Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure that children with SEND receive multi-agency support; and what steps her Department is taking to learn lessons from the provision of Family Hubs and Family Help when rolling out multi-agency SEND support.

In March this year, the government published its proposals to deliver stronger multi-agency support for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Key reforms include the introduction of Local SEND and Alternative Provision Partnerships, which will bring together representatives across the system, and ensure co-production is at the centre of decision making.

The department also committed to develop and test a standard for multi-agency advisory panels, to assess the most effective size, membership and remit of a group. These panels will inform local authorities in making decisions around Education Health Care (EHC) statutory assessments. The department will also test whether a standardised EHC form is effective.

The department will strongly encourage the adoption of the Designated Social Care Officer (DSCO) role in each local area. The job description and practice expectations for the DSCO will provide the capacity and expertise to improve the links and contributions from care services into the SEND process.

The government has published the Stable Homes: Built on Love strategy for children’s social care. This included a commitment to publish a Knowledge and Skills Statement for Family Help Workers. The Knowledge and Skills Statement will be informed by new research on current family support workers, helping to use learning from existing practice to inform future multi-agency working.

Family hubs also have an important role to play. The government announced a package of around £300 million last year, to transform a wide range of services for parents, carers, babies, and children in half of upper tier local authorities across England, including by creating a network of family hubs. The department has published guidance setting out the expectations of local authorities receiving a share of the funding, which includes specific expectations around hubs helping families who have children with SEND to access appropriate support and services. A copy of the guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/family-hubs-and-start-for-life-programme-local-authority-guide.

We will robustly evaluate the programme and build the evidence base around what works for family hubs.