Providing The Right Foundations For A Disabled Child: British children living with disability don’t always have the best start to life. According to Children & Young People Now, a magazine and research advocacy for childcare professionals, government policies are actively contributing to the health of children living with disability. Avoiding becoming part of this requires parents to be the best advocate for their children, and that means providing the right foundations for growth. A good place to start is with benefits, and understanding what the family may be entitled to.
Providing The Right Foundations For A Disabled Child
Understanding the gap
It’s important to consider what benefits the family will be eligible for and whether this will be sufficient to support the family. There are a huge range of schemes available, from the directly targeted Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payments to the more generalised Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit. It’s worth noting that, according to The Guardian, the current benefits package may not be enough to support some children, especially as the cost of living places added pressure on such families. Looking for alternative forms of support, and maintaining a progressive budget, is important.
It is unlikely that forms of support available today will be expanded in any sort of meaningful way, either. Both the government and opposition have signalled largely similar plans for benefits expansions, meaning that what is in place now will continue to need to be embraced by families. Regular reviews of the household budget will be essential as a result.
Making savings
Many families will have opted to use Child Trust funds, which operated for children born between 2002 and 2011, and similar schemes, to provide savings for their children while avoiding paying onerous taxes and fees. Unfortunately, as Sky News highlights, there are difficulties in accessing these funds for disabled children, as they are unable for various reasons to access their accounts and parents are not allowed to access funds in their stead.
A niche example, perhaps, but one that should offer guidance to parents. All of the best-minded saving and diligence in the world can be made redundant by a lack of access to accounts. With that in mind, ensure that your child will be able to obtain the proper access they require, and ensure savings accounts have safeguards in place to support them.
Embracing education
Disabled children are no different to any other in regards to the crucial impact of education on their early development. If anything, disabled children are even more reliant on the quality of their education. As Scope outlines, it’s important that children with needs are able to access a SEN school. This is so they can benefit from targeted learning and are in an appropriate setting, but to get that your child must go through assessment via the local authority ahead of enrolment age.
There is good news on the horizon here. According to The Guardian, there is wide acceptance in the halls of power that there must be a transformation of the special school environment. This should mean thousands more places in relevant schools, better access to those schools through streamlined assessments, and new national standards to help promote that progress and then preserve it. With platforms like Senploy, which are dedicated to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) sector jobs, future generations should find the system easier to navigate.
Improving independence
Financial and educational help will provide the foundations that children with disabilities need to succeed. The next step is independence – providing those children with as much possible freedom as possible. As Gov.uk highlights, schemes including the Motability scheme help in providing that level of independence to children. What’s more, these schemes can help parents to get around too, providing them with the independence they need to provide for the family.
Scope delves further into how parents can successfully bring independence into their children’s lives, and there are some important principles to consider. First, speaking to others with experience is important and can help to create views for the family on how best to maintain independence. Networking can help, too, by providing opportunities to get out and about. With aids and adaptations, it comes down to fostering a social life and engaging in as many activities and experiences as possible.
Every family wants to give their children the best start in life. When a child is born with or develops a disability, this can be made more challenging. The support is there, however, for those families who embrace that challenge and look to create a plan to support their child today, tomorrow and forever. The face of childcare is unlikely to change significantly over the next few years, aside from access to SEN schools. Despite this, the options are good; it just takes a well-organised family to stay ahead and make the most of the opportunities for their kids.
*Disclosure: Collaborative Post.
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