In 2002/23 , Derby City Council spent £8.4m on Home to School transport. The cost of the service increases each year with last year’s budget being overspent by £3m. The Council has taken action to introduce cuts, however it will seriously disadvantage some of the most vulnerable children in Derby.

The £8.4m covers the cost of transport assistance for 1371 children/students in the 5-19 years age bracket. The Council has a statutory responsibility to provide assistance to pre-16 children; 1135 of the 1371 are pre-16, costing £6.8m of the £8.4m. It is the post-16 group where the assistance is discretionary – the budget for that group is £1.56m. Of the 236 children who are post-16, 194 have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) costing £1.47m, and it is these families who are being the hardest hit.

Following an 11 week consultation, the proposal, being implemented for post-16 SEND children, is to replace the Council arranged, and funded, taxi/minibus service, based on the child’s support needs, with a Personal Travel Budget (PTB). The PTB is a standardised annual cost based on distance bands, not on the child’s support needs.

The average annual cost for transport assistance for each post-16 SEND child is £7.5k – the PTB is £1060 pa for less than 2 miles per single journey, up to £5300 pa for more than 16 miles. The PTB falls significantly short of the current annual cost.

The planned savings that the Council has incorporated into the Budget is:

• £0.47m – contract efficiencies, opportunities for block contracts, strategic partnering, and independent travel training
• £0.233m – implementation of new PTBs.

The cost saving from implementing PTBs doesn’t result from a more efficient, stream lined service, but by simply offloading the cost/problem to parents. On average, the saving burdened across the 194 children is £1200 each – this is equivalent to a 60% increase in the Council Tax bill for those households.

The Council is offering Independent Travel Training (ITT) through T2 to assist a child in developing more cost efficient options for getting to school; that is appropriate for some children.

Implementation.

The Cabinet paper of 15th February 2023 summarised the Consultation responses:

“The majority of the responses are not supportive of this change and focus on concerns that young people may experience challenges around travelling independently to school or college, and that PTB’s will not suit everyone. Respondents also referenced added stress being placed on parents and young people who may not be able to manage a PTB. Other comments received related to the importance of individual needs and circumstances which must be considered when assessing applications.”

Cabinet Paper 15/2/23 (my emphases)

Despite the substantial reservations expressed in the Consultation, the Cabinet approved the implementation of PTBs from September 2023. It recognised that there would be exceptional circumstances that may mean that a PTB wouldn’t be appropriate

“…where a learner has complex medical needs that require specialised travel assistance, and there are medical or health reasons why a parent/carer cannot manage a PTB, will the Council consider making the direct provision of taxi or minibus transport”

Home to School Travel Assistance Post-16 Policy Statement, Academic Year 2023-24

Parents are strongly encouraged to apply on-line – the window for the application was from the 1st April 2023 to 31 May 2023.

Parents’ experiences.

• The PTB proposal transfers the responsibility for arranging the taxi to the parents from the Council. Parents will not have the buying power of the Council, less likely to secure a long term contractual arrangement and consequently will have to rely on regular booking at a time of day when taxis are scarce. The parents will have to be their own “Transport manager”. This is of particular concern where children with autism / anxiety related conditions rely on consistency of taxi driver / travel “escort” for their daily journeys.
• The Council has made it clear that the financial impacts and/or “Parents’ social or other family or work commitments” are not a consideration. Families with multiple children, at different schools, together with the need to balance existing work commitments does present real logistical problems.

The style of implementation by the Council is not helping Parents’ deal with this new policy. Parents comments in italics.

• The Council’s Transport department will not approve travel assistance unless the signed final Education, Health and Care Plan for the child is published by the SEND Department, to the Transport Dept.
  • Families have significant issues making contact with SEND officers in order to get finalised plans, or indeed any contact at all.
  • One family has potentially missed out on their son’s post 16 apprenticeship due to their SEND officer not actioning any of the phase transfer review paperwork for 2 months past the deadline and not responding to requests.
  • Families are being told to reapply when they are declined for transport if they have a non-finalised plan due to it not being updated by their SEND officer, missing legal deadlines.
  • Families who have a new provision, temporary alternative provision, or two settings are being declined transport, despite the SEND team having arranged this. The two departments are not working together.

• Whilst the Council does not consider finances / existing family/work commitments as relevant, the policy is presenting problems:
  • Families who have larger families and multiple children with SEND in different settings are being set up for disaster and non-attendance by removing the Home To School Transport (HTST) and offering inadequate budgets for one child, which will then affect the attendance of all others. Circumstances are not being looked at individually, blanket policy is being applied
  • The local authority chose not to visit independent schools to discuss HTST policy changes last year, and these independent school families feel targeted since their school fee cost and travel cost are usually the highest cost. They are being knowingly offered a PTB that does not meet the cost of travel.
  • There is no support or reasonable adjustments with the HTST application process for disabled parents and no plan of how to support disabled parents who cannot physically transport their child to school, or afford private taxis through a PTB, when they have previously had successful local authority arranged taxi transport.

• The option for Independent Travel Training (ITT):
  • Post 16 families who have specified interest in ITT have not had any contact from T2 to move ahead

Comment

The policy is creating a 2 tier system discriminating against those children with neurodivergent/mental health conditions vs physical disabilities. Typically children with just physical disabilities can attend City based schools; those with non-physical disabilities are, quite often, in out of City schools ( due to lack of local provision) with the consequent travel costs.

Widening the disparity between children who have physical disabilities and children with solely neurodivergent and mental health conditions, by offering to arrange taxi transport to physically disabled children in Derby city schools, and then offering inadequate PTB to equally disabled children who attend out of area schools.

With potential longer term consequences:

There is no plan in place to manage placement failures due to lack of transport provision for children in out of area schools, who will end up Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). Many children in out of area schools are not studying at the same stage as their non disabled peers because of the time it took to find a school place after a failed mainstream placement, and are now doubly disadvantaged to find themselves unable to attend the provision it took so long to find and settle into as autistic young people.

The amount of money the Council is planning to save is negligible. It represenst 0.1% of the net annual budget – it is barely measurable. Yet the policy results in significant social consequences for a small number of vulnerable children and their families.

The post-16 Travel Assistance is discretionary and the Council has to be cost efficient but it also has a social obligation to the residents. Many parents, who have been in receipt of the existing support in the 22/23 school year, have designed their work/family commitments and logistical arrangements on the understanding that they have that support. It is unreasonable that they are expected to change this with little notice and to manage the consequences, themselves. If PTBs were the only answer then a phased implementation over a longer period of time would be more professional.

The Council’s time could be spent more positively and constructively by

• examining more efficient contractual arrangements with transport companies to deliver the required service.
• improving the SEND processes including those between the SEND and Transport departments so they are seamless and not fractured.
• spend less time creating friction with parents and save costs by working together. The underlying philosophy seems to be driven by arbitrarily trying to avoid costs rather than providing a service to support the child’s approved needs.

POSTSCRIPT

The unfolding fiasco with Home to School Transport is an additional level of stress created by the Council on to the parents of SEND children. It seems that despite previous promises and aspirations made by Council Officers that too many parents still have to fight for the right for their child to have an appropriate education.

This is wrong and unethical!

The answer is not for parents to be represented by funded organisations who will necessarily have their own agenda. The Council needs to listen, directly, to those with the lived experience and change their approach away from being adversarial. It doesn’t have to cost more, it might actually be more efficient for all involved. Trust has been lost. The Council needs to set up a “Truth Commission” style engagement and transform the way Derby educates and cares for children with Special Educational Needs, and Disabilities.