To ask you to explain SEND funding and bankrupt councils to me?

[Myanna]

I've read a few articles like this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/feb/05/send-costs-bankrupt-english-local-authorities

But I don't understand why the cost of funding SEND is so high that it's going to potentially/actually make most councils insolvent.

It's not like provision is generous or easy to get, from what I've read (I don't have a child who is supported).

Were these kids previously just not supported in any way by the state and was it left to families to cope as best they could?
Are these kids who previously wouldn't have survived, but now do because of better medical care and therefore need a lot of help?
Is this private equity running enterprises and charging huge amounts to local authorities?
Is it just inflation and the cost of employing people?

I really don't know much about this at all but I'm sure many on here do, so I'd really welcome your knowledge.

That's good to hear! You are one of the success stories then (I'm sorry you had to go through that though).

You'll be aware then that access to those services is harder nowadays?

I had a sobering realisation recently. A friend's teenager has been hospitalised with an eating disorder ("fortunately" this is in another country with better funded and organised healthcare).

I realised if the same happens to my daughter (more likely as she's autistic) we would almost certainly have to organise and pay for treatment ourselves.

Well what do you suggest to make this all financially viable?

I doubt it - not terminology in use at that time.

It said 20% of children could be expected to have SEN though.

It was the start of the move towards inclusion. And inclusion can't be done on the cheap (in fact so judgemental and cheapskate is our society that I wonder if it can be done successfully at all in the UK).

Anorexia is the most deadly MH condition - I’ve heard of a few cases and all have been treated rapidly as inpatients. Thank God, because it’s utterly awful.

I’m not a success story due to the services I received, and that is in part why I’m not sceptical but curious about the actual effect of them. A lot of expensive treatments seem to make little difference, or not much more than having a vent, and progress is often very slow. I don’t know anybody who has received a few sessions of this or that and it’s changed their life.

I had to hit rock bottom and it’s been a slow process to rebuild myself, but I honestly believe this has been better and more effective than endless interventions and people ‘supporting’ me.

I’m asking you what you suggest?

It’s meaningless. It was a report written at a time when the issues and landscape were completely different. It’s like saying in 1900 5% of the population were homeless, and 5% are homeless now, so the problem must be the same. It isn’t.

And I’m asking what you suggest, because you support a model that is unaffordable and not working.

Nope I support all children with SEND being catered for and the system being fixed.

What do you suggest?

You haven’t said how. How do you suggest this happens?

I’m not paid ££££ to solve it,others are.

And what do you suggest?

Sorry but this is such a cop out answer. The fact you can’t answer suggests you know the direction of travel is only 1 way, but don’t want to admit it.

In the absence of yet another tax which would probably topple the government, it has to be cuts doesn’t it? And to do that they will have to strip their legal obligations, because they over promise and therefore under deliver. EHCPs will have to be advisory in all but a small number of cases, like 20% of the current number at most.

And you’re happy with 80% of unsupported children with SEND either in your children’s classes or at home, needing more MH support that isn’t there and filling up our overstuffed prisons even more whilst needing more benefits because they’re unemployable.

Not going work I’m afraid. Think you’d best leave it to the people paid £££££ to work this out.

Ffs when did I say I was ‘happy’ with it? It’s going to be a regrettable necessity because the system has collapsed. Big difference.

Because they are your child that you made a decision to bring into the world knowing there was a chance they could have additional needs, and you are not doing the government or society a favour by meeting those needs, you are just doing what you should be legally required to do, and what you may be legally required to do when everyone wises up and realises that SEND funding absolutely cannot continue to balloon until councils are unable to pay for basic services that everyone uses and needs.

SEND spending is reckoned to be around £10 billion, or 0.81% of government spending this year. I wouldn’t call 0.81% of government spending, material in any sense. Posters need to get some perspective!

Meanwhile spending on free childcare has doubled in the last two years and is about £9 billion this year. See

https://ifs.org.uk/news/rapid-rises-send-and-childcare-spending-are-reshaping-education-spending-england

How many posters frothing at the mouth about SEND spending, are also creating thread after thread about government profligacy on free childcare?

@batt3nb3rg Do you also advocate parents should pay all child care costs for the children, they chose to bring into the world?

Just because there is legitimate concern, and indeed the subject of the thread is funding, doesn’t mean those asking questions about it WANT that to be the case. (It’s a pretty intersectional concern right now - I personally know much more about significant issues in housing and mental health provision which I worry about a lot)

And the projected spend for the next year is 14 billion. Therein lies the issue.

In the past millions of children were failed by education, whether this was a result of undiagnosed additional need or a very narrow view of what looked like. We know have a better understanding and are more able prescribe what individual children need. However, education and most LA services have been privitised through the back door.

Academy chains are run as businesses and their focus is attendance and results because this is what ofsted measure. Very few have effective nurture provisions and they are very poor at getting on with EHCP paperwork. The very deprived area I work in as a CP social worker has amazing and nurturing primary schools and some outstanding council funded nurseries (although these are under threat) who are pretty good at getting funding in place for extra help and trying to get the EHCP paperwork through asap. If this is not achieved by High School, then we are in different territory.

Private schools are cashing-in massively, offering special need provision because there are not enough council run places. The quality is debatable. Looked after child places for our most vulnerable children often cost £10 000 a week and then education provision is extra (and we are not talking highly trained staff here, there is a reason that private care providers are seen as a top investment). Central government funding to LAs has been slashed over the last 15 years, councils have sold all their assets and several have become bankrupt.

There is no bloody money (made available) for our most vulnerable and most of our council tax is basically funding private investors. I know my LA is trying to bring as much as they can back in-house, but that needs available money which is difficult when so much has to be paid out to meet statutory duties. I personally find it scandalous that as a country we have allowed private companies to make huge profits from our most vulnerable

Requiring SEN parents to quit their jobs and permanently reduce their earning capacity costs the economy £££. As does taking the only respite many parents have, pushing them to burnout and therefore requiring full time care places for their DC. Not to mention the cost of removing an education that for many of DC mean they will go on to contribute to the economy themselves. My DS couldn't access the curriculum before his EHCP was put in place, he was in school but did not learn to read until the end of year 2, he is now in year 4 and working at greater depth.

But it will cost the tax payer more.

Parents shouldn't pay for childcare costs because it's contrary to reason, nature, and research that children under school age should even be separated from their mother for eight or nine hours a day. Society needs drastic restructuring around what is best for children and the family unit, not what is best for the economy or for the misguided egos of adults. It is absolutely obscene that the government is happy to shovel tens of thousands a year into an individual child's childcare costs but women are being forced back to work at six or nine months because maternity support is so woeful. This is obviously talking about the women who have natural feelings towards their children, not the depraved individuals who gleefully hand their nine month old babies to minimum wage teenage apprentices for the majority of their days in the pursuit of career success.

My idea is that some adults put their needs after children with severe learning disabilities. But they don’t like to lose out, pay for themselves, work full time etc.

It will be a net benefit to the economy if someone who is paying 20% tax on their salary of £39,000 is required to do most of the care for their child whose provision is costing the local authority even £15,000, let alone when the cost is entering six figures.

And the housing costs and benefits the tax payer will need to pay because said parents can’t work on top of the loss of their taxes. Then there is the reduced outcome for the children because parents aren’t teachers.

And when the children age out of education and you have completely unemployable parents who haven't worked in decades.

I made a very deliberate decision to keep a foot in tbe door but I see everyday the panic that comes from the child turning 18 and the financial problems it causes to unemployable adults.