The fight for an education - The Sunday Times article

HCB's Head of Education Law, Andrew Barrowclough, gives his views on the state of the current SEN system in England.

HCB Solicitors, in Cardiff, is one of the UK’s leading education lawyers who fields hundreds of inquiries from parents lost in what he refers to as the “EHCP maze”. 

“The process is supposed to involve health and social services, but that almost never happens so it’s completely led by education,” he says. “That results in the true extent of a child’s needs not being taken into account. Local education authorities [LEAs] should be consulting occupational therapists, and in many cases speech and language therapists, to assess language and sensory needs and fine and gross motor skills. However, they often don’t have the budget and the NHS waiting lists are too long, so the child’s real difficulties get missed and they are denied support.”

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**Article first published in The Sunday Times magazine on 28th October 2018