Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Paragraph: 45
Support for prisoners with learning difficulties is long over-due.
Recommendation
Support for prisoners with learning difficulties is long over-due. We welcome the Government’s recent commitment in its Prisons Strategy White Paper to provide dedicated specialist support staff, but the Government must ensure that there is adequate resourcing for this. The Government must, in its response to this Report, provide greater clarity on the funding available to fund specialist support staff, how many will be appointed, where they will be distributed across the prison estate, with a minimum of one SENCO per prison, and the timescale for their introduction across the prison estate.
Paragraph Reference:
45
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
We accept this recommendation in principle. We are currently recruiting new support managers for prisoners with additional learning needs such as learning disabilities and conditions such as autism, acquired brain injury or ADHD funded from the £550m allocated for reducing reoffending in the recent spending review. These managers will be responsible for promoting a ‘whole prison approach’ to supporting prisoners with additional learning needs, enabling increased support for prisoners who do not attend formal education as well as those that do. We are working towards recruiting 61 in the first year of the rollout and a further 61 in the second year, resulting in one support manager in every prison by 2024. These roles are not identical to SENCOs, who specifically focus on education needs. SENCO provision is currently supplied by our contracted education providers. The need to ensure good provision for prisoners with additional learning needs is an important part of our planning for future prison education contracts.