Over the past year, Cabinet Minister Ed Balls has been exchanging letters with a 14 year old boy from Cornwall, although his mother has found it impossible to get a meeting with Cornwall Council officers to discuss special educational needs.

Pictured: Jude Robinson, Lee Jameson and Debi Evans with some of the letters from Labour's Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls to Debi's son David. 

Labour candidates Jude Robinson (Camborne, Redruth & Hayle) and Lee Jameson (St Austell and Newquay) met with Debi Evans and other mothers this week to hear about the lack of support for children with autism and Asperger’s  Syndrome in Cornwall. 

Debi Evans of Par, who has a Post Graduate qualification in Autism (Children) is so incensed at the treatment of children with special needs in Cornwall that she has set up a website www.jelibean.co.uk to offer support and help to parents of children on the spectrum.

Lee Jameson said: “It was a very emotional meeting because these parents feel their children have been failed by Cornwall’s education system and they are struggling to cope.”

Debi Evans said: “Ed Balls has taken the time and trouble to answer David’s questions when the people who should have listened to us shut the door in our faces.  The reality of living on the autistic spectrum is very different to how it is portrayed – these kids are being failed.”

Jude Robinson said: “There is a problem right across Cornwall because the Council has failed to listen.  The Lamb Review said how important it is that local authorities and teachers work more closely with parents.  It would make such a difference if Cornwall listened as Ed Balls has done.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The Lamb Inquiry was established as part of the Government’s response to the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee Report Special Educational Needs: Assessment and Funding. The Lamb Inquiry, under the chairmanship of Brian Lamb, the Chair of the Special Educational Consortium, will investigate a range of ways in which parental confidence in the SEN assessment process might be improved.

The Government response was the Lamb Implementation Plan, published by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in February 2010.

The Implementation Plan focuses on the following five key implementation areas:

●● Improving skills and practice within the workforce and focusing on children’s

outcomes;

●● Strengthening engagement with parents;

●● Ensuring a strategic local approach;

●● Making the system more accountable;

●● The national framework.