DfE to intervene on local authority SEND budgets

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced it will intervene to support more than fifty local authorities (LAs) to manage their high needs SEND budgets ‘sustainably’.

Educational provision in England for children and young people with ‘high needs’ is funded at local authority level through the high needs block of the Dedicated Schools Grant. This covers the costs of placements in all types of specialist provision, additional funding for pupils in mainstream schools and settings with this level of needs and the costs of some special educational needs and disability (SEND) support services.

In a letter to LA chief executives Will Quince MP, the children and families minister, announced the Delivering Better Value in SEND (DBV) programme, which would support 55 local authorities with ‘substantial deficits’ to manage their high needs funding and provide ‘sustainable’ SEND services. He also drew attention to a new research paper from the DfE which examines potential good practice in a sample of LAs.

The research paper High needs budgets: effective management in local authorities, looks at 10 LAs which were considered to be managing their high needs budgets more effectively, with the initial sample selection based on LAs which in surplus on their annual high needs budget for the 2020/21 financial year. The report found the case study LAs had often achieved a more collective understanding of the provision that should be ‘ordinarily available’, and had also placed a strong emphasis on working collaboratively with parents. Recommendations from the research included that alternative provision and special school places should only we used ‘strategically’, and that SEND and finance officers should be made jointly accountable for managing high needs budgets.

Full report: https://tinyurl.com/mvkwbrwa

Meanwhile the consultation on the DfE’s recent SEND review is ongoing, and can be responded to until 22 July 2022 here: https://tinyurl.com/yc7y94xy