SEND Participation and Family Support

Our vision for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) is the same as for all children and young people - that they achieve well in their early years, at school and beyond; they find employment where that's appropriate; and lead happy, healthy, and fulfilled lives which they have choices and control over.

Through this procurement, we are seeking to ensure the effective involvement of parents, carers and young people in the design and delivery of SEND services and provision - a fundamental principle of the Children and Families Act 2014 ('the Act'). The Act places duties on local authorities (LAs) to ensure that: the views, wishes and feelings of children and parent carers are taken into account when deciding what support they need; and children and young people with SEND and parent carers have access to impartial information, advice, and support.

This procurement seeks to consolidate and grow the improvements we have seen to date and to continue increasing meaningful engagement with children, young people, parents, and carers - improving outcomes and ensuring we leave no child behind. It builds on the success of bringing together elements of the participation programme in 2018 by inviting bids that bring together Participation arrangements, including payments and due diligence of grants to Forums, with elements of the IAS programme - seeking to achieve benefits of greater collaboration across these strands and potential synergies.

Additional information: The introduction of the principle of co-production into the SEND system was genuinely innovative and welcomed by the sector. However, despite the ambitious reforms introduced under the Act in 2014, key challenges remain in delivering SEND services in line with our vision. While encouraging progress has been made, survey data and feedback from the sector indicate that there is still considerable local variation in the effectiveness of co-production and participation arrangements. Further embedding and delivery of these principles is required to improved outcomes for all children and young people with SEND, both in terms of educational outcomes and access to employment. Increased demand for Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans is putting local authority SEND budgets under unsustainable pressure, and the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the need for further support. The Government is currently conducting a Review of the SEND system and will publish proposals for consultation in due course.

There have been considerable improvements in the development support offered to Parent Carer Forums (Forums), which has supported them to grow in membership. Sustained investment in these established structures will support them further and improve consistency across Forums, thus strengthening their impact.

Children and young people's participation is less established and requires further development to ensure that this is well embedded and consistent, particularly at a local level.

The Tender supports the continued improvement of coproduction at national, local, and individual level, including enabling the continued embedding of the voices of SEND stakeholders in national policy development, to support system-wide improvements.

Through empowering children and young people with SEND and their family or carers to make informed choices about the provision available to them and supporting them to influence SEND policy at local and national level, services and provision can be designed and delivered in a way that works for children and young people. Provision that better meets children and young people's needs and supports them to fulfil their aspirations will improve their educational and lifetime outcomes based around the four Preparation for Adulthood outcomes: children and young people find employment where possible, lead happy, healthy, fulfilled lives, and experience choice and control.

We also expect that strengthening the involvement of parent carers and families in local services and improving communications between LAs and families will result in less adversarial relationships and reduce the number of disagreements which need to be resolved via formal resolution processes. This will reduce the burdens on families and services, and also free up more resources to directly support children and young people with SEND.