Special Educational Needs

(asked on 14th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the Government has made an assessment of the implications for its policies of Action for Children’s report entitled Too Little Too Late.


Answered by
Will Quince Portrait
Will Quince
This question was answered on 22nd March 2022

The ‘Too Little, Too Late’ report makes three main recommendations. Firstly, it recommends an increase in funding for a range of early intervention services. In the autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021, the government announced a £500 million package for families. This includes £300 million to transform ‘Start for Life’ services and create a network of family hubs in half of the council areas in England, and a £200 million uplift to the Supporting Families programme. The additional Supporting Families funding represents around a 40% real-terms uplift for the programme by the 2024/25 financial year, taking total planned investment across the next three years to £695 million. This funding will help up to 300,000 more families facing multiple, interconnected issues to access effective support and improve their life outcomes. It will also continue to reduce the pressure on reactive, statutory services as the system starts to rebalance away from intervening at crisis point.

The report’s other recommendations include a legal duty for early help, and additional data collection on early help. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care is due to set out its final recommendations this spring, and the government will consider those relevant to early help to inform any next steps.

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