A stalwart group of objectors met, marched and sang in Swansea on Thursday evening in protest at the continuing saga of the Education Other Than At School (EOTAS) cutbacks.
ANM has covered this fiasco since the beginning when it became clear that it was slice and dice time for services to Swansea’s most vulnerable children.
Mobilisation of stake-holders, questions about transparency of process, including about the scrutiny committee itself, and the increasing involvement of concerned Assembly Members in the debate has led to a high profile campaign which has kept the Council on its toes and the proposed savage cuts to the Home Tuition service have been continually fended off and reduced.
It became clear earlier in the year however, that stake-holders in one of the services in EOTAS, namely Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), had been completely excluded from consultation, not even receiving consultation papers: sadly this move has been followed by the blatant targeting of this service.
Helen Johns, Assistant Secretary of NASUWT in Swansea, expressed procedural concerns to the Cabinet members of swansea Council, senior management in the Local Authority’s Education department, scrutiny panels, as well as the Local Authority’s Office for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which Swansea was the first Local Authority in Europe to sign up to, and who did not reply.
A major concern was the damaging prolonged uncertainly felt by pupils, parents and senior clinical staff, none of whom were included in the February consultation. A Freedom of Information request for details of spending on Agency staff across EOTAS has been unlawfully left unanswered since 13th October.
Eventually senior staff from the CAMHS at Trehafod, who were still receiving referrals from SENCOS in schools and still trying to fit in pupils from their long waiting lists, wrote to the council to enquire as to what was going on with the service, and were told that the entire CAMHS educational service, in which up to between 50 and 60 mostly primary aged children are taught in small groups, was to cease in the new year and that only one to one teaching of pupils unable to attend school for differing reasons would be undertaken by the now reduced Home Tuition service. There is no alternative provision planned for these children who currently attend the CAMHS specialist educational groups.
I asked AM Peter Black at the Guildhall about the economic wisdom of the decision:
The cynical may find irony in the Senedd’s “Inquiry into CAMHS” published in November 2014 which established that there was already a “significant level of unmet need” for children and young people in Wales.
According to the report, the total number of CAMHS treatment referrals in Wales doubled between April 2010 and July 2014 and those waiting for more than 19 weeks increased by a staggering five times. Out of 682 people of all age groups waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment, a huge 652 were children and young people. The report stated, “The service is finding it difficult to cope with the current levels of demand, resulting in significant increases in numbers of young people on waiting lists. It is unclear how the service will cope if numbers of referrals continue to increase at the current rates.”
UNCRC-toting Swansea Council’s response has been to exclude the stake-holders in the service from consultation and simply cut the service from right under their noses without telling them until five months after the decision was unilaterally taken.
How on earth did nobody see that coming?
#Councillor Rayner do reconsider
#Councillor Rayner do reconsider
#CAMHS children do have voices
#CAMHS parents do have voices
#CAMHS clinicians have voices too
#CAMHS clinicians have voices too
Angel Garden
Councillor Rayner, education, EOTAS, mental health, NASUWT, swansea county council, UNCRC
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