Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting times for children with SEN to access support services.

There is a wide range of support services which children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their parents and carers can access.

Local authorities are required to make available local services which provide impartial information, advice and support to these families. The government has invested £20 million between June 2018 and March 2020 to improve the quality of these services and their accessibility. The funding also supports a national helpline and online service for families who have children and young people with SEND.

More broadly, it is the responsibility of schools and other educational establishments to ensure children and young people with SEND are identified and assessed, and that support is put in place to meet their needs. Some children and young people with SEND will need extra help and may require an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. Local authorities are responsible for putting EHC plans in place and for ensuring that the support identified to meet the needs identified in plans is available.

The government has increased local authorities’ high needs funding by £780 million in 2020/21, boosting the budget by 12% and bringing the total spent on supporting those with the most complex needs to over £7 billion for 2020-21.

However, we recognise that there is work to be done to improve the SEND system, including access to support services and that is why we are conducting a review of the SEND system.