Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): I welcome Mr Liam Burns, head of employment and personal development; Ms Rebecca Brogan, a Mencap client; and Ms Denise Sweeney, a local manager. We apologise that you were waiting some time — well over your time — but we had important issues that we were looking at, and I did not want to curtail anyone in the Committee on questioning.

You are very welcome here. We will give you up to 10 minutes to present your case, and then we will open it up to questions. I say to members that we want your questions to be specific and to the point, because we are running seriously over time. Over to you.

Mr Liam Burns (Mencap): No problem. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the Committee for giving Mencap the opportunity to speak today. As you said, my name is Liam Burns, and I am head of employment and personal development with Mencap in Northern Ireland. I would like to introduce my two colleagues here: Rebecca Brogan, who will talk about her journey from school to mainstream training; and Denise Sweeney, who will talk about Mencap's experience of providing support to young people and their families as they prepare to leave school and begin their adult life. I will read out a statement shortly from a family of a young man whom we have supported through school and college and towards paid employment. I will then make some final comments.

Mencap as an organisation has nearly 70 years' experience supporting and representing the interests and views of people with a learning disability and their families. We have almost 25 years' experience supporting people with a learning disability who are hoping to gain new skills and to finally keep a job in their chosen field.

Our employment services work with over 600 people with a learning disability each year across Northern Ireland, and that is made possible by a range of different funding streams. People with a learning disability are typically supported by our employment service for two or three years, depending on their individual career and support needs. Like their peers, young people with a learning disability are excited and anxious about what will happen when they leave school. A lot of young people with a learning disability are keen to continue into FE or training when they leave, to become more independent and to contribute to the life of the community by getting a job or becoming a volunteer. Regardless of the severity of their disability, they have those interests and aspirations. They and their families tell us, however, that the transition from school can be difficult and complex, as you will hear in a minute, and that they need more and better support if the routes into learning, training or work are to be effective and accessible to them.

I will now read a statement from Mr and Mrs Doherty in Belfast. Unfortunately, they could not be with us today, but Mencap worked with their son Daniel when he was at school and college and will support him as he progresses to sustainable, paid work next June when he leaves college.

Mark and Angela Doherty said:

That is a personal testimony.

Mencap also recognises the importance of examining the transition from school. However, we believe that attention should also be focused on the lack of planning and available information, as well as on the absence of clear routes for young people with a learning disability to progress from one course to another in college or from further education into meaningful employment afterwards. Mencap's work in transition has focused on supporting each young person and their family through the process and on actively engaging with the professionals and agencies that are involved in the life of the young person.

I will now ask Rebecca, who is a young person, to talk about her journey from school and what she thinks made good support during transition.

Ms Rebecca Brogan (Mencap): I am 19 years old, and I am a young ambassador for Mencap. I have come here today to tell you about my journey so far through education. At the moment, I am doing a health and social care course with Rutledge Recruitment and Training in Coleraine. That course will help me to get to where I want to go in future. The course is two years' long, and because I have a learning disability, I got an extra year. Eventually, I want to be a voice of disability.

A health and social care course was available in school, but I did not get to do it. Everyone else got to pick their course, but I did not get a choice. The school sorted out the timetable for me, and I even had the right grades to do the course. That made me angry, as the school stopped me from doing the course that I wanted to do just because it thought that I would not be able to do it. For a long time, all I have wanted to be is a social worker, and I knew that I would have been able to do the course with help and support.

In the special unit, we were treated differently from other students. Everyone that has a learning disability should be involved. We are still human, and we have the same rights as everyone else. We should have a choice when picking courses and the choice to try out classes. It was not fair that we were told what classes we were doing, rather than being asked.

Regardless of what happened in school, I am now doing the course I wanted to do. I am enjoying it, and I am excited about the future. If I had not had Helping Young People Enter Education and Employment (HYPE) in my life, I would not be where I am today — I would have been on the dole. I left school with no GCSEs, but I now have an A level to my name through Rutledge Recruitment and Training, and I am so thankful to HYPE for coming into my life.

Thank you for listening to my story.

Mr Burns: Thanks, Rebecca. I will now ask Denise Sweeney to talk about learning from the delivery of our transition project in the Western Trust area. Unfortunately, this very valued service is no longer available due to changes to the European Social Fund (ESF) funding rules.

Ms Denise Sweeney (Mencap): I will provide an idea of the model of the transition service in the west. The service was provided via the method of us providing pre-leaver support, whereby a Mencap employment officer went into schools to gather a group of students together the year before they were leaving school to offer support and help them to start thinking about their options and choices. We helped final year students by supporting their leaver's review meetings. We would have been present from the initial review meeting in the young person's last year right through to the final review meeting in the final month at school. We would have been there to offer support to the young person and their parent or carer with information that was discussed to advocate the choices and the personal wishes of the young person and to confirm the options available at their new provision.

We also looked at areas such as transport, funding, learning support that was available and advice for progression options later in life, such as signposting to Mencap employment services. We also offered regular one-to-one meetings between the Mencap employment officer and the young person. That would have involved completing action plans, vocational profiling, exploring options, preparation for leaving school and general ongoing support.

We also provided careers information and information on college and training courses, including supporting visits to open days. We explored employment opportunities if further education or training was not a preferred choice, so that might have involved a transfer to Mencap employment services. We offered provision visits to the chosen options. That was supported and set up by the Mencap employment officer, and it involved visiting with the young person, as well as the parent or carer, if desired, to enable them to become familiar with the new setting, meet the staff and have any of their apprehensions eased.

We supported the completion and submission of application forms for the new provisions. We explored funding options and completed the funding applications. That included understanding eligibility criteria, sourcing the supporting documents that were needed and meeting the required deadlines that secured funding.

We explored and confirmed transport options with the young people. That also involved making applications where required, for example, to community transport services. We had to become familiar with the guidelines and procedures for those. We offered route training, which included road and travel safety, familiarity with bus timetables, understanding the cost of travel and providing accessible help if problems arose.

We also offered meetings throughout the summer months when the young person had left school to maintain ongoing supports, help them reflect on leaving school, prepare for the new provision, deal with ongoing worries and finalise funding arrangements. So, for example, I set up group meetings with young people and their parents to explore their emotions about leaving school. That provided a space and opportunity for trainees and parents to share their worries and queries and for trainees to come together with their peers to share their experiences of transition.

We supported the induction and enrolment to their new provision, which included supporting initial assessments; ensuring that learning support was requested; becoming familiar with the support networks within the new provision; providing the information required for registration and funding; and finalising transport options. For example, the young person may have needed some additional Western Education Board support if they were still under 18 years.

We offered ongoing monitoring and review of the new provision. That involved the Mencap employment officer completing regular monitoring visits to the young person in their new provision; liaising with relevant professionals and parents or carers to map their progress; ensuring that the required support was in place; and offering support with any arising issues or concerns. That also included the completion of progress reports that documented the young person's progress, confirmed available supports and offered an opportunity to discuss issues.

Throughout the process, Mencap had partnership with the various professionals involved in the young person's life. That might have included the education and library board transition officer; schoolteachers; principals; social workers; occupational therapists; Careers Service; supported living managers; course coordinators; curriculum managers; transport providers; and student support services. So, various people were involved. The partnership ensured that a constant link of information was maintained from the start of the final year right through to the new provision.

Let me give you an example of specific success with the transition service. We had a young trainee called Thomas who attended the local special needs school in Omagh. He had been there since the start of his early primary education. Thomas chose to attend South West College in Omagh as his new provision for after school because all his friends were going there and he wanted to join them. When the Mencap employment officer supported Thomas and his family with looking into transport and funding, it was initially thought that he could not access his choice. He was deemed ineligible for a further education award due to his household income, and, due to council boundaries, it was deemed that Thomas was outside the area for community transport to travel to Omagh. It was decided that it would cost Thomas £1 per mile to travel, which would have been a cost of over £100 a week to get to college. As a result of partnership working between the Mencap employment officer, the community transport services and the course coordinator at South West College, it was discovered that a group of seven students in proximity to Thomas's home were facing the same problem. Therefore, it was decided that the students could group together with the community transport Omagh service and split the cost of travel amongst the seven of them. That resulted in Thomas being able to attend his provision and travel at a reduced rate.

That demonstrates the need for collaboration, and it also links into the current consultation with DRD about transport and how there are still issues there that need developing.

Mr Burns: Thank you very much, Denise.

We have given a couple of examples to give a flavour of the sort of interventions and supports that young people need when they are in transition. In conclusion, there has clearly been some progress and investment in recent years in transition for young people with a learning disability, but there is also very clearly a need for more investment to turn around the experience of young people like Rebecca who are going through a transition. Clearly, there is still not a joined-up or strategic approach across the Departments and agencies regarding the transition of young people with learning disabilities into adulthood. That results in a shortfall in provision and in a postcode lottery. Some of the new DEL strategies, such as the review of youth training and the NEET strategy, etc, are very welcome and no doubt will benefit some young people in transition. However, those are largely geared towards helping young people who are closer to the labour market, which still leaves a significant gap in provision for those who are furthest removed.

We believe that the following changes are needed. Firstly, there should be a collation of specific disaggregated data on all young people with a learning disability who are or are not in further education, training and employment. We do not know from the information on the NEET population who specifically has a learning disability. Secondly, there should be effective coordination of transitions planning and provision at a strategic and operational local level. Thirdly, there should be tailored support and specialised guidance for students with a learning disability as they move from school and into FE and as they move within FE and out of FE. Fourthly, there should be targeted provision in the form of advice and support for young people with a learning disability and their families that helps the young people to achieve their career aspirations and to become economically active citizens. Finally, we also believe that the Northern Ireland Executive should target investment more for young people with a learning disability who are in transition and should consider including provisions such as preparation for adulthood, integrated plans for those up to 25 years of age and packages of support across five days.

Thank you very much for listening.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): Thank you for your presentation, and Rebecca, thank you for your testimony on how you moved forward. It gives the Committee encouragement when we see the confidence that you have and that you have built up in moving forward.

We have been looking at the transition from one sector to another. What better support do you feel needs to be put in there to make that much smoother than it really is? The other issue is that I am disappointed that, after all the work that has been done by the Western Trust, it had to go because of funding. What actually is Mencap providing, if anything, in the western area?

Ms Sweeney: In the western area, our employment services are still in operation; therefore, we can support people into adulthood to get job opportunities or long-term voluntary work placements. We also support the Workable NI and Work Connect programmes through our employment services. We have our other work streams as well. We have supported living, which sometimes would be in partnership with the employment service. We also have community support officers.

Mr Burns: There is provision, and it is mostly focused on the adult side. That is because of the changes in rules, because ESF rules did not allow you to work with young people who are still at school.

Where your first question is concerned, Chair, on what better support can be provided, starting from the individual and looking at the person and everything around them, the same as for anybody else, there are so many different government agencies and Departments that impact on that person. So, a holistic, person-centred approach has to be the starting point for all young people with a learning disability.

Ms Sugden: This is not really a question; it is more of a comment. I just want to say really well done to Rebecca for giving a presentation. It is really difficult to sit in front of this Committee sometimes, but you were there and you did it, so it obviously shows how far you have come and the support and work that Mencap has done to help that.

Again, this kind of comes to my next point. The farce that happened with ESF and how it happened is a bit of a tragedy, and now we are affecting people like Rebecca in developing as she has.

Actually, I do have a question, and it comes from the restructuring of the Northern Ireland Government and where special educational needs might sit. They are likely to go into the Department of Education. A comment was put to me earlier in the week that that concerns some people, because of the — I will not say why. It concerns some people, and they would maybe have preferred it go into the Department of Communities, because it would have almost a social kind of protection. Have you had any thoughts on that at all?

Mr Burns: That is something that I could obviously come back to you on. If you are talking about young people with special educational needs as a whole from age 4 upwards, that is beyond transition, which is what we are talking about today. Whatever Departments people are working with, we will obviously engage with them.

Ms McGahan: Thank you for your presentation, and well done, Rebecca. I am aware of the excellent work that you are involved in, because I talk to neighbours of mine who use your facilities.

I represent a rural area. In our inquiry, one of the issues that we get is that you can throw all the resources in the world at transitional processes but there is still nowhere for our young people to go. So, we have a long journey to engage with employers out there, and I suppose there are issues with insurance, but we need to be looking at social clauses to try to correct that problem. Otherwise, we are going nowhere.

I would just like to know a wee bit more about the transport issues, especially in rural areas, because that is being cut and cut. I got a research paper done about rates, and I find it breathtaking that the highest increase in rates is in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, which is a rural constituency, yet and all, we are hearing about all this money being cut from rural transport. I think that it is horrendous, I really do — it is a disgrace.

Ms Sweeney: Transport is an ongoing issue for us in our employment services and was always an issue. The only way that we have been able to rectify it is by maintaining links and putting forward cases where we can. We have supported trainees to meet with DRD representatives. We in Mencap have held public meetings and brought some of the case examples forward there. Thomas's case linked into that back in 2012, and I think that an outcome came from that through contacting local MLAs and signposting families to flag up issues as and when they are happening. I suppose just being there to advocate for the issues is our main role, as well as signposting to resources and places that maybe can give support. It is just that idea of looking at the issues and pulling them together. If we had not been involved with Thomas, he would not have known that other people were facing the issue; it just would have been ignored. It just shows that the more it is highlighted, the more likely it is that something can be done about it.

Ms McGahan: Well done for taking that hands-on approach.

Mr Burns: With the employers, it is important to actually engage. Each of our employment teams across Northern Ireland has an employer engagement strategy, if you like, to create opportunities for employment and training opportunities, as well as to have that dialogue. A lot of employers are concerned or anxious about what it means or how they fall within the regulations. It is about that engagement. It is as much education as anything else and working with them in partnership.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr Buchanan): OK. No other folk have indicated that they want to ask questions. I thank you for coming and giving your presentation to us today. Thank you very much.