'Support and Aspiration: A New Approach to Special Educational Needs and Disability' Extended Version

Extended Summary

  • Published May 15th 2012
  • 87 pages
  • Legislation to be introduced early 2013

Overview

A foreword is provided by Sarah Teather MP (Minister of State for Children and Families) and is followed by an executive summary. Following this; the paper is broken down into five large sections:

  1. Early Identification and Assessment
  2. Giving Parents Control
  3. Learning and Achieving
  4. Preparing for Adulthood
  5. Services Working Together for Families

Each of these sections is begun with a brief summary of the proposals set down in the Green Paper and is then further divided into three sections:

  1. Consultation Responses
  2. Progress
  3. Next Steps

1.Early Identification and Assessment

Green Paper Proposals

  • Professional health services will work with parents to assess child development, particularly between ages two and two and a half
  • High quality education and childcare available to all
  • By 2014, there will be a single assessment process, one which encompasses education, health, and care.
  • Pathfinders will test how to radically reform the SEN assessment and statement processes
  • Time takes to complete the assessment process will be reduced.

Consultation Responses

  • 45% of those consulted wanted better trained and qualified staff
  • Speeding up the process will aid the identification of SEN in early years
  • More information for parents regarding SEN identification and care, as well as better sharing of information amongst education and healthcare providers

Progress

  • The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS):
    • Effective September 2012, the EYFS contains requirements for settings to make reasonable adjustments to support the needs of disabled children and those with SEN
    • Progress check at age 2, providing the parent with a written summary of their child’s development in the areas of communication and language, personal, social and emotional development and physical development
  • Health and Development and Early Years Reviews:
    • Recruiting and training an additional 4,200 health visitors by 2015, available to communities, schools, parents, and other services
    • Healthy Child Programme health and development review at age 2 to 2½
  • Early Language Development:
    • Deliver a three year early language training programme through Children's Centres for people working with children up to 5 years old. Special focus for under 3’s who may suffer from language delay.
  • Free Early Education:
    • Free early education for all 3 and 4 year olds, as well as a new entitlement for 260,000 disadvantaged 2 year old by 2014-15
    • Give the entitlement flexibility so that free hours can work with the schedules of the parents
    • Make SEN first priority when considering free early education placement
  • Childcare:
    • Published annual report and information of the sufficiency of accessible child care for disabled children and children with SEN
  • The Early Years workforce:
    • Strengthen training, qualifications and career pathways in childcare and early learning, both for people new to the early education and childcare sector and those already employed there.

A Single Assessment Process, Education, Care, and Health Plan

Consultation Responses

  • Agreed current system is adversarial, overly bureaucratic and not sufficiently focused on outcomes for children and young people
  • Stressed that success of the single assessment is based on the agencies working well with one another
  • Claimed necessity of equal legal obligation as SEN statement
  • Would provide relief for parents from bureaucracy and repeated assessments
  • Expanding farther than education, care, and health would likely just add to bureaucracy
  • Voluntary and community service organizations can provide services such as training and care, as well as act as a trustworthy source for parents
  • Agencies, such as local authorities, should work together
  • Variety of suggestions to shorten the statutory assessment process; shorten 26 weeks to 20, reduce paperwork, and more involvement for the parents.

Progress

  • Local pathfinders
    • 20 pathfinders involving 31 local authorities
    • Develop the best ways for agencies to work together
    • Increase general knowledge about statutory assessment requirements
    • Improving the process of assessment, as well as determining how best to combing education, care, and health services.
    • Make the assessment process quicker, simpler, and more holistic.
    • Pathfinder support team, Mott Macdonald, provided to aid the pathfinders
    • Questions: How to determine which child or young person should have a single assessment and how this will work alongside a local offer; the details of what the new plan should look like; the time tables for completing the assessment; when the plan should be reviewed and who should be involved; and how to determine accountability arrangements across the range of services included in the plan

Next Steps

  • Explore how to realize commitments, such as reduced statutory assessment timeframe, and assuring that the single assessment holds as much legal authority as a statement of SEN
  • Possibly the institution of personal budgets in the hands of families and care packages developed through the single assessment plan
  • Legislate through the Children and Families Bill to build on the framework introduced in the Health and Social Care Act and ensure that services for disabled children and those with special educational needs are performed jointly between local authorities and clinical commissioning groups.

2. Giving Parents Control

Green Paper Proposals

  • Local authorities will provide clear information regarding what support is available
  • Parents will have the option of a personal budget by 2014
  • Transparent information about funding
  • Short breaks for parents
  • Parents will know what schools are available and have a right to express preference
  • Mediation will always be the first option
  • The right to appeal to a Tribunal

A local offer of support for children, young people and families

Consultation

  • In favour of local offer
  • Make clear to parents what support is available, what programs are available, how to access them, and what the local authority’s policy on SEN and disability is
  • Access to parent support groups

Progress

  • Local authorities must provide a local offer which provides information in a single source that describes the kinds of available services and ways to access them as well as local authority policy on SEN and disability.
  • Local offer will cover provisions for children from birth to 25
  • Detail how to appeal express displeasure with provisions
  • Provide to parents a comparison of the services offered by many local authorities
  • Local authorities must work with parents, carers, and local services to develop the terms of their offer

Next Steps

  • Conditions will be put down in law, but specific provisions and the shape, scope, and content of the offer will be up to the discretion of the local authority
  • Slim down statutory information requirements
  • Extend the requirements of schools to produce and publish SEN policy guidelines for parents

Short breaks for families with disabled children

  • Short breaks from care provided to parents so that they may do things that other families take for granted.
  • Through the Early Intervention Grant, £800 million devoted through 2012-13 and 2014-15 to the funding and development of more short break programs

Progress

  • Recruited Impact, a partnership between Short Breaks Network and Serco, to support local authorities in the development and upkeep of short breaks
  • By the end of January 2012, 98% of local authorities were complying with the short breaks requirement and were publishing information on them

Improving parents’ choice of school

Consultation

  • Agreed to provide parents with the opportunity to express preference for a school and to have that preference met unless to do so would be, unsuitable for the child, incompatible with the education of other children, or insufficient use of resources

Progress

  • Put in a range of measures to support whole school improvement and professional development
  • Provisions for schools to become Academies
  • Provisions to allow for the founding of new Free Schools
  • Parents gain the right to extend their expressed school preference to academies and special academies
  • Parents have the right to make representations for an independent or non-maintained special school for their child and to have those representations considered.

Next Steps

  • Legislation currently introduced to Parliament
  • Continue to encourage innovative applications from parents and other organizations

Inclusive schooling guidance

Consultation

  • Asked whether the guidance Inclusive Schooling allowed appropriately for parental preferences for either a mainstream or special school. Mixed response, some unsure, some ignorant, some felt it needed updating

Next Steps

  • Incorporate Inclusive Schooling in the SEN Codes of Practice

Personal budgets

Consultation

  • Personal budgets for parents were viewed positively as a way to offer more freedom of choice for parents.
  • But, 60% of those consulted feared that it would be an unwelcome responsibility for overly worked parents
  • Discussion over what could be provided for by a personal budget
  • Funding must be sufficient to the child’s needs
  • Funding needs to be monitored

Progress

  • Families reported improved access to social care, shift in services, and greater satisfaction with those services
  • A pilot scheme has been established for Green Paper Pathfinders and Individual Budget pilots
  • Health budgets being looked over by NHS and 60 pilot sites are currently being run
  • Three methods of payment: The PCT can hold the budget (a notional budget) and commission the things agreed in the plan, a third party can hold it, or direct payment

Next Steps

  • Learn form the pathfinders and pilot programs and eventually offer of a personal budget for families with the new Education, Health and Care Plan by 2014.

Mediation to resolve disagreements

Consultation

  • Compulsory mediation before appeals with a Tribunal
  • Mediation should go across, education, health, and social care
  • Some felt that mediation should be overseen by a neutral third party
  • Some worry that forced mediation will only make the process longer and even more drawn out.

Next Steps

  • Boost the role of facilitates mediation but retain the right for parents to appeal.
  • Retain the same timescales for appeal

Giving children the right to appeal

Consultation

  • Children  and young people should have the right to appeal to a Tribunal on their own behalf

Next Steps

  • Drive a bill through Parliament to change the Education Act 1996 and the Equality Act 2010 to allow for children to appeal
  • Pilot programs will determine whether or not children or young people will use this power of appeal.

3. Learning and achieving

Green Paper Proposals

  • Ensure schools have access to what works well (Achievement for All)
  • Teacher training to allow them to successfully deal with a variety of adverse situations, including bullying, identifying SEN, and determining effective teaching methods
  • Special and mainstream school should share their expertise and services with others
  • SEN and disability training for those teaching in colleges
  • Prevent the over-identification of SEN
  • Schools to have the ability to become Academies
  • Parents informed of how the school is helping their child, and a table to determine their child’s progress

Leadership and professional development

  • Expand the Achievement for All program
  • Support training for teachers to allow them to determine which children have SEN and which are simply under-achieving, as well as to have the skills to effectively work with either
  • Enable special and mainstream school to share expertise and services in order to aid the growth and development of students at other special and mainstream schools

Consultation Responses

  • The best way to reach these goals is for exemplar schools to share their practices
  • The importance of teacher training, adequate funding for that training, online resources, and networking
  • All Special Education Needs Coordinators (SENCO’s) need to be qualified at post-graduate levels, not just the new ones

Progress

  • Achievement for All program contracted out to 3A’s, showed significant improvement in many categories including Math and English, attendance, and behaviour at home.
  • Achievement for All is available to all schools and 780 are already involved
  • Teaching Schools, 25 special schools that have been judged outstanding, to share experience and knowledge with other schools
  • New standards for qualified teacher status (QTS)
  • Scholarship scheme for teachers to learn how to teach students with SEN
  • Scholarships for the most able support staff
  • The Teaching Agency has developed advanced level materials on autism, dyslexia, speech, language and communication difficulties and behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, building on the Inclusion Development Programme materials for Initial Teacher Training (ITT)
  • Increased the number of special school placements available for ITT to up to 900 in 2011/12
  • Provided funding for up to 9,000 SENCOs to have completed the mandatory higher level SENCO award by the end of 2011/12 and are funding a further 1,000 SENCOs in 2012/13.
  • Set up clusters to encourage great partnership among specialist colleges

Next Steps

  • Build lessons from Achievement for All into teacher and school leadership training and ITT
  • Awarding more SEN teaching scholarships and support staff scholarships
  • Expand the number of teaching schools and recognize excellence in education of those with disability or SEN

Improving the way we identify and support children who are disabled or have SEN

  • Help teachers spot SEN quickly and accurately
  • School Action and School Action Plus be replaced by single school based SEN- category
  • How helpful is the category of Behavioural, Emotional and Social Development (BESD) in identifying the needs of children with emotional and social difficulties and ensuring the right support is put in place.
  • Revise the statutory guidance in the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice to promote more consistent identification of SEN and to provide clarity to professionals and families.

Consultation Responses

  • There are difficulties in the current classification of SEN
  • BESD is unhelpful and confusing
  • Losing School Action and School Action plus could result in undiscovered SEN, but could focus support on those in greatest need and hold schools accountable

Progress

  • Propose to develop a new approach to a single school or early years setting based category and redesignate the BESD category working closely with professionals across the sector
  • Schools asked to determine whether or not disruptive behaviour is the result of SEN and avoid unnecessary exclusion
  • Charlie Taylor Improving Alternative Provision review; Recognize SEN early to prevent exclusion, Information shared between school and AP providers with baselines established to determine progress.
  • Extend the “Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme” to children and young people. Additional funding of £22 million
  • Commissioned the BOND consortium to provide early mental health support, including to schools
  • The Department of Health is funding Time to Change, the anti stigma and discrimination campaign led by Mind and Rethink, providing up to £16 million over the next 4 years.

Next Steps

  • Replace the current categories of School Action and School Action Plus
  • Bring in experts to examine how the current category or BESD can be redefined and expanded so as to reveal more about the child’s condition

Flexibility over resources  

Progress

  • Remove ring-fences to give schools greater flexibility over resources
  • Additional £2.5 billion for schools to developed programs for students from most deprived backgrounds

A diverse range of schools

  • The right for parents and independent community organizations to form Free Schools
Consultation responses

  • Wider range of provision would be provided, but concern about lack of expertise
Progress

  • First round of Free School to open in 2012, second round in 2013
  • Special school with a history of underperformance will be made into special Academies and partnered with a strong sponsor
Next Steps

  • Encourage range of innovative proposals for free schools
  • Asses all proposals very carefully

Improving accountability for the progress children make

  • Sharp accountability for the development and progress of students with SEN
Consultation Responses

  • Would be an improvement on the current system and hold teachers accountable for the progress of students with SEN
  • Supported the idea of an indicator to determine the progress of students in the lowest achieving 20%

Progress

  • Key Stage 2 results were published and showed improvement in the 20% that entered below nationally expected levels
  • For the .7% of students with the most complex needs, Statutory collection of P Scale assessment data to help teachers track the progress of students below level 1 has been introduced

Next Steps

  • Develop new average point scores for P levels to provide comparator data on the progress made by pupils working below the levels of the National Curriculum.
  • Introduce Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 destination measures to determine how many students progress into employment, education, or training
  • Publish information on the attainment and progress of students undertaking Level 1 and 2 as well as Level 3 qualifications

4. Preparing for adulthood

Green Paper Proposals

  • Support for, and advice on, birth to 25 single assessment process
  • Access to better quality vocational and work-related learning options, with the goal of getting and keeping gainful employment
  • A well-coordinated transition from children’s to adult health services

Early and well integrated support and advice

  • Creating a single assessment plan that operated from birth to age 25, providing support for the goal of gainful employment and education
Consultation Responses

  • Supportive of single assessment process and extension of SEN provisions to age 25, but sceptical of how those needs would be cared for

Progress

  • Identified changes necessary to convert to education, health, and care plans, including legislative changes
  • Discussed how remove perverse incentives from the funding and commissioning systems
  • Identified 10 pathfinders to focus on transition to post-16 and adult life and appointed The National Development Team for Inclusion to provide advise and support for the pathfinders

Next Steps

  • Developing the Education, Health and Care Plan so that it will provides statutory protections comparable to those currently associated with a statement of SEN to young people aged 16–25, this includes the students right to express preference for schools or colleges
  • LA’s must insure the right to appeal to all young people up to age 25 and their parents
  • The right to ask for an assessment if not previously diagnosed (particularly for young offenders)
  • Work with further education (FE) providers to improve mainstream provision for all young disabled people or those with SEN

Improvements to vocational and work-related learning

  • Build on “Wolf Review” to improve vocational and work related option for the disabled or those with SEN

Consultation Response

  • Agreed with desire to provide more options for practical education and employment to those disabled or with SEN
  • Also saw the need for other services to aid employment such as transportation or career counselling.

Progress

  • Developing flexible study programs:
    • Provisions to allow providers to develop their own comprehensive study programs
    • Study program themselves to have provisions such as: high quality experience to enhance readiness for employment, personal and social development, C or above in GSCE English and Math, and another qualification of substantial size
    • Intended for implementation 2013/14


  • Providing better information on the outcomes young people achieve:
    • Provide information to parents about how well special schools and colleges prepare pupils for adult life
    • Provide destination measure to determine progress and hold schools accountable for under performance. The measures will include statistics on students with disabilities or SEN
  • Improving participation:
    • Support for all young people to participate in education and training until age 18 by 2015 and progress into work
    • Publish information at LA level to hold services accountable for performance, as well as maintain disciplinary measure for LA’s that don’t comply
    • Additional £126 million for 16 and 17 year olds through “The Youth Contract,” targeting young people who are not in education, employment, or training and have low levels of attainment
    • Consulted on regulations for Raising the Participation Age, including requirements for full time education for 16-18 year olds
    • £44 million available for placement of 16-19 year olds in 2012-201

Next Steps

  • Continued improvement in provision:
    • Consider how best to support providers as they develop programs for disabled young people and those with SEN
    • Enable FE providers who are not yet involved in a cluster to access and use cluster work to improve their expertise
    • Developing further FE clusters
    • Continue to support the AoC Beacon Award (for excellent provision in the FE sector for the disabled and those with SEN)
    • Explore how to provide packages that extend to 5 days a week
  • Providing better information on the outcomes young people achieve:
    • LA’s should make known to families what support is available and from whom
    • Provide information by individual provider which will improve transparency, support better value for money judgements, inform parental choice and promote improvements in performance
  • Improving participation:
    • Beginning 2012/13 students age 16-24 who are funded by the Education Funding Agency and study at Independent Specialist Providers will be able to apply to their college for a discretionary bursary
    • Work with stakeholders to determine what further action is possible

Improved opportunities to get and keep a job

  • What young people want when they leave school or college is a job
  • Proposed supported internships as a way of providing meaningful work opportunities for young people whom an Apprenticeship may not be realistic

Consultation Responses
  • Positive Response to the idea of internships
  • Identified a range of people best able to provide support (key workers, link tutors, job coaches, mentors, youth support workers and disability employment advisors)
  • Should begin early, before year 9, and be person centred and parent involved

Progress

  • Supported Internships:
    • Program of study based primarily at an employers residence, available to students 16-25 with a Statement of SEN, Learning Difficult Assessment, or Education, Health, and Care plane when introduced
    • Should contribute to career goal of young person and real business need of employer. The goal is for the young person to have a job at the end of the internship
    • Maintain the following rules: majority of time should be spent at employer’s premises, expected to comply with real job conditions, systematic instruction where appropriate, stretching goals to be set, and both the employer and student will have support from either a tutor or job coach.
  • Work experience:
    • £4.5 million to 25 college over the next two years to explore work experience programs for 16-17 year olds who are not in education, training, or employment
    • 4,000 young people will be involved in trials, 200 will be disabled or have SEN
    • Final report December 2013


  • Cross-government work on disability employment:
    • The National Careers Service offers up to three in-depth face to face guidance sessions, which are free, as a priority to adults aged 19 or over (aged 18 if unemployed) who have a disability. More support is available to those who need it
    • Work to improve and smooth the transition from education to work for people with disabilities and SEN
    • £20 million to 76 local transport authorities to help aid community transport programs to aid those who can’t use conventional transport

Next Steps

  • Supported internships:
    • £3 million pounds to 15 colleges with high levels of disabled of SEN students to trial supported internships
    • Standards for Job Coaches
    • Make the model available to all colleges in the future
  • Work experience:
    • Make inroads with more potential employers
  • Cross-government work:
    • Access to Work proposals in Disability employment support: fulfilling potential
    • Monitor the move from supported internships to employment
    • Determine that welfare reforms, and the development of Universal Credit, are flexible enough o support young people with SEN or who are disabled as they try to find work

The role of health and social care services

  • The need of well coordinated transition from pre-16 care to post-16 care
  • How much of a part could General Practitioners (GP’s) play in this transition

Consultation Responses

  • Transition could be made smoother by better communication and information sharing and retaining the same key-worker throughout the process
  • The general role of the GP would make them unhelpful in managing the transition and the rarity with which children see their GP would make it difficult for the GP to have an accurate and useful medical history for the child
  • However, having the GP perform an annual health check could be useful, as well as having them sit in on review meetings and make referrals to adult service specialists

Progress

  • Decided not to take forward at this time the idea of annual GP health checks

Next Steps

  • The Department of Health is exploring how to improve communication and transition from young to adult health services
  • Ensure that social care reforms and Green Paper reforms collectively deliver a significantly improved, less adversarial and less bureaucratic experience for transition between children’s and adult services.

5. Services working together for families

Green Paper Proposals

  • Determine how to best take into account the needs of disabled children and children with SEN through the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, joint health and wellbeing strategies, guidelines and standards from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), and health service outcomes frameworks
  • Determine the best methods of commissioning health services for families
  • Provide statutory guidance for professionals working with disabled children or those with SEN
  • Utilize educational psychologists
  • Encourage collaboration between professionals and services across local boundaries
  • Freedom and flexibility in funding that can be used locally
  • Provide funding transparency for parents through a national banded framework
  • Provide targeted funding to the most successful organizations

Better planning by education and health services to support children with special educational needs and disabled children

  • Determine and maintain a strategic overview of the needs of local communities
  • Local authorities need to work with a range of providers to secure high quality provisions and to identify services that are letting down families
  • Set out a local offer to aid parents in their decision making and give them greater control in collaboration with the possibility of a personal budget

Consultation Responses

  • In favour of the three provision but questioned whether parents would want that much control or whether giving the parents too much power could jeopardize the LA’s ability to strategically plan and commission services
  • Some suggested that the local authority should also be responsible for the fair distribution of resources and opportunities, as well as the development of multi-agency working and training
  • Funding should be distributed based on need and be designed long term

Progress

  • Research is looking at the strategic and operational implications for the role of local authorities with both a high and low proportion of Academies.
  • They will determine how to make sure there is sufficient placement and provisions in schools, high education standards, and support for vulnerable children (disabled, SEN, excluded, and the disadvantaged)
  • Sir Ian Kennedy’s report Getting it right for children and young people, discovered that the current NHS often lets children down
  • Far greater integration between the NHS and local government
  • Local authorities will establish local Healthwatch organisations to provide a collective voice for patients and carers

Next Steps

  • Develop a health outcomes strategy for children and young people at the end of January 2012
  • Children and Families Bill to be introduced in the current session of Parliament to ensure that services for disabled children and young people, and those with SEN are planned and commissioned jointly, this includes among the Department of Health, Local Authorities, and the Department of Education
  • The commissioning of highly specialised services will be a core responsibility of the NHS Commissioning Board.
  • From April 2012, local commissioners are offering choice of provider in selected services

Reducing bureaucratic burdens

  • Parents want a simpler, less daunting and bureaucratic system and professionals want less paperwork and complex processes so that they can spend more time providing care.

Consultation Responses

  • Reducing the amount of paperwork would help
  • Speeding up the process of referral would also help
  • Some thought that funding changes would free up professionals, but others claimed that change itself might just add to the bureaucratic burdens

Progress

  • Reframed the information requirements for schools to only focus on necessary information
  • Extended the statutory requirements for school to publish SEN policy
  • Single Assessment process to reduce time spent in assessment by professionals
  • Seek to ensure strong monitoring and review processes

Next Steps

  • Reduce the Special Education Needs Code of Practice while also making sure it retains essential advice for professionals as well as reflects the changes made to law through reforms
  • One school based category

Supporting the development of a high quality educational psychology profession

  • Future training arrangements for educational psychologists (EP’s) and how their role might evolve in the future

Consultation Responses

  • More face-to-face time between children and EP’s needed
  • More EP’s to reduce the time children had to wait to see one
  • EP’s should focus more on early intervention and preventative work

Progress


Next Steps

  • Set up a new national steering group for the training of EPs to manage the relationship between training and placement providers
  • Determine the role of EP’s and include it in legislation

Encouraging greater collaboration between local areas

  • Greater collaboration between local areas can help LA’s plan, commission, and deliver the best possible services for disabled students or those with SEN. They should also help schools to develop their own effective school-school collaboration methods

Consultation Responses

  • Establish a culture where collaboration is favoured and supported, this includes reciprocal provisions and placements as well as effective information sharing
  • Funding to support collaboration may be necessary, could be done in the form of pooled budgets
  • Central government could legislate to make co-operation amongst LA’s a statutory duty

Progress

  • Pathfinders have explored the best ways to support co-operation and the transfer of Education, Health, and Care plans among LA boundaries

Next Steps

  • Consider necessary changes to this effect

Extending local freedom and flexibility over the use of funding and al5
Progress

  • Outlined proposals for reforming education funding arrangements
  • Published School funding reform: Next steps towards a fairer system, beginning reforms start of financial year 2013-14
  • Place-Plus approach: clarity about what mainstream school, academies, and colleges are expected to provide, support of a local offer, transfer of support if the student moves, transparency, base level funding for high-need students, successful transition in care from pre-16 to post-16, and the development of SEN personal budgets


Next Steps

  • Work with stakeholder to develop the practicalities of the Pace Plus approach

A national banded funding framework

  • How can a nationally banded funding framework help increase transparency


Consultation Responses


  • Felt is was a good idea, but would be difficult to put into practice and they need more information in the form of a rigidly detailed proposal

Progress

  • Pathfinders are working on developing and testing proposals for a nationally banded funding framework

Next Steps

  • Consider the findings of the pathfinders before moving forward

Enabling the voluntary and community sector to take on a greater role in delivering services

  • Enable voluntary and community sector organisations to take on a greater role in delivering public services, where and how could they be the most effective?
Consultation Responses

  • Best impact would be to offer advice, guidance, and support
  • Few thought they would be useful providing actual services, though about 30% believed that could be useful by providing childcare, after-school projects, school holiday activities, day trips and family events

Progress

  • Providing £6 million a year for two years to organisations who will support short breaks, provide greater information and help to parents, and help disabled young people and those with SEN prepare for employment, training and independent living after they leave school
  • List of pathfinders in these areas: The Bond Consortium, The Early Language Development Programme, Early Support and Key Working, Parent Participation, Parent Partnership Services, Preparation for Adulthood, Short Breaks Delivery

Next Steps

  • Pathfinders will utilize experience and knowledge to create legislation