In response to the letter sent to Councillor Bridle, here is the
reply received from Peter Lewis at the education department. Please
let me know your opinions. The last piece, I think, says it all.

On the subject of provision for children and young people with
Aspberger's, we have not cut any provision at all. In fact, our
development plan proposes additional provision in a number of areas
including that for children with autistic spectrum disorders, speech,
language and communication problems. We are currently trying to
recruit a replacement for our specialist teacher who recently left –
which, if we were trying to make cuts, would have been an obvious
target at this stage; but we're not cutting and so the recruitment
continues. In fact, our Education Officer for SEN has been
negotiating some additional provision through the Health services
locally and we hope to announce some further improvements over the
summer.

Of course, the picture is not universally `rosy'; there are some
areas where we continue to have problems. There is a national
shortage of speech therapists and the local Primary Care Trust has
done a huge amount to try and recruit locally. But everyone who
works in our field is fully committed to making sure we can meet the
needs of our children and young people in our local provision.

One aspect of this is our definition of `inclusion' – which you refer
to as LEAs "relentlessly pursuing the course of inclusion". I make
no apologies for doing that; the alternative would be to neglect
inclusion or, even worse, pursue its opposite – exclusion! But we
are very clear about what we mean by `inclusion' in Southampton. Our
definition says it is about the most appropriate learning environment
for the child. It is not about `every child in mainstream' in a way
that says some children will be there whether its good for them (and
the other children in school) or not. And it doesn't mean that we
don't challenge our mainstream schools to improve what they can
offer. It means being very careful to assess the child's needs and
match that to resources that will allow them to make progress.

Most of our special schools provide outreach to mainstream schools;
amongst the best of these is that from the special schools for
children and young people with learning difficulties working with
autism in mainstream schools. These are new services that the
council has introduced over the last 5 years of being a unitary
authority and more are planned. As a city we believe in investing in
our children and young people in just the way you describe. We also
need to maintain a good balance between special schools and
mainstream schools provision, not least because that is what many
parents tell us they want.

We have just come to the end of the consultation period for our SEN
development plans and review of provision. But if you want to pass
on any other comments, please do; I can certainly take what you wrote
to Cllr. Bridle as a contribution if you want me to.

As for further communication, now that we know about each other,
let's keep in touch. We try to make sure we have good communications
with parents individually and through groups like yours. Maybe we
could even arrange to meet so that we can demonstrate to your members
that we are listening very seriously to what you tell us. Let me
know what you think about that.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Peter
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