Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to provide children with SEND access to (a) services and (b) support in school holidays.

The government is again investing over £200 million in the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, with all local authorities in England delivering in the Easter, summer, and Christmas holidays.

The department encourages local authorities to use their discretion and use up to 15% of their funding to provide free or subsidised holiday club places for children who are not in receipt of benefits-related free school meals, but who the local authority believe could benefit from the HAF provision. We provide guidance to local authorities on designing provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), and they must include the numbers of children with SEND or additional needs who have participated in their programme in their post-provision reporting to us.

Where children and young people have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan that specifies the provision of services or support outside of term time, the local authority or the relevant health commissioner will be required to secure the provision. Additionally, through the Children and Families Act 2014, the department requires local authorities to work with schools and other partners to publish a ‘SEN and Disability Local Offer’ outlining the support and services they expect to be available to children and young people in their area who have SEN or are disabled, including those who do not have EHC plans.

All local authorities have a duty to provide a range of short breaks for carers of disabled children and must publish a statement about short breaks services in their area. In 2022, we launched the Short Breaks Innovation Fund, a £30 million fund to test novel approaches to short breaks.