SEND reforms ‘remain to be realised’

REFORMS THAT aimed to give children and young people with special educational needs and their parents a greater say in the support they receive in England have been criticised by MPs.

The House of Commons Education Committee said that when the Children and Families Act was introduced in 2014, it established an “ambitious” programme to transform the provision of special needs education.

It said the ambition of the Act

“remains to be realised” and that a “significant funding shortfall is a serious contributory factor” in the failure to deliver the reforms.

“Let down by failures of implementation, the 2014 reforms have resulted in confusion and at times unlawful practice, bureaucratic nightmares, buck passing and a lack of accountability, strained resources and adversarial experiences, and ultimately dashed the hopes of many,” the report said.

“The reforms were the right ones. But their implementation has been badly hampered by poor administration and a challenging funding environment in which local authorities and schools have lacked the ability to make transformative change.

The reforms replaced a system where a local education authority carried out an assessment and in the most severe cases provided a statement of a child’s special needs, and saw health and care needs sit alongside educational ones, with an individual worker and budget for each family.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “This report recognises the improvements made to the system over five years ago were the right ones and put families and children at the heart of the process. But through our review of these reforms, we are focused on making sure they work for every child, in every part of the country.”