New Minister with responsibilities for SEND announced
The new government continues to formalise ministerial responsibilities and last week, Kelly Tolhurst was announced as the new Minister for Schools and Childhood with responsibility for SEND. Minister Tolhurst is the second most senior minister in the Department for Education behind the Secretary of State Kit Malthouse.
NNPCF co-chairs Tina Emery and Mrunal Sisodia have written to Minister Tolhurst to introduce the NNPCF and ask for a meeting.
What next for the SEND Green Paper
The consultation period for the SEND and AP Green Paper closed before the summer holidays (22 July 2022). The DfE received several thousand responses, many of which came from parent carer forums and individual parent carers. DfE also held 175 engagement events many of which were hosted by or involved parent carer forums.
There were also responses from local authorities, schools (mainstream, special and AP) and health providers amongst others.
The NNPCF have attended several meetings with DfE officials over the last few weeks to discuss the next steps on the green paper and we continue to have input into the next stages of the proposals. Key points from these conversations include:
The DfE will publish a response to the green paper consultation in a National SEND and AP Improvement Plan by the end of the calendar year. This will set out government’s response to the consultation, and the next steps for delivering these reforms.
We have engaged in conversations about the formulation of national standards.
Whilst the contents of these discussions remain confidential, we can share that we have continued to make the following points.
- National standards must drive and enable early intervention, particularly for those children and young people that do not have an EHCP Standards should be based on the holistic needs of the child and young person, not on diagnoses or conditions
- Standards should be based on the holistic needs of the child and young person, not on diagnoses or conditions
- There needs to be a strong link between standards used by practitioners when supporting individual families and standards that are used when planning, designing, and commissioning services.
- Coproduction must be the core principle throughout all standards
The SEND and AP Green Paper and its progress remain a high priority for the NNPCF and we will continue to keep you updated on progress.
However, we are also very clear that our children and young people cannot wait for new legislation and reforms to improve services- there also need to be programmes of work targeted at improving services now. We are also working with the Department for Education and NHSE to focus on these areas.
We will update you on these over the coming weeks.
One reply on “Department for Education update”
[…] Similarly, it is impossible to say whether the legislation required to implement the SEND Green Paper will be part of next session of parliament – no-one (arguably including the current Prime Minister) is in a position to say with any certainty what will be a part of the first Kings Speech (see note below). However, we know that the DfE continues to work on the response to the SEND Green Paper as we outlined in our article earlier this month. Department for Education update – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C (nnpcf.org.uk) […]