The Government published its long-awaited review into SEND provision earlier this week.

I am encouraged by proposals to move towards a single, digitised format for Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and the better regulation of the Annual Review process. I also welcome any proposals that will improve the experience of navigating the SEND ‘system’ for families of young people with complex needs, including those that we support at InFocus. However, many have particularly complex health, education and care needs that may struggle to neatly fit into any national framework for banding and tariffs as suggested.

I also share the concerns of The National Association of Independent Schools & Non-Maintained Special Schools (NASS) that the Green Paper suggests (without evidence) that independent placements at Colleges like InFocus are “poor value for money” and are not always the best placement for young people. Our charity is fiercely proud of working to improve the lives of young people with very complex needs and while our highly specialist service may be more costly than a more generic setting, that does not equate to “poor value”.

As a charity operating our College on a not-for-profit basis and meeting the needs of the most complex students, we struggle to understand how Local Authorities think they could achieve the 50% saving in the cost of a placements in their own provision whilst providing the same level of expertise, as suggested in the Green Paper.

Young people at InFocus College and across the UK’s specialist FE sector thrive because they are given the sort of specialist (and individual) programmes of learning that simply can’t be replicated across all mainstream colleges. I would concur with the initial responses of NASS and Natspec that it is disappointing to see so little reference to FE.  Early intervention and investment in schools is welcome, but the Green Paper fails to suggest an increase in investment and support for the specialist FE sector, when at the exact same time the numbers of SEND students and the complexities of their need is increasing all the time. 

Jane Bell is the Chief Executive Officer of InFocus – the vision impairment & complex needs charity.