You will all have noticed the political instability over the last few months and weeks. Many parent carer forums and others in the SEND system have been asking what this means for SEND and how they should be responding.
Ahead of each financial year, the NNPCF outlines its strategy which includes a clear set of priorities for the coming year. You can see our presentation on this from our annual conference in March here NNPCF AGM – A review of the last year and coproducing our priorities for the coming year – YouTube
We outlined five priorities for the year. These included the SEND Green Paper, the Schools Bill and the NHS Long Term Plan. It is clear that the current political turmoil may impact these.
We do not yet know what will happen to some of our priorities
An uncertain legislative programme
At time of writing, the legislative programme of “in flight” bills (including the Schools’ Bill) has been paused for review by the new government. We have specifically asked the Department for Education what this means for the Schools’ Bill and at time of writing they are unable to share which pieces of legislation will proceed in the current session of parliament.
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)
An uncertain financial programme
Similarly, you will have noted the financial turmoil recently following the mini budget at the end of September. The government and new Chancellor are still working on what the changes announced will mean for public spending. We cannot rule out that there may be cuts in services and programmes associated with SEND. This includes parts of the NHS Long Term Plan.
A shift in our strategic focus
This has led to giving greater focus to some of our work at a national level. Namely:
- We will continue to engage with national government and the NHS to shape and deliver the work that is ongoing including the SEND Green Paper, the Schools Bill and the NHS Long Term Plan.
- Because of the legislative and financial uncertainty, we are placing greater emphasis on those parts of the plans that do not require legislation or are financially committed for the coming periods. The sequencing of changes that will make a difference to families become a relatively higher priority. For example, the new Ofsted / CQC local area inspection framework; the regional educational directorates being set up by the Department for Education and the new NHSE Dynamic Support Register and Care Education and Treatment Review policy.
- Similarly, we are increasingly focusing our work on those initiatives that are looking at improving the SEND system here and now. These include the Delivering Better Value and Safety Valve programmes – please look out for an update on these over the next few days
What can parent carer forums do?
It is clear that we cannot depend on major national initiatives to “rescue” the SEND system. Even if there were clarity over future plans, they would take several years to have an impact whilst many SEND families are in crisis now.
This makes the local work of parent carer forums even more important. Forums need to continue to represent the lived experiences of local families and work with their local areas to coproduce better services and more intelligent commissioning. This includes being involved in local implementation of ongoing programmes from NHSE (e.g. keyworking and autism in schools) and the DfE (e.g. Delivering Better Value in SEND and Safety Valve). Please look out for our updates on these programmes over the next week or so.
Regardless of the political turmoil, we continue to have very strong engagement with officials in government and from the NHS and will continue to work with them to progress the SEND agenda and represent the lived experiences of families of children with SEND.
Note: Each “parliament” is broken into “sessions”. Typically, there are 3 or 4 sessions in each parliament. The legislative programme for each session of parliament is announced in the monarch’s speech – until recently this was the Queen’s speech, but it will now be the King’s Speech. A parliament is marked by a general election and the current parliament started with the election of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in December 2019. A change of “government” (e.g. a change of PM from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss) does not mean a new “parliament”.