Catherine Ashton, giving the keynote speech at the conference 'Seamless services for children with disabilities', organised by the Disability Rights Commission, said support for disabled children in their first three years was crucial to their life chances. She added that the Government intended to build on the Early Support Pilot Programme (ESPP), set up to provide multi-agency services for disabled children under three and their families.
Baroness Ashton said, 'The major strength of the ESPP is that it delivers multi-agency child-centred services. This has been the abiding principle we have used in developing the ESPP resources, including the family and professional "tool kits". Putting policy into practice can be tricky, however, and that is why we have agreed to work with a series of Pathfinder sites to test out these tool kits on the ground.'
She announced that the areas taking part were Leicester City and Leicestershire, Bromley, Essex, Ealing, Gateshead, Medway, Salford, the STAR Centre in St Helens and Stockton Sure Start. The Government will work with these sites to learn how to deliver a comprehensive multi-agency service for disabled children from birth to three.
Baroness Ashton said the proposal in the Green Paper, Every Child Matters, for a common assessment framework for disabled children would address parents' concerns about having to repeat their child's story over and over again. The Government also expected to announce a Special Educational Needs (SEN) action programme before the end of this year, as part of its vision of inclusion to educate children with SEN in mainstream schools.
Because access to learning for some children depended on the support of other services, the minister said, it was vital for services to be built round schools. The SEN action programme would link to the Children's National Service Framework, Children's Trusts and extended schools.
Also at the conference, Professor Patricia Sloper from the social policy research unit at the University of York spoke about the importance of key workers for successful multi-agency working. She said interviews with parents showed the difference key workers made to a holistic, family-centred approach. One parent had said her keyworker 'thought about the need to improve my life and my other child's life as well as my disabled child's life'.
But Professor Sloper said the provision of key worker services was patchy and that many services were pilot projects with temporary funding.