Agenda item

Please introduce yourself and describe the role and responsibilities that your position as School Parent Governor involves.

I trained as a solicitor and worked for many years in this profession but then gave up full-time work to be a carer for my son, who is profoundly disabled and attends Valence School. I have served as a School Governor since 1996.  I am currently the Chair of the Teaching and Learning Committee at Valence School, and, amongst other commercial legal issues, act as a consultant on Disability Discrimination Act matters for the John Lewis Partnership (for whom I used to work as the Commercial Solicitor). 

Please outline the Extended Services that Valence School – at which you are the Chair of the Teaching and Learning Committee - offers to its pupils and to the local community. 

We can offer pupils a broad range of services:-

• a ‘one stop shop’ for healthcare, including physiotherapy, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy;
• wheelchair provision, repairs and servicing;
• consultants from London hospitals come to Valence for appointments with pupils, as do dentists, optometrists and GPs (for the boarding pupils);
• we have a specialist teacher for support services, and an AAC department;
• we have after-school clubs and activities in the evenings and at weekends, which can be accessed by boarders and day pupils;
• we have recently been awarded Sports College status, and operate two Kent Sports academies to help pupils who have been identified as having particular sport skills.

However, we would love to be able to offer this same range of services to the local community, but we have had less than positive engagement and we currently provide no services at all to the local community.

Why do you think this is?

I think there are several reasons, including inertia in the community - although, as part of our Sports College status, we have a duty to engage the community and share our facilities.  We approached the local GPs’ surgeries to link to people who could benefit from our ‘one stop shop’ healthcare services, and we also have a well-equipped gym, but all our attempts to engage have failed. Maybe this is because people have a mental block as it’s a ‘special’ school and they don’t see it as being relevant to them. Other factors may be the demographics of the local area and the fact that the school site is relatively isolated, being set in some 47 acres of countryside.

In your experience, what are the benefits - if any - that Extended Services bring to pupils and to the local community?

Having London consultants visit the school means that pupils do not have to take time away from study to attend an appointment in London, parents do not have to take time off work to accompany them, and families are spared the travels costs and the physical difficulties of making a journey by public transport with a profoundly disabled child.  The school has twelve pupils with muscular dystrophy who are treated at the school by the only consultant available locally who works with muscular dystrophy.  Our after-school clubs in particular offer a range of interests and activities, which benefit pupils’ mental health and, often, also their physical health.  We have a number of pupils who have developed their sports skills to a national level, and competition and leadership skills help pupils develop independence and self worth.

What are the main challenges for Valence School, and for schools in general, when providing Extended Services to pupils and to the local community? Is there any particular difficulty in accommodating special needs?

A major challenge is to offer the services to the community that our Sports College status requires us to offer. We have tried, and are continuing to try, different ways of engaging the community, as this is a major issue that we need to address. Funding is also a challenge, as our healthcare programme relies on NHS, Social Services and Education funding, and if any one of these dries up it will have a big impact.  For instance, the PCT’s funds are short and nursing staff cover has been adversely affected.  This has had a big impact on the services we are able to offer to pupils with complex medical needs.

Please can you tell us a bit about the pupils and the Valence School.

Valence School is pretty unique, and I am not aware of any other school like it, certainly in the south-east.  Our pupils have profound and complex physical disabilities – some also with complex medical conditions, and the majority are in manual or powered chairs. An increasing number have no vocal ability at all and rely on communication aids. I could sum it up by comparing them to a large group of 6 – 19 year old Stephen Hawkings! Some have Special Educational Needs (SEN) but most have very active and very able brains. Our role at the school is to tease out every ounce of ability and potential that we can identify, to give them the best possible start that we can. Many will go on to college or university, but to do this they need much practical support and input in terms of services. We do not have many pupils with severe learning difficulties.  Most special schools do, but we don’t.

Has the School experienced any particular problems with regard to the safeguarding of its pupils and with regard to security? What are the main challenges for students with special educational needs in accessing Extended Services?

The Valence School site is made up of a very large old house with other buildings around it. Pupils have free access across the whole 47-acre site. It is very rural and remote, and is difficult to access by public transport.  If the site were opened up to the community, this would compromise the safety of students, and the security measures we would need to take to safeguard pupils would mean that pupils would lose the easy access across the site that they have now.  We would need to secure the individual buildings, but could not secure the whole site, so we could not stop people wandering in. There are student bungalows on site, which are occupied by some of the boarders, and these we prefer not to secure as it inhibits students’ ability to move about freely.

All the consultants and other medical personnel who attend the school are CRB checked, but community use brings us a number of new issues and presents a number of safeguarding problems. 

There is also a challenge around making the after-school clubs accessible to all pupils.  Although these are open to all pupils, they are mostly used by boarders as the day pupils travel home from the site at the end of the school day. It is difficult to try to persuade a commercial transport company to run a service for one or two pupils at an odd time.  Most parents do not have the freedom that I have as a self-employed person, and cannot run a taxi service for their child at all hours.

How long do pupils stay at the school?

From the age of 5 up to 19.  Sadly, some of our pupils will not live much longer than their late teens or early 20s.  Those who do are likely to need  to access Adult Social Services to live independently.  Some will be able to take a place at a specialist college or at university, with sufficient practical support.

I know that Adult Social Services day centres and Borough/District Council cohesion schemes try to encourage disabled and able-bodied young people to mix.  Is your school too remote to make such a link practical?

This is a useful suggestion, which I will look into.  I know we have some liaison with Sevenoaks District Council and Westerham Parish Council, but I think this is at a very early stage. We have had for some time very strong links with Sevenoaks School, who regularly provide VSU pupils to assist our youngsters and who also throw open their sports field for our annual Sports Day.

Please describe your experience of the “Swift and Easy Access” element of the Extended Services core offer, when providing support for children and young people who have additional needs.

My understanding of this is that it’s a one stop shop for social care and health services for pupils and their families.  We offer extensive Swift and Easy Access and it works well and is valued by parents.  There is no need for pupils to travel to a dentist or GP, and it gives parents and pupils confidence that we have everything necessary on site.  We offer all services that parents would be able to access at a children’s centre, except parental counselling.  But our role as a special school includes liaison with and support for parents and families.

In which ways, if any, might the reduction of Government funding for Extended Services in future years affect the Extended Services which Valence School provides?

I think it will kill it stone dead, as it is so dependent on three funding sources - from the NHS, Social Services and Education – and the loss of any one source will have an enormous impact.

Do you know the ratio of funding given by the three providers?

I am not sure, but I think two-thirds comes from Education and the rest is from Social Services and the NHS, with Social Services’ share being the smallest.

In your opinion, how can Kent County Council, together with schools and other providers of Extended Services, ensure the sustainability of Extended Services into the future, and how can collaboration between Kent County Council, schools and external partners, such as those in the voluntary and private sector, be made more effective when providing Extended Services?

I can tell you an example of something that happened in Surrey. My son’s favourite sport is boccia, which is a version of boules developed for people with cerebral palsy.  Both my son and I are qualified coaches and referees for the game, and we both play and coach at the local YMCA in Surrey. 

This joint working by local businesses, Surrey County Council, the YMCA, local schools and NHS initiatives such as the MEND programme provides a whole host of clubs and activities, including breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and holiday clubs for mainstream and SEN pupils, complete with a transport arrangement to and fro. Sports activities cater for the whole community, from the cradle to the grave, and include a fully-accessible gym, but have focused activities for children, teens and young adults. The clubs offered to those children and young people with special needs are a positive activity to engage young people as well as giving parents and families valuable respite time while a club is running. I am not aware of anything like this in Kent, but a similar arrangement could be set up.

Do you receive NHS funding for what you do at this club, as you are, in effect, doing preventative work to improve the health and active engagement of those young people?

We have found that it is very difficult to access money and support from the NHS.

What is the role of the Governing body in supporting/promoting Extended Services, and to what extent are Governors and the Head Teacher on board?  I am concerned that you say the withdrawal of government funding will kill Extended Services stone dead. Surely you can’t afford to let this happen?

This is a major concern. As an education facility, our goal is to give 24-hour education, and we are always looking for ways to improve the syllabus for our residential pupils.  The Head Teacher is very enthusiastic about Extended Services. We are a Sports College, so we are keen to offer everyone the benefits of the facilities that we have, and we will continue to make every effort to engage the local community.

Do you focus on proving any parenting support to the parents of pupils, to support their skills and knowledge?

No, not at the moment.  We are unique in the huge size of our catchment area, which includes London Boroughs, so parents are spread far and wide and it is difficult to gather them together into any group to deliver such sessions.  We have to rely on them to contact us if they need support.  We do not go out to them to promote such ideas.

Do you have any volunteers involved in delivering Extended Services?

Not to my knowledge.

I am concerned that you say the NHS has not replaced one of your nurses.  Can the KCC put pressure on the NHS to fill this gap, as good health care is important to help pupils to concentrate on study?

Our School Improvement Officer has taken up the issue.  I am not sure what our relationship is with the NHS, or how we link to them.  We will continue to pressure the NHS about this.

What would happen if all local government Extended Services interaction were to go away completely?  Would the school be able to be entrepreneurial and provide Extended Services yourselves?

We are pragmatic about the future and we know there is very little money available.  We look to promote ourselves as a business, across Kent and beyond, and we have appointed a Business Manager into the former Bursar post.  We are planning much activity to promote our value to the community, and to enhance what we do.  Whilst being determined to do whatever we need to do to carry on, it must be recognised that the likelihood of funding cuts across the board in education – not just in Extended Services interaction – will have a profound effect on our ability to provide such services.