Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many additional educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists will be required annually to deliver the Experts at Hand programme.

The government is providing substantial, targeted investment to help local areas grow and strengthen their specialist workforce. Over the next three years, £1.8 billion will be made available to local area partnerships to develop and rollout of the Experts at Hand offer.

Local area partnerships will design and implement their own Experts at Hand models, tailored to local needs and workforce capacity. This will be supported by strong national oversight. The department will set the overall framework, provide guidance and tools, and work closely with local areas to ensure consistent quality.

​To support this, we have also announced £15 million for new speech and language therapy advanced practitioner roles, as well as continuing our investment in the educational psychology workforce with £26 million to train at least 200 educational psychologists per year from 2026 and 2027, building on previous investment.

The department knows that continuing to build the pipeline of speech and language therapists is essential. That is why we are working with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to improve access to community health services, including speech and language therapy, for children and young people with SEND.