It must be Christmas — that made me sit back and reflect recently with a sense of nostalgia. We knew in 2003, when we were setting up the Every Child Matters policy in Government, that the legislation for children with special educational needs and disabilities was no-longer fit for purpose. The legislation didn’t promote collaboration between health, education and care. It didn’t even talk about outcomes for children. And often promoted legal battles between parents and services.
And yet it was 11 long years before we saw the 2014 reforms that brought in Education, Health and Care plans focused on outcomes, joined up a fragmented system, promoted choice and extended support to 25 years of age.
Whilst the 2014 Children and Families Act was welcome, it’s now looking too long in the tooth. Again, we have known this for some time, but each Government has been slow to act. As a result, Councils have borrowed more than £3bn to pay for support for children with SEND and their families through a central government statutory override. This special fund is unprecedented — an increasingly large sticking plaster.
There are no easy answers, although our own reforms in Somerset point to a potential way forward. Funding is currently skewed to a smaller number of high-cost education settings, that can cut children off from their communities and local support networks. We are building local support with our services reorganised into six localities, working with 100 hubs across the County to deliver support to schools and families closer to home. And we are working with schools to build our collective capacity to support the needs of children with SEND in their communities. Over time, we want to move the money from expensive placements with often poor outcomes, to local schools.
Ultimately, central government will need to tread a careful path. To ensure parents and carers are satisfied with the education and support their children receive, to control profiteering, inefficiencies and the balance of funding, to make inclusion the default so most children can go to their local community school, to balance the legislation and inspection regimes, and inevitably invest more money in the futures of our children and young people.
As we wind down for a well-earned Christmas break, policy officers in the Department for Education are as busy as the elves, working up the next SEND reforms. As parents, carers, teachers, nurses, social workers and other professionals — we are all wishing that this time we build the SEND system that our children and young people deserve.
Merry Christmas and have a lovely break!
