Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely this week met with new Children, Families and Wellbeing Minister, Claire Coutinho, to explain to her why she should support the Isle of Wight Council’s bid for a new school to support children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
In the meeting, which took place on Monday (19th December), Bob specifically asked the Minister to make the Isle of Wight a priority for new SEND school funding.
Bob told the Minister that the number of children with Education Health and Care Plans on the Island had increased since the introduction of the Children and Families Act in 2014, and it was becoming increasingly challenging to serve the Island’s children with the current provision in place.
There are currently 2 maintained special schools on the Island – St George’s and Medina House – and both are full.
Speaking about his meeting, Bob has said:
“I made it very clear to the Minister that the Isle of Wight is short of SEND places and that we need a new SEND school here as a matter of urgency.
“The case for the Isle of Wight is strong because we also have practical reasons for needing additional places here with some Island families needing to send their children to the mainland to access SEND placements. For these families, being further away from their children is not only upsetting but it is also inconvenient and costly for them. It is also costly for our local authority. The more placements we can create on the Island the better.”
Mr Seely said civil servants were due to report back in the New Year as to whether the bid has been successful.
Why….. don’t encourage all these people who have kids with all the latest “designer” illness. What we actually need is a 2nd hospital seeing as housing plans are running out of control and being built where ever the developers can squeeze another load in. Do more stringent checks on these so called “special needs” Sorry if that upsets people, but it is true.
And who are you going to get to run this 2nd hospital when there is a staffing crisis at the current one?
Maybe if the Government actually agreed to talks with the nurses and took their demands seriously those that remain might be encouraged to stay and more might be encouraged to join.
As it is you will be lucky if we have one hospital on the Island by the time of the next election.
How is your private health insurance, Digby? We will soon be like the US where the ambulance controller will ask you how you are going to pay when you call 999.
And the thing is you don’t know how much it is going to cost until the bill arrives (anything between $500 and $20,000).
And that’s just the ride to the hospital.
There is nothing “designer” about special needs. You can barely string together a coherent sentence and you think your opinion is valid over doctors, consultants and various healthcare professionals? Perhaps look a little further than the end of your honker, educate yourself a little and come back to the internet when you can converse like a decent human being.
Your comment is not true. All your comment shows is a lack of decency, intelligence and lots and lots of ignorance.
I agree with you
A simple search on the Internet would show there’s a worldwide explosion of adhd problems. Possibly the “designer” illness the poster refers to. So not only do we need more special needs places but research into what causes it.
People like Digby need education, difficult as that may be.
You are an uneducated prick! Perhaps before you make disgusting comments you should visit the school! Every child in there has more class and morals than you!
Agree. Some of these ‘illnesses’ are in fact behavioural problems that should be addressed by social workers
There are three special needs schools here, one being the Isle of Wight council building..
Issue imo is on one hand Parents of joeys insist on the right to send them to a school where normal children attend, often then at great cost as all the schools then have to have larger doors, ramps, quite rooms for when they go wild etc.
But now we have to supply ‘special schools’ as well.
Should not have it both ways as too costly.
In all honesty most of these special students will never amount to anything so a basic home education via PC and their Parents would be enough to cover educational needs and entertainment of singing the ‘wheels of the bus’ etc to keep them amused.
After all the parents who created these people get well paid by the state and high time imo they pulled their weight in looking after them.
I would like to punch you into next week until you need ramps and wide doors etc to get by
Very well said onehand.
Those who diss your comments likely have one in the family, so whilst knowing what you say is spot on, they want to keep getting all the benefits and aid.
Many get a nice new car, an allocated parking space, and blue badge, other helpers to take their special out on days out to give them a break, they get thousands extra a year, and to cap it all, the schools make them ‘welcome’ ONLY because the schools get extra state funding.
But it is ALL paid for by us, and we are funding a burden for society forever, so of course people question the justification of paying thousands for those who will only ever take.
Not their fault, BUT neither is it ours. Parents should fully fund these children or cut back
The real question is why are there suddenly so many people needing to send their kids to a place that doesn’t cater to the majority.
perhaps if the parents actually spent more time teaching their kids, instead of dumping them infront of a tv or phone screen, then they would not be considered as special educational needs.
Have you seen some of the parents, clueless springs to mind.
Are you honestly this ignorant? No wonder you posted on here under a fake name and guise, I too would be extremely embarrassed to hold such a view on special needs. No doubt you are some old fogey who holds the incorrect ideology that special needs were not around in your day, when in reality all these children and adults have always been here. Just in today’s day and age we treat these people like humans and don’t lock them away, out of mind and out of sight.
Thanks to science and medical progression people are no longer locked in mental institutes and are given the support they need to flourish. Now I suggest you take your disgusting views and stick them up your decrepit backside where they belong.
Re: ” people are no longer locked in mental institutes”
Yes and the country has never been more unsafe for people out and about, and wealth is draining out at an alarming rate by over funding those who will never pay their way in life and be a very costly mill-stone around the taxpayers necks for ever.
You bred it, one of you stay home and look after it and with internet learning surely you could eventually ensure it can do the basic things needed in life, rather than US all have to pay expensive helpers to waste cash and time upon just teaching how to basic things so almost every one will still be a burden for ever more.
Still I expect the extra cash and having others tend them for a large part of the week is hard to give up
The truth is SEN on the island has been unfit for purpose for many years, so Bob thanks for the newspaper update, but that’s all it will be, you will move on .. or be ousted .. and the island’s SEN function will remain same .. let’s have the next spin vote winning notice please Bob, but we are not fooled by you.
Seeing the way people carry on along Great Preston Road, it’s not only the
Children who have special needs.
Jason I think you have your own discuss needs! You need educating!
Why do we have so many of these Children? What’s going wrong ?
Too many parents who are told they are high risk of having a handicapped child, STILL don’t abort. Yet if they had to look after it 24/7 and if they had to work harder to pay for it, instead of burdening the state with the cost and responsibility then they would think again.
Add druggies, and care in the community adults having children as the easiest thing in the world do do, hence we have more joeys than ever before,
I thought the councils mission was to close as many schools as possible.
Pugh started the demise of what used to be fit for purpose but with little help or investment, the West Wight is now a shambles though lack of joined up thinking . But don’t bother Bob, he’s on a mission to become a minister, whichever way he can . Failed with Bojo, failed with Trust……, and has no chance with Rishi .. so some good news . .
Special needs, like ADHD. This is just a label put on a child that hasn’t been bought up correctly with discipline and rules and doesn’t know the word, NO.
Granted, the island has many children with complex needs who truly need specialist schooling. Hope this grant for such a school can be agreed.
Bob you have still lost my vote
I think that they should sterilise ALL pore people !
Its not so much being poor, but the hard fact that too many poor people have damaged sperm and eggs from over consumption of drugs, and alcohol.
Add to that fact that many are ‘care in the community’ beings who you wouldn’t trust to look after a dog, let alone a child, and then I agree that such beings should be sterilised as they just add more drain on society.
IF you have a handicapped child, then YOU should expect to have a lower standard of life by being prepared to fund it’s costly needs
But the parents of such think that they have added needy person that WE should all fawn over and financially support.
They should fund the unfortunate child as that is the gamble you take when not using contraception or aborting a joey