practitioners to perform these increased tasks. In the last two decades, several governments have increased their funding to the multi-agency working initiatives with the aim of promoting a better-co-ordinated partnership working and integrated services. Examples of these government funded initiatives include Youth Offending Teams, Sure Start, BEST and Connexions and lastly, The Children’s Fun.
Various current legislation about multi-agency working has different pieces of advice. This legislation about the multi-professional approach includes the following: The Special Educational Needs and the Disability Act. These laws were enacted in May 2001 (Gasper, 2016). Their role was to strengthen the rights of young people and children who are disabled and require special educational needs in the learning institutions. These legislations emphasised and advised that every child with disabilities and special educational needs should be educated alongside other children in ordinary schools and also have access to a balanced and a relevant education which involves the National Curriculum. Multi-agency working consist of three processes which are panel, team and integrated service processes. Different individuals such as practitioners and managers are involved in these processes. Multi-agency working and its operations have various benefits which include the following: It minimises human resource recruitments since practitioners remain employed by their home agencies, these practitioners are always occupied with issues occurring in their home agencies and have various opportunities to work together and have experience of numerous working styles. The other benefit of Multi-agency working and its process is that they have a good sense of team identity and doesn't require IT infrastructure or a permanent base. Communication is always straightforward which facilitate easy sharing of skills, knowledge and easy job training. The last benefit is that they have opportunities of addressing different children disability issues and particular educational need in a non-stigmatising universal setting. There is always a great co-working and exchange of skills among these agencies and members have access to personal developments and training in their home agencies. Despite having these numerous benefits, multi-agency working is faced with various challenges. Minimal contacts between the agencies and the children have worsened the relationship between these agencies and the targeted children. A lot of time is spent in planning the meetings. There are also inadequate financial resources that are meant for the effective functioning of these agencies. And lastly, the relationships with different universal providers and schools have continued to worsen. All these mentioned factors have affected the operation, performance and development of multi-professional approach (Gasper, 2016).
A voice is an expression in words or can also be defined as a way of various expression of opinions and attitude via speech. Voices are used by individuals to enable them to get what they want from the intended receivers of the message or enable the listeners understand the message and respond. Parent and children voices are very important for the protection and maintenance of positive health, social and educational outcomes for disabled children with special educational needs. Their voices calls for improvement and development of the care system of the disabled children with special educational needs (Tomlinson, 2016). Professionals use various strategies to ensure that the child’s and the parent or the carer’s voice are captured in all of the discussions relating to the outcome of the disabled children with special educational needs. These professionals have increased diagnosis rates for children in their early years of development to determine their disabilities and also predict the possibilities of the child’s future difficulties in learning. This has helped since some disabilities among the children and the young people are rectifiable in the early years of the child development. These professionals such as doctors, nurses and other government health officials have reduced the cost for diagnosis of young people and children to determine the existence or the chances of occurrence of disability and learning difficulties among the young people and children. They have also increased the number of special schools to cater for the needs of these children and an example is the special schools maintained by the West Sussex (Tomlinson, 2016). A partnership between parents and professionals are important in protecting and maintaining the positive health, social and educational outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities. Behind any disabled child with different special needs are parents, who without having any diagnosed condition might bring various problems to the parents. The lives of these disabled children are involved in lengthy dealings with varying professionals of health which becomes part of their lives. A good relationship between the health professionals and the parents will offer support to these affected parents and this enables them to feel competent and to make proper decisions of looking after their children to minimise parents stress which is associated with the child’s special needs and also provide the required care to these disabled children. The relationship ensures that the correct information is given to the parents by the health professionals concerning the health conditions of their children. Parents also provide great information about the health of their children to these professionals. A good relationship between these two parties ensures that each party is open to each other and listen to the views of each other. These proper relationships also ensure that information flows in both directions. The appropriate partnership also provides that the best outcomes for children with disabilities and special educational needs are achieved. Lastly, good connection with parents is necessary since it equips these affected parents with knowledge on how to get services (Tomlinson, 2016).
Partnership with parents can be developed efficiently in various ways. This productive partnership depends on building trust through respectful and proper communication. Expounding the similar nature of multiple roles for both the parents and the health professionals is essential for partnership improvement. Self-help groups further develop this relationship by restricting parents from giving medical advice to other members whose children have similar medical treatments since some opinions may differ from the professional information and the treatments (Ivanova, 2017). The current legislation about the child and the parent voices and partnership with parent advice that proper relationship and collaboration with parents and the professionals should be maintained and information should be provided to schools, parents and other stakeholders concerning the excellent practice about the planning and the coordination of provision of education and support service. These legislations also advices that education of children with special educational needs and disabilities should be improved. The child’s voice is an essential factor in protecting and maintaining positive health, social an educational outcomes for the disabled children with special educational needs since it reveals the challenges that these children undergo through. These disabled children are faced with difficulties in pursuing their careers and their talents. They also get discriminated regarding employment since they are perceived to be less competitive than other rational human beings by the society. Children can be involved in the process of designing and developing interventions to support their needs in various ways. Children can be included in early interventions where these children are put under observation by professionals, but under the care of their parents, and this is done to observe the skills that the child might be missing. Child's involvement in interventions has various challenges. It is difficult for the therapist to observe the skills that the child lacks since they get exposed to them for a short duration of time and also this process requires a lot of financial resources.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is evident that early intervention and identification of disability and special educational needs among the children and the young people are necessary since some disabilities are rectifiable when detected on the early days of the child’s growth. Multi-agency working is also important since it’s an effective way of addressing various risks factors that are caused by bad outcomes among the young people and children. Child and parent voice are necessary since they reveal the problems that are faced by disabled children and those with special educational needs together with their parents.
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