Post-16 Transitions: a Longitudinal Study of Young People with ...

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examples here are Maria who wants to set up home with her young daughter, and Andrea, who experiences tensions with other family members. With no job, a commitment to full-time education and a young daughter to bring up, Maria is in no position to live independently. She is heavily dependent on her own mother to provide childcare and there is a sense that her mother is discouraging her moves towards independence so that she can have more contact with her granddaughter. Andrea expresses a similar dilemma in the following terms. She is, she says desperate to: “Have a house on my own, not a flat. It’ll never happen but be great if it did… I don’t have much of a choice at the moment, ‘cos I can’t get any benefits to help me get a place of my own until I’ve left home... I need the benefits to leave but I can’t get the benefits until I’ve left. It’s a loop and I’m stuck in it…” Andrea, a bright young woman variously described as having conditions including autism and behavioural, emotional and social difficulties was not optimistic about the support available to help her to leave her family home, in which she was finding it increasingly difficult to live: ‘If I really really desperately wanted a place on my own I could just leave and say I’m homeless, sleep on the streets... Even if I did go, even if I went out on the streets and said I’m homeless, they’d say well you’ve got a home you can go to.’ In the event, Andrea’s key worker at her training provider found her a place in a Foyer (an accommodation scheme for unemployed young people) and after some hesitation Andrea accepted. Not only does this confirm the high level of support offered by this individual but it raises the possibility that Andrea might be in a position to make genuine progression from her hitherto somewhat aimless situation. The caveat, however, is that Andrea had her own reasons for hesitating about accepting the place: “But it’s a box, it’s not a room, it’s a box. You’ve got a bed. You’ve got a cupboard right next to a bed and you got a cooker right at the end of the bed…I considered it for about two seconds. The whole idea of moving out is so you can take all your stuff with you and you move out, not so you leave all your stuff behind and you sleep somewhere else. It’s not the same.” There must be some doubt, therefore, about whether Andrea’s experiment with independent living will last. The other situation in which financial difficulties can arise is where some element of provision for the young person is dependent on funding which is not guaranteed. This is not a common situation. Young people who remain at school are protected by the school and LEA SEN procedures; in fact, they are likely to have statements and have their provision specified in and protected by the statement. Other young people are likely to be on pre-vocational or other courses where the course provision has stable funding even if the entitlement for any individual (as Devesh, discovered), is not guaranteed. The vulnerable Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2 161
group here are those who need some provision over and above what is provided as ‘standard’. One example is Stuart whose place at a specialist college came under threat when he wished to exceed the usual length of stay. Another is Sophie whose severe and complex difficulties mean that she will need long-term college and day centre provision. This has been apparent for some time and she is in the sixth form of a school where transition planning is taken very seriously. However, the funding of her post-16 provision is dependent on Social Services because it does not lead through LSC-approved progression routes, and Sophie's Headteacher is scathing of Social Services’ capacity to deliver: “… they haven’t got the social workers to re-place anyhow. I got a letter from the children with disabilities team saying ‘please don’t refer any more children because we are shedding cases because we haven’t got enough personnel’, you can’t do that because if they need a referral, they have to have a referral, we can’t take them on, there is nothing we can do, we can’t do it. It’s just a joke in terms that they are the primary source of funding for our children, they have to make the applications, they have to do all of these things and quite often they don’t know the children, quite often they are new, they are not fully qualified, they don’t know how to access the system, how to get the funding that they need to get.” Sophie’s head sees this as part of the general turmoil of Social Services provision. The issue is not lack of funding per se, but the failure to make the correct moves to access funding caused by lack of social workers and by the transfer of cases from Children’s to Adult Services. Since Stuart’s problems also stem from difficulties in accessing Social Services funding, the impression is that SSDs may have real difficulties in meeting their responsibilities towards young people with the most complex needs in a planned and predictable manner. Sophie’s Headteacher hopes that Connexions will be able to iron these problems out and she believes she has already begun to see some improvements. It remains to be seen whether her hopes are fulfilled. Marcus provides us with an example of engagement with Social Services, benefits, and other sources of support. Because of his severe and complex difficulties, he and his family already receive significant levels of support not only from Education but also from the benefits system and from Social Services. Currently he receives attendance and mobility allowances and incapacity benefit. At present, Marcus’s needs appear to be adequately met, but the real challenges for him and his family lie (as so often in deferred transitions) when he finally leaves school. He faces a choice between local authority provision and, as his family see it, much superior private provision which is run by the same charitable organisation which maintains his current school. His benefits would not cover the costs for this placement nor for the one-to-one care which he needs, though he could apply for grants to cover both. However, since his family already meet most of his personal care needs, his mother would prefer to have funds to support leisure activities (at weekends, for instance) which will make Marcus more independent of his family and give them more 162 Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2
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RESEARCH Post-16 Transitions: a Lon
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Acknowledgements The authors would
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Contents Executive Summary viii 1.
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Executive Summary Introduction This
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help or information from the young
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profound difficulties and those whi
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1. Introduction This report present
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Main-stage fieldwork The aim in the
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Table 1.2: Estimates of the number
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• Chapter ten draws together the
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when educational options have a str
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of work-related training schemes. I
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without very considerable effort on
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introduction of a Children’s Bill
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3. Characteristics of Young People
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difficulties. The less common forms
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Table 3.6: Statement of special edu
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Table 3.10: Change in SEN status N
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severe learning difficulties/profou
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4. School and Outcomes A primary ai
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Table 4.2: Young person’s recall
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Table 4.5: Reasons why transition p
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Table 4.7: People involved in the t
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Table 4.9: Coverage of transition p
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Table 4.10: Coverage of transition
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Figure 4:3: Reasons why Year 11 dis
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Table 4.13: Provider of help to pre
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Table 4.15: Most helpful person whe
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Table 4.18: Extent to which school
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In cases such as these, transition
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were choices but young person and f
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Figure 4:6: Young People’s views
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“In school he had quite a lot of
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Figure 4.7: Whether gained qualific
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Figure 4.11: Level of qualification
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• Over three-quarters of all youn
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Table 5.1: Current main activity Al
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Table 5.4: Current main activity, b
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Table 5.6: Current main activity, b
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college for people with LDD, and we
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transition plan to have sought advi
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5.2.3 Ease of transition The majori
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Table 5.14: Occupation/training typ
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5.3.3 Method of jobsearch and advic
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• help to progress into work/trai
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Table 5.21: Reasons for current ina
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Table 5.24: Advice received when lo
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However, he was finding this new co
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years, often in quite productive ac
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Table 5.25: Parent/carer view on ex
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employment or a training placement
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Figure 6:2: Benefit receipt, by SEN
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had not had any subsequent contact
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Table 6.3: Type of support lost sin
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Table 6.5: Additional support recei
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met by his special school sixth for
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education since their child left Ye
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• colleges (33 per cent of parent
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published information against just
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who had a statement of SEN and/or h
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Table 6.12: Parent/carer knowledge
Page 124 and 125: Figure 7:1: Qualifications gained (
Page 126 and 127: Parents were also asked to reflect
Page 128 and 129: “(He is) a bit more independent;
Page 130 and 131: immaturity and the fact that she is
Page 132 and 133: 8. Leisure Activities and Social Li
Page 134 and 135: Figure 8:2: Weekday evenings spent
Page 136 and 137: For some young people, the involvem
Page 138 and 139: For Li, who has found his own way o
Page 140 and 141: Figure 9:2: Parental views on young
Page 142 and 143: Table 9.1: Views on the future, all
Page 144 and 145: Table 9.5: View (4) on the future,
Page 146 and 147: 9.3 Next activity Almost three-quar
Page 148 and 149: plans for their futures but for var
Page 150 and 151: 10. Conclusions 10.1 Introduction T
Page 152 and 153: Transition planning is purposely fo
Page 154 and 155: needs in both the academic and the
Page 156 and 157: and most reported that they had mor
Page 158 and 159: the most severe and complex difficu
Page 160 and 161: Appendix One: Wave 2 survey Summary
Page 162 and 163: Table A.1: Profile of participating
Page 164 and 165: 10.5.2 Weighting Table A.3 reports
Page 166 and 167: • Economic factors • Structural
Page 168 and 169: gave their consent and who lived in
Page 170 and 171: Gareth is a young man with learning
Page 172 and 173: she does not succeed, her Connexion
Page 176 and 177: time to themselves. The problem for
Page 178 and 179: here. He is one of the nicest peopl
Page 180 and 181: Appendix Four: References Bignall T
Page 182: Copies of this publication can be o
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