General News
Hancock’s Dyslexia Bill, where has it gone?
Hancock’s Dyslexia Bill, where has it gone?
Following on from our story of the proposed reading on the 8th April of The Rt. Hon Matt Hancock’s Bill for Dyslexia Testing for Children we have supplied with further information from his office.
The Bill was withdrawn before the 2nd reading and we were intrigued as to the reasons for its withdrawal. James Davies who is Head of Communications for Hancock has informed us that following Matt’s meeting with Education Minister Will Quince there has been some excellent progress in this area, as outlined in the SEND review.
“Given the commitments made by the Department for Education, it made sense to withdraw the bill and to resubmit it after the Queen’s speech.”
It would seem that there has been progress made and some of this may well appear during the Consultation Period of the SEND report, a Green Paper published this week.
Titled:
SEND review: right support, right place, right time
This consultation is being held on another website.
The consultation closes at 11:45pm on 1 July 2022
The government says it is committed to improving outcomes for children and young people with SEND and those in alternative provision.
To achieve this ambition they want to work with and hear from:
children and young people
parents and carers
those who advocate and work with the SEND sector
local and national system leaders
Together, they say, we can ensure every child and young person with SEND and those in alternative provision can thrive and be well prepared for adult life.
You can access the Green Paper here in full
We asked Lisa Donaldson, Head of Vision at SeeAbility, who have developed the LOCSU pathway for her views on the Green Paper.
“SeeAbility welcome the commitment in the paper to providing the right support in the right place at the right time for every child with SEND and the NHSE special schools eye care service is a great step towards this. The paper also commits to commission analysis to better understand the healthcare support that children and young people with SEND need so that there is a clear focus on SEND in health workforce planning. Timely Primary Eyecare is a key part of this for every child with SEND. ICBs must identify an Executive lead for SEND. Responsibility lies here in ensuring all children with SEND have their primary eye care needs fully met with suitable pathways, such as the locsu paediatric and learning disability and autism eye care pathways. ”
Matt Hancock’s office has promised to keep us informed as to any progress with Dyslexia Screening. Despite publishing our own story (February 24th) some weeks ago querying the lack of support or interest in dyslexia screening from the College and other membership bodies of the profession we have yet to receive any assessment or argument for or against such a Bill.
But Hancock’s team appear pretty confident that such a Bill will come forth.
We are very lucky to have engaged Lisa Donaldson as on of the Opchat Lecture Series at 100% Optical on the first day, Saturday where she will discuss this and many other issues relating to examining children with learning difficulties. It will give opinio formers and leaders of the profesiona an opportunity to divulge their views.
The Opchat Lectures will take place at 2pm on every day at the Optical Suppliers Association stand M230.
