A key part of a child’s educational success is that they be able to connect to services beyond school that support families’ wellbeing and children’s development in all areas. Most of the participants in this study mentioned that they felt there were serious concerns with their ability to reach services and receive proper support. One family had four children and the eldest child has autism. The mother described how the support from Ryegate children’s centre (a centre for children and young people with special needs) was harder to access during the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the family is waiting for an Education Health and Care Plan, however, this was delayed due to the pandemic. The mother also noticed her youngest child may have autism and asked for an assessment when she was six months old. 18 months later, she was still waiting for the assessment to take place. The usual wait-time is one year, however, the delays in assessments are a result of the Covid-19 pandemic as children were not being seen during lock down and this created a back-log.
Some of the families who took part in the study were referred to the Multi- Agency Support Team (MAST), however, they were conducting appointments by phone which families found difficult, especially as many of the families speak English as an additional language.
Another mother had a young child and reported that she didn’t see the health visitor for long periods of time due to the Covid-19 pandemic. She was sent the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) to complete when her child was 2, which she found really difficult to do. In the end, the health visitor spoke to her over the phone and asked if the mother had any serious concerns about her child.
The health visitor advised that she could go and see the doctor or a health visitor if there was anything she was very worried about. This is clearly different to the usual standard of care where a health visitor is able to come to the house and help the parent to fill the ASQ-3 form in if they are not able to fully understand the questions.
The Health Inclusion Team provide hands-on support for vulnerable families, where they would do anything from introducing families to local services and toddler groups, helping them to find a local school or even walking people down to their local shops so that they know where they are. One important element of the Health Inclusion Team’s remit is to work with vulnerable families and help them to engage with their children through activities, play and nursery rhymes. The introduction of Covid-19 restrictions meant that the amount of home visits reduced, however, visits continued if it was deemed necessary, for example, if there was a safe- guarding concern. Although practical support was made more difficult by the restrictions, the families received a regular safe and well call from the team and if then from that call it became apparent that the family were not either receiving free school meal vouchers for the children or had not been given/offered data/Wi-Fi access, then the Health Inclusion Team either contacted the school to make them aware or contacted COSS who made the contact with school to ensure that these families received the help and support available.
In addition, schools expressed that there was some frustration after schools were fully opened and doing everything without Covid restrictions, services that support schools to do their jobs were not open, or operating a reduced ‘working from home’ service. If support services, such as speech and language, MAST, SEN assessments, and even the bursar services are not coming in to schools, or not doing as much as they could to support children, then that creates difficulties for schools as they need these resources in order to be successful. It seems that schools were given national guidelines they had to follow, and they had to open when the government mandated them to do so, however, this obligation did not extend to support services.
Many of the organisations who supported families also expressed how difficult it was for families to access support services for their children. Phrases such as ‘services just shut their doors’ and ‘services were crashing’ express just how difficult it was for people to get the help they need for their children. In addition, contacting services via the internet is problematic as this report has shown (see Barrier 1: Digital Access).
Contacting services by phone can be difficult for people who are not confident speakers of English. Many of the participants spoke about how they would prefer not to answer the phone as they were scared to speak English with services and possibly say something ‘wrong’. Phoning services can also be difficult as many have pre-recorded messages asking callers to press option 1 to reach a particular department, which can be a barrier as well.
That said, one participant was fleeing domestic violence and living in temporary accommodation with her children. She found that contacting services by phone and on line was beneficial as she did not drive a car to get to children’s centres and she was reluctant to go to many services in the local area for fear of being recognised by someone who was in contact with the perpetrator. Therefore, speaking to social care by phone was convenient and more discreet.
All schools and organisations spoken to quickly adopted outreach- proactively contacting participants, identifying needs and connecting them to services or filling in the gaps where services were unavailable. The Health Inclusion Team commented that “it was very much thinking on your feet and being able to adapt and change”. They explained that they have a remit that is around the broadest sense of health requirements for marginalised groups, so were therefore able to be more flexible in the way they deliver their service. This meant that they were able adapt their practice quite quickly, and were able to contact families by phone, to establish a relationship with the families and to support them if they needed to request anything from school or to be referred on to additional services.
Many schools also took the initiative to contact families weekly and check that everything was ok, then based on these phone calls, they would actively chase up referrals to services, or, in some instances, take matters into their own hands and conduct home visits in line with the Covid restrictions at the time. For example, the SENCO of the school where the child with autism attended went to visit the house every week and stood in the street, 2 metres away from the front door, to see if everything was going ok. One school even commented that social care were not doing home visits, so the school had to become social workers and do the home visits themselves.
One mother talked about a health visitor she met at a children’s centre who sent her a lot of different information. The mother said she was able to send the health visitor a WhatsApp message when she needed to find something out, and she found this a lot easier than calling a general number and explaining to someone who doesn’t know her situation, then waiting for someone to call her back. Similarly, another mother was pregnant and gave birth during the Covid-19 pandemic. The family explained that they had one health visitor who called them regularly and now visits them. They said that the continuity of having one health visitor is really important for them to trust her and to feel they are receiving the best support.