Punishing Children with Special Needs

by Mark C - Teacher Wed Oct 12, 2005 19:12

Very interesting and informed article. I could not agree more with you. I think it would be a great service to all Special Needs Students to have the same assistant from day one in school until the day they feel they can fend in the school campus for themselves (not the day the principal decides they can) or until they leave school. I wonder does anyone ever ask the kids what they themselves would like .

A very interesting book on this issue (albeit a non-fiction one) is Mark Hadden's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - a book that I am reading with my Transition Year students (which they don't seem to like, damn teenagers) at the moment, and also a book that every school principal, if not every school worker, should have a read of.

Thanks for highlighting this.

Mark Conroy.

by Concerned Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:44

No one would deny the lack of consistent and organised support for children with special needs both inside and outside the school environment. The lack of resources available in the area of special needs is common throughout areas of society that do not indicate an immediate or imminent profitable return.

I would like to comment specifically on some of the references made to SNA’s by Mr. Curtin. The comments outlined by Mr Curtin, from my perspective, display an understandable view from what is perceived in the best interests of the child in relation to the role of the Special Needs Assistant.

My partner is an SNA and we are close friends with a number of other SNA’s in local schools. Up until last year an SNA was employed and allocated to a particular pupil. If the pupil left the school either through re-location or moving to second-level the SNA was automatically out of a job. If the pupil lost their special needs hours due to increased ability to function in a school environment, the SNA was out of a job. In fact the SNA was probably the only job you could have that would cause you to lose your employment if you were 100% successful in your work. Part-time SNA’s were paid little above the minimum wage, with full time SNA’s receiving something better. You could be employed for 8 years as an SNA (junior infants to sixth class) and then lose your job, while a new SNA working for only a day would hold their new position because they were allocated to a specific child. All the experience and hard work of the now unemployed SNA would be lost to the school and the special needs children in that school. SNA’s were employed on a week-to-week contract.

Special Needs Assistants both individually and collectively have fought very hard over the past number of years for a number of key rights. 1) For the right to be allocated to the school rather than the pupil, in order to have some sort of security of employment and seniority, 2) Increased pay as recognition of the role they play in the school environment and pro-rata pay for part-time workers, 3) Hiring and firing to be conducted on a last in-first out basis (when a child leaves the school or their special needs hours are reduced), 4) all staff to be employed on a full-time basis where possible, 5) Pension, holiday pay and holiday entitlements in line with other workers in the Education system, 6) Increased qualifications necessary for employment (up until now the requirements were junior cert level). The efforts made by the SNA’s succeeded in achieving all their objectives, something that is not widely known and clearly not something the government has openly acknowledged for obvious reasons.

Before looking at the impact of this in the context of the original post, I would like to point out the absolute commitment of every SNA I know to helping the children they work with. These workers make a significant sacrifice emotionally, physically and psychologically to these very deserving children, many work extra hours without pay to help, a significant number are actively involved in the special Olympics, many spend a significant amount of time outside of school hours discussing with parents how their child is developing etc.

So how has the changes outlined above impacted on the situation of the special needs child in relation to the SNA?

In the context of continuity of the SNA to the child - every special needs child is different. The have different needs, abilities and requirements and these needs, abilities and requirements are constantly changing. Among all of the educational professionals, the SNA is the most acutely aware of the needs of these children. It must be remembered that every parent will look at the situation purely from the perspective of their own child, something that is hardly surprising. While every child is different, every parent is also different and every parent reacts in a different way to different situations. The continuity of the SNA with the child clearly would be the ideal situation but there are factors that impact on this. The second level environment is completely different to the primary school. The demands and requirements are different. The behavioural problems portrayed by the child are different even down to the growing physical strength of the child and the ability of the SNA to cope. SNA’s can also become burnt-out from constantly working with the same child on an ongoing basis over a period of years. The child can become accustomed to the SNA and develop an ability to exploit the SNA for his/her own benefit, not necessarily a positive benefit. Discipline can be difficult to maintain over an extended period. There can be difficulties and conflict with parents, in many cases the SNA can be more objective in seeing the difficulties the child is having and some parents do not react well to this. It is not a good situation to have an SNA continue to work with a child in these circumstances and the SNA’s themselves are acutely aware of these difficulties. By working with children who have different disabilities the SNA can also develop new skills that will benefit all the children. My partner currently works with 3 different children during the school week, all of whom have different physical or learning disabilities and different behavioural problems.

All in all, the SNA’s themselves feel that the changes in relation to SNA’s are very positive for their own situation and generally positive for the children. There still are difficulties particularly over the authority the SNA has in the classroom and as a result their ability to create a disciplined and structured environment for the special needs child. There is no doubt that some principals have approached the new situation in a ham-fisted and bureaucratic manner that has caused difficulties and conflict for the SNA’s, the parents and the children. Ideally, regular communication and case conferences between the parents, teacher, SNA and principal would be beneficial, they do not happen often enough and in a structured way and in many incidents the different parties will attempt to get the upper-hand rather than co-operate.

There is no doubt the EPSN Act is riddled with flaws, inconsistencies and difficulties. Parents have by and large been ignored in its drafting. The special needs teachers and assistants have certainly been ignored. The Minister consistently refers to SNA’s as classroom assistants in order to downgrade the role of these workers and the rights of the children. The current government is more concerned with the neo-liberal agenda, in economic, social and educational terms, than in providing for the needs of children with learning difficulties.

Children with special needs, and their parents, require and deserve all the support and help that can be made available. I believe some of the recent changes can beneficial to these children, particularly in relation to SNA’s if implemented properly, and we should work for any situation that can improve the lot of these children.

by Shannon Thu Oct 13, 2005 19:24

There are two things that jumped out at me as I read this article, mostly because I am a special education (sped) teacher in the states.

One of them was that the US is a good place to be if you are a sped student. While that is currently true, our dearly beloved president Bush has worked hard to change this with his No Child Left Behind pile of shite. According to this law, ALL children will past the state achievement tests by the year 2017. Not sure how he's planning on eradicating poverty, malnutrition, learning disabilities, autisim and the entire rage of accademic disabilities, but...there you go. Leave it to a politition to create a law for the unachievable.

Second, I understand your fustration in laws that only protect the rights of the regular education students. Here we have the opposite problem. Special Education students have more rights than our regular students, to the point where there is little to no funding or time left for students who just need an extra fifteen minutes to help them succeed in the regular classroom.

by M Cotton Thu Oct 13, 2005 21:24

And every right thinking person is concerned, of course.

I’d have to argue that other contributors here have an equal grasp of the complexities of the issues involved.

The employment rights of SNAs, while important, are not actually what the original article was about and of course the neglect of the government in resolving the uncertainties that SNAs faced is to be deplored. The lack of security for SNAs had nothing to do with being allocated to the individual child and everything to do with the fact that there were thousands of children in schools all over the country who were desperately in need of SNAs but were being denied one. There was ample employment potential to warrant secure employment for SNAs but meanness and spite towards people with disability put us all at a disadvantage.

SEN children are something more than justifications for the employment of SNAs, I hope.

At the time SNAs, SEN children and lots of others were fighting their respective corners it turns out the government’s priority was paying out fantastic sums of money to consultants who completely failed in the tasks for which they were paid and incurring billions in overspend on road projects and the like. Artificially connecting the need of SEN children for continuity to employment terms and conditions of SNAs is the worst possible approach to the issue. The real question is: what do the children need?

Nobody has questioned the commitment of most SNAs to the children in their care. But the fact is that under the new regime SNAs have been directed not to discuss educational issues with parents and have been restricted exclusively to practical matters. I do not know a single SNA who considers herself to be ‘making a sacrifice’ because she is working with a child with SEN, thank God. Our children are rewarding, interesting, loving and equal members of society. The best SNAs understand this and appreciate that they are lucky to be able to work with them.

The need for continuity and consistency is something that does not change and the system that has been put into place is disastrous for many, certainly the majority of children. This has nothing to do with the views of an individual parent. You trivialise and infantilise the attitude of parents by suggesting that they are not concerned with how the school can reasonably manage the collective needs their children have. What most of us find is that when we try to discuss that issue with the school, in order to support and help them, we are told to mind our own business. There is no dialogue with parents, either collectively or singly. This is a feature of the governments attitude towards ordinary families across all its policies and practices of course. Nothing in the new SEN regime does anything to improve that. The arrogance with which it was introduced where parents were concerned was breathtaking. Not a single piece of communication was sent to any parent by the NCSE. It was done, deliberately, behind our backs and over our heads so that the whole thing would be a confusing and frustrating pre-emptive strike. Nobody has yet explained the General Allocation Model to parents. The only document I have seen was an incomprehensible 3-pager sent round to schools in May or June of this year giving them just two weeks to get their applications in under the new system. When this government wants to railroad something through, they use every sly trick in the book to make sure it happens.

At the moment SNAs are certainly the people who know the SEN child best in the school setting, but they are also the least qualified and their training at the moment is often perfunctory. This is not the fault of the SNA and there is something of a territorial battle taking place whereby many teachers are not at all happy with what they see as an encroachment onto their territory. The SNA is perceived by some as a much cheaper model coming in via the back door. Our children are casualties in this particular fight too.

The most concerning thing about your comment is the way in which you depict SEN children almost exclusively in terms of difficulty. It is this very attitude that is creating so much upset. There is no appreciation, no gladness or welcome for our children in schools. And no appreciation of the benefits that they bring for the other children. And why pathologise the situation? The last thing that is needed is anything that remotely resembles a ‘case conference’ which is a management strategy used in situations where children are being abused and are in need of protection. That idea has no place at all in the education of our children.

The new system has been carefully designed to exclude the people who have the most to contribute in terms of experience and know-how: the parents. Nothing will get better until that much at least is changed. It is not so much ‘help’ that we need but for the people who are paid to provide these services (educational or otherwise) to apply the best possible practice in doing their jobs. In a situation where so few of our principals and teachers, let alone SNAs, have been trained for this, what chance do our children really have?

The EPSN Act 2004 is useless for the purpose of ENSURING the standard and extent of services for SEN children in schools. It damaging, vindictive and ill-informed in every way.

by Aine Ni C Tue Jan 22, 2008 20:34

Having worked as a SNA for 6 years I whole heartedly agree with the sentiments expressed above, I would however like to point out a few things
Not all SNA's fought for pension rights, etc. and these have come with some strings that principals routinely abuse.
SNA's are routinely dismissed or used as dogs bodies by school authorities, have little or no union support or rights.
the current contracts for SNA's are ambiguous in their discription of duties, 'the phrase 'work appropriate to the grade has in my locality seen SNA's doing jobs such as receptionist over holiday periods, conducting entrance exams, cleaning outdoor toilets and supervising students. e
SNA's are an untapped treasure in schools, with literacy rates falling why not let them train further as teachers are entitled to do with inservice?
I left as I was sick of being routinely ignored, I have a degree but was never allowed use it, there are countless people working as teachers, substitutes, and part times both primary and secondary who hold no teaching qualifications.
While I have no interest in being a teacher, using the SNA fully for the benefit of the child should be the priority of teachers and legislators alike.
Principals are not trained in the needs of children with SEN, I worked under a man who sugested to the mother of a child with C.P. that 2 wheelchairs would not fit in the corridors of his school during a entrance interview. Surely this is not the inclusion that we are told of?

SNA's are a motivated and usefull bunch, why they aren't used or appreciated is beyond me, its snobbery, they bring so much to schools, they bring experience of a life outside of the education system.

Unfortunately the department handing out 'units' is seen by principals as a chance at a school upgrade /new buildings/extra staff and not as an opportunity to learn and rethink teaching methods.
I am working at the moment to highlight these issues and work towards greater training and appreciation of these people.
please feel free to contact me at the following address if you would like to contribute stories or information to me.
SNAdevelopment@gmail.com