Former Deputy Director for social care and participation at the Council for Disabled Children and the National Children's Bureau, Caroline Coady, encourages the sector to share views via the SEND reform consultation, an important opportunity to shine a spotlight on the urgent need for join up with children’s social care reforms already underway across the country.
On my final day as Deputy Director for social care and participation here at CDC and NCB, I wanted to both encourage partners across the sector to take this opportunity to share their views into the SEND reform consultation and to share some reflections on what needs to come next. With a particular focus on ensuring that disabled children are supported to thrive through joining up the myriad of reform on the horizon across the Children’s Social Care and SEND systems.
Joining the dots
In March 2025, the Families First Partnership Programme (FFP) Programme Guide set out the vision for a transformation in family support. Seeking to rebalance the system away from crisis intervention and toward earlier help, describing effective transformation of family support as “integrating services from universal to social care interventions into a single system” and highlighting that all families need support, whether from family or volunteers, private services, publicly funded family support or social work. The guide also acknowledges that the type of support that disabled children and their families may need is potentially different from other children and families.
In September 2025, the Law commission published their comprehensive final report on the review of disabled children’s social care legislation, including 40 recommendations. They cover all aspects of the legal framework from assessment and planning to national eligibility criteria designed to reduce the postcode lottery of support that families experience. All underpinned by new statutory guidance, as well as a recommendation that local authorities be required to have a Designated Social Care Officer (DSCO) for SEND.
Beyond this there are a series of measures set out in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill including the introduction of a single unique identifier to support more effective information sharing across agencies. And at the more specialist end of the system there is the introduction of ‘relevant accommodation’ for children and young people with complex needs who may also be at risk of being deprived of their liberty, with work underway to develop a model of community-based therapeutic provision that means children and young people can be safely supported close to their communities by knowledgeable, skilled staff.
...unless we have a clear understanding of where and how these systems need to join up we not only risk missing a significant opportunity to improve the lives of children and families but also risk destabilising critical systems of support at a time when families will need them most.
As of the 23 February 2026, the ‘SEND reform: putting children and young people first’ consultation is open creating an important opportunity for colleagues and partners across the sector to respond and shine a spotlight on the urgent need for join up with children’s social care reforms already underway across the country.
There are clear common threads in the vision across these areas of reform: a focus on prevention through earlier identification and support; a focus on inclusion and enabling disabled children to thrive in education from mainstream to specialist; and destigmatising the systems and services whose purpose is to provide support, as well as simplifying processes and information. But unless we have a clear understanding of where and how these systems need to join up we not only risk missing a significant opportunity to improve the lives of children and families but also risk destabilising critical systems of support at a time when families will need them most.
What needs to happen
For the scale of the vision to become reality, families need to experience a joined up system of preventative support that enables disabled children to thrive. We need to look at children’s needs holistically across all aspects of their lives not in service-based siloes. We need accessible pathways to earlier support, proportionate approaches to assessment, an equitable needs-led eligibility framework and a genuine multi-agency response with shared accountability across education, health and social care that is based on the evidence of what works.
This means considering how to ensure that:
- We embed a culture shift, with the necessary resources, to build a robust cross-agency preventative response which wraps around schools and ensures that inclusion becomes an expectation not an ambition, ensuring the letter and spirit of the Equality Act underpins all strands of intervention.
- DSCOs and specialist disability teams are embedded and aligned with the Family Help infrastructure and that Family Help Lead Practitioners are engaged in the proposed Experts at Hand model.
- A joined up, one assessment approach across Family Help and SEND with opportunities built into the assessment and planning for Individual Support Plans (ISPs) in education to join up with Family Help short break offers for disabled children and their families.
- Specialist Provision Packages (SPP) linked to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) are robust, individualised, cross-agency support packages by design.
- Short break provision is accessible across all tiers of support from universal to specialist and connections are made between providers of Short Breaks and Alternative Provision to support effective and fluid transitions between schools and settings.
- Best Start Family Hubs are accessible for disabled children and their families from 0-25 and SEND specialist workers are embedded and can support families to navigate across agencies.
This presents a unique opportunity to transform these systems to enable effective and timely support for disabled children across all aspects of their lives, but this will only happen if practitioners working within these systems and families experiencing them, take this opportunity to share their views into the SEND reform consultation.