‘Wigan schools just don’t have the staff’ to manage children with disabilities and special needs

The borough’s SEND programme is currently in deficit as well as being in higher demand, the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee was told.

“The financial position in schools is terrible,” Coun Debra Wailes told Wigan Town Hall. “When children are arriving with quite severe needs they just do not have the staff to manage.

“Some are coming in with quite complex needs and the work hasn’t started in nursery.”

The council has instilled five key priorities in order to try to rectify this – to ensure all education providers are fully inclusive, nurture support and promote those with SEND and have clear support pathways in place for parents and teachers, the chamber heard. The priorities also include wanting them to still feel connected to the community around them.

However, the progress on this has been hindered by the Covid pandemic, the cost of living crisis and a lack of funding, Coun Jenny Bullen, portfolio holder for children and families, claimed. She made a call-out to the national government to provide more support to allow them to do their job without getting into debt.

“Just to reinforce that many issues to do with SEND and provisions are to do with resources and that is not an excuse it is fact,” she told the committee. “In Wigan we don’t have overspend, but when you look at overspend in other authorities it is quite frightening.

“Until it is properly resourced we will always be struggling with this. It makes me mad because we could do so much more but we do need more resources.

“We have strategies in places and schools behind us. But because we always appear to be short of resources it is always going to be difficult – that is always going to be the biggest challenge.”

Coun Susan Greensmith suggested that the teachers are “under tremendous stress” and are “visibly impacted” by the strain already on them. She claimed financial stresses and pressure are why more people are coming out of teaching or not going into the profession in the first place..

Responding to concerns from councillors, officer Charmaine Tarring said: “It is a challenge to achieve that balance for finance and inclusion for our young people. We are looking into SEND reviews where we go in and do work with those schools to see where they may need support where they face challenges.

“The schools that have had that support have really welcomed it.”