Reform councils to cut SEN spending

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.. according to the Lib Dem’s. Can they even do this? My DC isn’t SEN but her class has 5 TAs mainly as 121s and I dread what would happen if their funding is removed. Our council isn’t Reform led but they’re pretty neck on neck in no overall control.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/apr/24/ed-miliband-energy-pricing-keir-starmer-nigel-farage-latest-live-uk-politics-news

You don’t get interventions for an ADHD or ASC diagnosis, you get interventions for educational struggles and needs.

Autism and ADHD are massively under diagnosed. Wait lists are insane and only 1% of children have an autism diagnosis so let’s quit with the suggestion we take away diagnosis to hide SEN need.

Need is there diagnosis or not.

I know. Why have you quoted me.

I was answering a poster who cited that there are more children with FASD now. Im saying there are not 'more children', its more that there is growing awareness that many children with FASD have not been diagnosed or have been diagnosed with something else, usually ADHD/ASD not exluding other issues either.

I didnt comment on what you get interventions or.

There isn’t much Reform or any party can do in local government, once all statutory services, salaries and pensions are paid for there isn’t much left to do anything with. Most ‘nice to haves’ have already been cut. What they are likely to do is a review the tiny percentage of the budget put aside for things like grants or culture and make a big fuss about what they think is ‘woke’ spending in this area. But in the grand scheme of things they can’t change much - as the cost of statutory services, salaries and pensions are in lots of LAs almost all of their budget or even bankrupting them. We need to start funding these services centrally.

What so many people forget is that if young people are correctly supported in school to meet their own potential then they are much more likely to become “productive” members of society in adulthood.

Just look at the current mess with prisions and the statistics on how many people in prision had undiagnosed needs at school and as such slipped through the net.

Proper support in place is in everyone’s best interest in the long run!

This!

@CherryVanillaPie I'm not sure, I think so just going by the comments on local groups, but of course it could just be protest votes. Local parents of SN children are very angry at the lack of provision.

Disabled children are being discriminated against in schools and many LAs at every step already.

Why are people driven to such hysteria before you even know the facts . How’s labour working out for you then .

I think there needs to be an overhaul of SEN provision. The number of SEN children have risen and catering for them is in the current format is not working for them , for other children and is not financially viable. I don’t know what the ideal answer is, maybe special provision , maybe ignore diagnoses, maybe specialist units, different curriculum etc. There is something wrong when schools large amounts are being spent on this group and main stream children are underfunded to such a high degree. Yes in an ideal world all funding would rise but that just isn’t possible

How will SEN and social care be provided for in your wonderful new world?

For context I live in a labour stronghold and the SEN provision by the council is utterly appalling. So I doubt reform could be worse. They are all bad.

I'm not at all surprised. I expect SEN funding comes under the heading of 'woke' to Reform, and they'd like to emulated Trump/Musk's DOGE cuts

Most of these children are mainstream and absolutely don’t need specialist units which cost a whole lot more than funding TAs who reach many children with interventions that run alongside mainstream education.Are you seriously suggesting that children who need phonic catch up or a speech therapy or physio invention be slung into an expensive specialist units which cost??? Are you suggesting that leaving them to fall further behind is a good option too?

And as for ignoring diagnoses 😱1) a diagnosis does not get you interventions, educational difficulties do and 2) in this country reasonably adjustments are a right by law. You don’t just ignore diagnoses and disabilities. What a truly dreadful thing to suggest .

I agree . The costs have risen astronomically and just aren’t affordable .

So why do children without SEN have more of a right to an education than children with SEN and do you want to fund huge number of uneducated kids with SEN unable to get jobs as a result of no education?

What is your fantastic idea for a cheaper alternative, exactly? I'm sure you have one 😏

I increasingly feel that diagnoses don’t help as much as identifying the specific real world differences or difficulties the child is having and tailoring everything to meet those needs. Unfortunately everyone and everything else (money, people) seem to only see the way to do this after a diagnosis. (I appreciate that some drug prescriptions require diagnosis first)

Ive taught in send for nearly 20 years. Environmental changes / settings etc across offer the best interventions, medication only seems to help a few really extreme cases.

unfortunately it’s the settings that cost so much and what we are lacking.

The other thing that seems to have been forgotten about is dyslexia and dyspraxia.

Both can come with executive function difficulties that could be seen as adhd but are due to sensory processing / dyslexia. There so much that can be done to support all this in terms of pedagogy. However there’s a one size fits all approach driven by academies these days,

That’s the point I am making- people are looking at the ballooning bills for these services and saying they don’t want to pay that much for those services, ergo the services will have to change.

Leaving aside the point that LAs can’t change what they are responsible for or how much the can raise(thanks, Tories!), paying the insane SEN and care bill has reached tipping point where it’s having such an impact on the services provided to taxpayers that they are no longer willing to pay.

I think that is true. There is a huge resentment about sen funding out there. Eve

Plus there has been a steady drip of media about local councils being made bankrupt by sen or social care, with no balance about how central funding from government for local authofies also decreased in real terms by 40% during austerity. Some of the press has been quite manipulative I think.

People can see the services they use crumbling and don't really think beyond that and the paper article saying it's all the fault of fake adhd diagnosis.

Well, the electorate is going to give it to you and it almost certainly looks like a scaling back of all of that provision.

So they can’t remove TA funding? I’m worried about what will happen in DD classroom if they do, it would be chaos

Are they? Last I heard Reform didn’t do so well in a general election. Local elections are very different.

If Reform scale back on SEN provision every parent in the land will be up in arms because ALL children will suffer. Instead of TAs covering interventions teachers will need to do it alongside pitching lessons a lot lower and dealing with the inevitable increase in behaviour problems- alone.
The governments phonic programme will need to stop, high medical needs children won’t be able to go to school and alongside IEP and EHCP provision those kids that need a bit of a boost now and again to reach attainment targets won’t get it. Results will drop across the board, even more teachers will leave and even more young people will be shut out of work.

Not exactly a vote winner.

The resentment is because SEN has been used by some to explain and justify poor behaviour, bullying and has meant non Sen children are viewed as less of a priority . That has happened n some cases, I am not saying that we don’t need specialist support but this has happened and understandably people feel that isn’t right.

Bull shit!

Every child has to reach attainment targets. You don’t get to say to Ofsted “ oh sorry our results are so low and children haven’t met their targets, we were focusing on SEN”

If anything it’s the children with SEN who are sidelined.