Joining up SEND: How government can make special educational needs and disabilities services more cohesive

England’s dysfunctional special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system will only be fixed if central government gets off the sidelines and actively enables the joined-up approach it has called for.

The report warns that the government’s welcome ambitions for early intervention and inclusion won’t be enough to stop a repeat of the rising costs, frustrated services and poor outcomes for children that followed the last, flawed SEND reforms.

With Andy Burnham recently arguing that SEND is a system “that simply does not work for children with complex needs”, the report – which draws on extensive IfG research into public service reform and interviews with more than 50 experts – says the government’s SEND reform plans need to go further. Unless it makes key changes to the design of the SEND system, services like schools, councils and GPs will continue to be pushed into conflict at the expense of the children they serve.

Early signs show why a different approach is needed:

• SEND teams have reportedly been hit disproportionately by NHS job cuts, despite being central to reform delivery.
• Local areas have been told to commit to SEND reform plans, but ongoing reorganisations in councils and the NHS leave them planning for a future system that is still being redesigned.
• DfE and MHCLG have each started their own uncoordinated attempts to align the government’s various reform programmes.

Making SEND more cohesive starts with being clearer about what success looks like and providing the resources to deliver it, with the report’s recommendations including:

• The Department for Education making essential policy decisions about its vision for SEND reform.
• DfE establishing a cross-government working group, commissioned by No.10, to oversee the implementation of SEND reform.
• A minister in the centre of government deciding whether SEND reform is a genuine health priority – and either resourcing it accordingly or redesigning the reforms to reflect a more limited role for health services.
• A minister in the centre of government picking one of the options to break down funding silos from our line-up.
   

A briefing summarising the report's findings is found below (PDF).