Davina: a tribute

Baroness Darcy De Knayth – Davina - became a Patron of the Independent Panel for Special Educational Advice (IPSEA) in 1991, not to serve as a figurehead for the charity but to help us protect and promote the interests of children with special educational needs. This Davina did tirelessly till her death, through her practical political work as a Member of the House of Lords.

Davina tabled written questions to Ministers for IPSEA. For example, when the Government introduced legislation (the Education Act 2002) which would enable Local Authorities to be relieved of certain of their legal duties under education law, Davina’s written questions sought – and obtained – the assurance that this would never be used to relieve Authorities of their key duties towards children with special educational needs – the duties to assess, to issue and maintain statements, to specify provision in statements and to arrange provision once a statement was finalised. To date, the 2002 Act has not been used for this purpose.

Davina tabled amendments to legislation as it passed through the Lords. For example, during the passage of the Education Act 2001 Davina tabled a number of amendments drafted by IPSEA including one which would have made it mandatory for professionals to specify how much help they believed a child needed in their assessment advice. This was resisted by the Government, but in a follow-up meeting with the Minister, arranged by Davina, a compromise was offered in the form of an addition to the new Code of Practice:

‘Those giving advice may comment on the amount of provision they consider appropriate. Thus LEAs should not have blanket policies that prevent those giving advice from commenting on the amount of provision they consider a child requires.’ (SEN Code of Practice, paragraph 7:79).

This statutory guidance would not be in place without Davina’s efforts.

Davina intervened in debates on special education whenever they arose. When Baroness Warnock called for total revision to the legal framework governing special educational needs in 2007, Davina represented IPSEA’s concerns, arguing powerfully for the protection of the rights-based elements in the current legal framework, and for the effective enforcement of the current law, as opposed to the total scrapping of the 1996 Education Act, which Baroness Warnock seemed in favour of. The debate concluded with Baroness Warnock withdrawing her proposal.

Davina arranged meetings with Ministers (numerous, over the years) and accompanied IPSEA staff to those meetings, not to sit on the side-lines but ready to question and challenge whenever the educational interests of disabled children required it. Long-term IPSEA volunteers will remember the charity’s battle in 2001/2 over the guidance on ‘specificity’ in accounts of provision in statements, which the then Secretary for State, David Blunkett, tried to cut from the SEN Code of Practice. There could be no better tribute to Davina than the fact that every day in advising parents IPSEA volunteers quote paragraph 8:37 of the Code of Practice (‘Provision should normally be quantified e.g. in terms of hours of provision…’) and use it as a mantra in Tribunal hearings. Again, without Davina’s commitment and hard work, we would have lost this essential guidance from the Code.

In November 2007, Davina agreed to keep a close eye on the implementation of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, in particular on the content of the Tribunal Service’s Annual Reports (which, as well as reporting on the work of SENDIST, should include comments on the quality of Local Authorities’ original decision making in special education). She is not able to do this now and as a consequence IPSEA’s role is made more difficult, and the educational rights of disabled pupils harder to secure.

It was only when reading the obituaries that we became aware of just how furiously busy and successful Davina had been in so many areas. Paralysed at twenty-six in a car crash which killed her husband and left her with three children to bring up, Davina headed the movement which led to the foundation of the Paralympic Games, taking part herself in Israel in 1968 in Wheelchair Fencing, Woman’s Slalom and winning a gold for swimming. In the 1972 Games in Germany she won a bronze in table tennis. Her Maiden speech in the House of Lords was in support of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 and she became a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Disability and over the years proposed numerous amendments to legislation aimed at improving the rights of disabled people. When the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords was removed in 1999 she stood for election as a crossbench peer and came top of the poll, being the only original hereditary peer to retain her seat.

Davina always welcomed briefings from IPSEA, but always questioned them, rewrote them, improved them, made them her own. Generally the process would take place via re-writes and re-re-writes faxed to and fro, starting at midnight when Davina got back from a day (and half the night) at the Lords. Sometimes the fax machines were still clanking at 3 am.

In pre-website days, the IPSEA office was kept informed and up to date on events at Westminster by Davina posting Hansards (when special education had come up in debates in the Commons or the Lords) and Select Committee reports and Government consultation documents as soon as these were published. At the time, as a small charity, IPSEA workers did their own admin, so it always seemed to me particularly appropriate and impressive that whatever Davina sent us came in brown envelopes addressed in her own distinctive, large looped and slanted handwriting. Davina Marcia Herbert, 18th Baroness Darcy de Knayth, on top of everything else, wrote her own envelopes!

Davina was 69 when she died. It was way too soon.

Tribute by John Wright, Administrator/Chief Executive of IPSEA, 1988 – 2006