Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help ensure that children with special educational needs and disabilities receive an initial assessment for speech and language therapy within an appropriate time scale; and how long he plans that a child should wait for an initial assessment.

The Government is taking several steps to help ensure that children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive an initial assessment for speech and language therapy as quickly as possible following referral. In September 2023, the Department for Education launched 'Early Language Support for Every Child' (ELSEC), with NHS England. ELSEC is a two-year pathfinder programme which will fund innovative workforce models to improve early identification and support for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs within early years and primary school settings. ELSEC will take place in nine sites across England, one in each Change Programme Partnership. It is running across two academic years from September 2023 to August 2025.

The ELSEC pilots are one of several components of the wider £70 million Change Programme that is testing some of the key reforms set out in the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan.

The Department of Health and Social Care is also working with the Department of Education to take a joint approach to SEND workforce planning in recognition of the demand for specialist services. We have established a steering group to oversee this work and aim to complete it by 2025. To establish the evidence base needed to inform this work, the Department of Health and Social Care published a research specification paper on 19 September 2023, Demand for therapists for children and young people with SEND, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research to help understand the gaps between the supply of therapies and the demand for therapy in children and young people with SEND.