“Reform is inevitable—but it must be carefully sequenced and co-produced with those it impacts most. True change will only come when children, young people, and families are fully supported, not through reduced entitlements, but through a system built on accountability, inclusion, and trust.” – NNPCF
NNPCF welcomed the previous ISOS report, July 2024, as a valuable platform for a wider conversation.
The NNPCF were pleased to provide representation, from all 9 of the DfE Regions, across all in person workshops conducted by ISOS through our Regional Representatives, who are leaders within their own local Parent Carer Forums, NNPCF Regional Directors and Co-Chairs. In the addendum report, their collective participation was referred to as “PCF Leaders,” a term we have adopted throughout this response.
During the discussions, we were pleased that both lived experience and professional expertise played equally important roles in openly debating the current system and demonstrated a shared commitment to improving the outcomes for children and young people with SEND.
For too long, there has been a focus on the issues surrounding a “broken” system, which is not meeting the needs of our families and, most importantly, not providing the support our children and young people need to achieve and thrive. The NNPCF welcome the revised rhetoric: “the current system is not delivering the experiences and outcomes that are needed for children, young people, families and practitioners, and that it needs to be fundamentally redesigned to deliver better experiences and outcomes.”
Reform is clearly inventible, therefore the NNPCF believes we must now stop revisiting and debating the broken system. Instead, we must work together in a solution focused approach to co-produce the system that enables our children and young people to achieve and thrive to the best of their ability. Any new system must ensure that the right services and provisions are available without parents and carers exhausting themselves in a fight to obtain them. To do this, and as this addendum report has demonstrated through its recent engagement, we must work with wider stakeholders, children, young people, parents and carers.
ISOS takes the previous eight recommendations from the original report and moves the recommendations into two main areas which they call Pillars. These ‘Pillars’ were discussed and debated at the workshops and reported through this addendum.
Pillar One
As the addendum indicates, parent carers were supportive of rebuilding a system that provides the necessary support and ensures that there is capacity in the system to deliver the support required. It is reported that the PCF leaders that took part, in the workshops, felt strongly that we must have a system capable of delivering the necessary provision and meeting the needs of our children and young people, before any statutory provision is amended.
The PCF leaders raised concerns that the sequencing of SEND reforms would be perceived by parents and carers as a weakening of entitlement and access to support. We raised a concern, that there is also a very real risk that many children and young people could slip through inevitable gaps as the system transitions to a new way of working. The impact of this could be detrimental to many children, young people, and their families. Therefore, we asserted strongly that any reforms must be properly sequenced.
There has been much debate around whether the current system needs reform at all, or whether it simply needs to be strengthened and increased accountability. This, in turn, led us to emphasise that any reforms, particularly those involving changes to statutory entitlements, must be accompanied by robust accountability measures, that align to the roles and responsibilities of those delivering of provision.
Accountability in any SEND reforms, must apply to local authorities, education settings and health providers and commissioners, especially in relation to access and delivery of provision deemed to be “ordinarily available”. Placing responsibility and accountability to identify and meet the need for children and young people and their families across stakeholders. Currently, such accountability is lacking across the whole system and therefore provision is inconsistent and often subject to a postcode lottery within the system.
Pillar One is, in many ways, is potentially asking parents and carers to place their trust in a system to deliver support, a system that has, historically and systematically failed them and their children and young people.
This is why the NNPCF believes that change must be carefully coproduced and sequenced. As change progresses, the experiences of children, young people, parents, and carers must be fully understood and genuinely valued. We cannot simply enforce change or reduce statutory entitlements without first creating an environment in which children and young people feel truly valued, included, and supported.
Pillar Two
The NNPCF agrees that we must move away from a deficit model of support only being provided based on labels and diagnoses, but as the report highlights, these play an important part in terms of self–understanding and we must not lose that. Support however should be needs led, particularly when waits for a medical assessment and/or diagnosis have never been higher, and whilst we would argue the current legislation supports this, the system does not.
In relation to the “vicious circle” (Fig. 3), the NNPCF acknowledges that the level of support for children and young people on SEN Support has decreased. As discussed under Pillar One, this support is not always needs led, clearly defined, and there is little accountability for its delivery. As the report rightly states, this understandably leaves parents and carers with no choice but to seek statutory support and specialist provision. Whereas, in a reformed system, a system where children and young people’s needs are both identified and met, we accept that more children and young people’s need could potentially be met without a statutory plan or specialist provision provided through EHCP admission arrangements.
Reforms to the legal framework must tackle the disproportionate statutory responsibilities placed on SEN Support compared to those associated with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) This success of any legal reforms will be depend on adequate funding, comprehensive workforce development, and timely access to specialist services such as educational psychology, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and mental health support.
That said, we do not believe that the incentives to seek statutory support as identified by ISOS within the addendum1, within the current system, are the only cause of the increase in the number of children identified with SEND. Special educational provision is defined as “provision that is additional to, or different from, what is normally available to children or young people of the same age in a mainstream setting”. Whilst the report discusses an overidentification, many families have also told us that their child or young person’s needs were not identified early enough or not identified or indeed recognised at all.
What is “normally” available in a mainstream educational setting, has been significantly reduced due to factors such as funding pressures, workforce capacity issues, and a lack of training (all cited as root causes) more children and young people by the very definition, are then considered to have SEND. This is not because their needs have changed, but because the education system is now meeting the needs of far fewer children and young people than it once did. Any reform of legal accountabilities around SEND should include a tiered system of accountability, alongside the introduction of a standardised and enforceable support plan for those requiring both ordinarily available and targeted support.
Therefore, in terms of the legal definition of SEND, as stated in our previous response and as supported by the reasoning above, we acknowledge that the current definition is broad. However, our primary concern is not with the definition itself, but with the support that surrounds it, specifically, how the needs of children and young people are identified and met. Changing the legal definition will not change those needs and could risk disrupting access to support as the system transitions to a new way of working.
Amending the legislated definition of SEND at a time when there is already significant contention within the system, amongst parents and carers, as this addendum highlights, education leaders, local authority leaders, and health professionals, are unlikely to build the confidence that is so urgently needed, particularly among children, young people, and their families. Especially, when we currently have a system that is misaligned in terms of accountability with the roles and responsibilities of those that support our children and young people. The NNPCF welcome the view of this addendum report that the system must align and foster joint funding and responsibility. The NNPCF are concerned that how quickly roles and responsibilities might be realigned in a way that ensures that the system can work effectively so that children and young people do not fall between created gaps as the system shifts.
This is why we believe careful sequencing is essential.
The NNPCF believes that language is important. It supports culture, inclusion, and a sense of belonging, something all children including those with SEND strive for. The terms “special” or “SEND” can carry negative connotations, as expressed by children and young people themselves. We support the use of language that empowers them and their families, rather than stigmatises them. However, this shift in language can not be supported and championed without the need to legally redefine the existing definition at this stage, ahead of any potential changes.
However, if the government does decide to redefine the legal definition of SEND, this should be carefully sequenced and must be undertaken through genuine co-production with children, young people, their families, and experts across all sectors.
Whilst moving towards the suggested learner records, it still remains unclear how the accountability to provide the support will work and how these documents will be quality assured which is often the issue with non-statutory SEND Support. This is why changes to the statutory rights of children and young people should not be made without first establishing the essential building blocks of a SEN Support system that can meet needs as intended and a system that is less reliant on individual statutory plans to access support.
Any change must build confidence; not only among children, young people, parents, and carers, but also among professionals across health, social care and education. To achieve this, those at the heart of the system must be meaningfully involved in shaping the changes.
The NNPCF welcomes ongoing discussions with ISOS, CCN, the LGA, and government officials as the SEND system is reformed, with a shared commitment to improving outcomes for children, young people, and their families.
You can read the full ISOS Report here: https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/reform-send-system-what-might-next-stage-look-and-how-can-we-build-consensus