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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting point and there is a problem with our definition of disability and what effect it has on people's lives. For example, we pay higher rate disability benefits only to people with visual impairments, which shows how much further we have to go. Most people accept that if someone is blind, it is more difficult for them to find their way about, but I had a case recently in which a mother had applied for DLA on the grounds of her daughter's deafness but the application had been rejected. I asked the Royal National Institute for Deaf People about this and it said that each case was considered individually. Charities need to give us better advice, but we also need better advice from the DWP. As a child gets older, we expect them to be able to go to school on their own. Perhaps they can walk to primary school at 10—in my case, I was seven, but times have changed—and go on a bus, with friends, to secondary school at 11. For the parent of a child with a disability, all bets are off. If the child has a physical disability, they will probably be eligible for school transport provided by the local authority, but in the case of a child with deafness, it is more of a judgment call about whether it matters that they cannot hear the traffic. Rather than let their child walk to school in those circumstances, and perhaps then get the telephone call that every parent dreads, most would prefer to play it safe and take the child to school safely right through to 18. That brings us back to the question of how parents can balance that with their working lives. I mentioned ADHD and I wanted to stress the need for the interface with child and adolescent mental health services. Many children with behavioural issues are under the supervision of a psychiatrist, or on medication under such supervision. The silo problem then arises, with one approach from the school, another from health services and yet another from social services, and never the three shall speak. We need to join up the services for those children. The hon. Gentleman said that children can fall into an abyss at age 11, but they face an utter void at 18. Most mental health trusts have no provision for adult ADHD services. In a way, the children we are debating today are privileged, because they are being taken into consideration, but when children turn 18, they are no longer eligible for child and adolescent mental health services. They become subject to the adult psychiatric service. I pay tribute to a constituent of mine who has attended my surgery several times and spoken very movingly about the challenges he has faced in acquiring an adult diagnosis and proper psychiatric support for his son. Through that parent's diligence and persistence, Wakefield mental health services, together with Kirklees and Huddersfield, has set up its first ever adult ADHD service, starting from this April. As the hon. Gentleman knows, young people with ADHD are more likely not to be able to find a job and to get in trouble with the police. They often do not have a daily structure to their lives, because they are no longer in secondary education, and they no longer have proper medical supervision because they are now adults and, obviously, instantly better. That is clearly not the case, and the Government must look at that issue very seriously. We need to avoid having a postcode lottery, in which such services are a priority for some areas, which have a campaigning individual, but are ignored by health chiefs in other areas. My final point is on dyslexia. Statistics from the Dyslexia Association suggest that many children with the condition are not diagnosed. In a two-form entry school, it is likely that there are at least two children with dyslexia in each year. The challenge that schools should be given is not to reduce the number of statements, but to identify those children with dyslexia as soon as possible. The experts say that there is a golden window for learning to read between the ages of five and three quarters and six and a half. If that opportunity is lost, and the child does not acquire the ability to read, they instantly start to fall behind. I pay tribute to what the Government have achieved through the Every Child a Reader, Every Child a Speaker and Every Child a Counter programmes, but dyslexia probably accounts for a significant percentage of underperformance. If we want to improve our GCSE results ever further—I want 100 per cent. of children to get five A-C grades, not 48 or 50 per cent. as at present—addressing the problem of dyslexia could lead to a step change in results and attainment. It is possibly the single most common undiagnosed or late-diagnosed learning disability, and it can have catastrophic consequences for children's educational careers. If we believe that every child matters, we have to ensure that the children with the greatest difficulties are put first.