The increase in appeals – and similarly large rise in demand for mediation between councils and parents – is a reflection that the SEND support system has become increasingly adversarial in nature (Special report big debate).
It is all too common now for parents and local authorities to spend more than a year locked in dispute over what support a child with SEND should receive, with significant cost in legal fees for all parties – it was recently revealed that Birmingham City Council had spent £10m fighting such cases since 2015 – and damage to a child's wellbeing.
This situation has to stop if children are to get the support they need. The only way to achieve this is to move away from a quasi-legal system for securing support to one based on collaboration between parents and all the key agencies.
The government's SEND improvement plan sets out several useful measures on how to tackle this, including standardised packages of support for children assessed as needing an education, health and care plan (EHCP). However, these standardised EHCPs should be based on best practice England-wide and not used as a mechanism to lower the bar on what support is provided.
Mandatory mediation is another measure that could help reduce conflict. For that to work, more funding should be put into supporting organisations like Family Action to be independent arbiters in the process. Currently, inadequate provision means mediation takes months to arrange, entrenching disagreements.
There is no doubt that councils were given a raw deal over the implementation of the 2014 SEND reforms – ministers raised parents’ expectations but failed to give services the funding to meet them. However, if these new reforms are to work there must be a culture change among agencies in the way they approach meeting children's needs. Rochdale is a shining example of what can be achieved: the introduction of its Raising Rochdale strategy in 2021 has, according to Iain Calderbank, the area's SEND service manager, shifted the culture from “not being able to do something” to now being about “how we can make things happen”.
We need a SEND system based on high ambitions, an open culture and committed to collaboration – aligned with sufficient resources – if we want to reduce conflict.
