Ms Rachel Cassen:

I thank the Chairman and Deputy Wynne. We have various comments on the recommendations from the committee’s report which was published in July and we watched with interest the committee’s public meeting which the committee has uploaded live on the website.

I will directly address both the Deputy’s question and recommendation No. 23. Recommendation No. 23 in the committee’s first report: Aligning Disability Funding with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states:

Children with special educational needs have the same rights to appropriate education as children without special educational needs. Accordingly, [you recommend] ... that the [EPSEN Act] Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 ... is [fully] commenced and ... implemented to ensure that children with special educational needs are educated, where possible, in an inclusive environment.

LEAP has a proven track record in asserting the importance of inclusive education in line with Article 24 of the CRPD. Inclusive education is the foundation for social inclusion and participation of all citizens in ordinary community life. We know that the majority of children with disabilities attend their local neighbourhood school. However, there are very few resources available to families to support the full inclusion of their child. That is not just inclusion in the ordinary school building but inclusion in the whole curriculum and the full life of the school, such as the playground - to break it down - and inclusion on school trips.

We understand that many children, as the Deputy has described, feel “more comfortable” placing their child in a special school setting. Within that, we would include the autism spectrum disorder, ASD units, more commonly or typically known as classrooms. I would like to make a comment on those in a moment, if I may.

In 2019, LEAP hosted a joint conference with the school of education in Trinity College Dublin called "Belonging in School: The What, Why and How of Inclusive Education". This conference resulted in the formation of LEAP's families for inclusive education subcommittee, whose purpose is to provide a platform for families to share knowledge and experience of pursuing an inclusive education for their child. During the pandemic, we had a meeting with Deputy Madigan at which we spoke about the issue of inclusion and the push at that time to return children with special educational needs to school ahead of their non-disabled peers. We gave powerful testimony from families who are members of LEAP who did not want that. They only wanted their children to return when all their children were returning. They felt this proposal did not support their inclusion and that it othered them. There was a lot of othering during the pandemic. Imagine one child in a family going back while the others did not when, for years, the family had worked really hard to allow all of their children to go the same school, the local or neighbourhood school, so that they could be involved in the life of that school and community with their brothers and sisters. Our families felt that this well-intentioned effort undid a lot of the careful work families had done with a view to full inclusion.

I will now comment on the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, increase in the number of special classes by more than 130%, from 548 in 2011 to 1,456 across the country now. Some 1,192 of these classes are so-called autism spectrum disorder special classes. Special units or classrooms are contrary to Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. LEAP is concerned about the normalisation of the segregation of children with autism in special classrooms. We ask the committee to challenge the assumption that any child should be segregated and placed only with other children with the same or similar diagnostic labels. Testimony from actual autistic adults is beginning to emerge. These are adults who were segregated in these settings as children. One will particularly hear this testimony in the UK and other countries. It is not good. We need to listen to these voices.