CHILDREN with special needs are spending up to an hour being bussed to school due to a shortage of specialised teaching.

The journeys endured by some children was just one of the problems highlighted by councillors at a meeting this week.

Other concerns were that Worcestershire Primary Care Trust is struggling to meet the demand for speech and language therapists and any attempts to evenly distribute resources around the county could result in cuts and closures.

More than 1,000 youngsters in Worcestershire’s state schools have special educational needs. Some attend special schools, while others receive individually tailored education in mainstream school.

With Worcestershire County Council planning to revise its special education needs (SEN) policy – and make changes that will affect thousands of pupils, parents and teachers – the spotlight has been turned on current provision. A committee of councillors met to discuss the emerging changes and voiced grave concerns about current provision.

Councillor Barry Gandy, chairman of the children and young people scrutiny panel, said: “I have gained the impression that addressing the current variation in services across the county means spreading the existing provisions out so that some people get more and some people get less. And I’m very concerned by that.”

Councillor Fran Orborksi said the number of children with special educational needs being “bussed from north to south Worcestershire” has risen not fallen since the last review.

She said: “It can’t be good for children to be spending up to an hour being transported across the county to reach suitable provision.

“We can not have provision so unequally spread.”

But the council’s head of policy Colin Weedon said a main aim of the review, which has only just begun, was to redress that balance. He said: “We’re undertaking a detailed review to ensure we’re identifying the children that are in need.” Officers made it clear that addressing the current variation – particularly the uneven spread of speech and language therapy – did not mean taking provisions out of north Worcestershire and into south Worcestershire.

The emerging draft policy will go before Cabinet on Monday, November 2, and there will a consultation period before any changes to Worcestershire’s SEN are made.

l Your Worcester News was the only member of the media to attend this meeting.