A laudable aim, no doubt – but what does it actually mean in practice? How exactly can we make sure that children with SEND get the support they need, when they need it?

With so many children now presenting with additional needs earlier and earlier, there can be no question that the early years sector can and should play a central role in this. And yet, as a survey of over 1,300 early education professionals carried out by the Early Years Alliance earlier this year found, government support for our sector is severely lacking.

While schools receive what is called a ‘notional SEND budget’ – that is, a defined pot of money within its overall budget to help meet the additional needs of children with SEND – early years providers have to meet the needs of most children with SEND out of their core budget.

It’s only if a child’s needs cannot be met from this budget that providers can apply for additional funding and even then, only if they are able to navigate the complex, burdensome and often incredibly lengthy funding application process. As one survey respondent put it: “SEN is a total disaster. The paperwork involved means that I have to employ a member of staff to spend most of her time on SEN alone. There are so many hoops to jump through and so many children with needs that are being failed.”

In fact, our survey found that 40 per cent of early years providers supporting children with SEND didn’t receive a single penny of additional funding to help them to do so, and that a huge 92 per cent have previously had to fund additional support for children with SEND out of their own pockets, with more than half of these having to do so ‘regularly’.

And of those that do receive additional SEND funding, 87 per cent said that the level of funding, combined with their general early years funding rate, isn’t enough to provide the quality of care for children with SEND that they want.

Many of our respondents told a familiar story: a child starts at a nursery or pre-school, or with a childminder, aged two. Early years professionals identify that the child is likely to have SEND. They seek out additional funding to help to support this child – often additional staffing to help provide more individual care, but also practical support such as specialist resources and equipment – but are told that this funding is only available for children aged three or over, so they start paying for this support out of their own, often very limited, finances.

When the child turns three, they apply again, liaising with a range of agencies to try and gain the evidence needed to successfully be awarded funding and filling out reams and reams of paperwork. They wait for the local SEND panel to meet up to make a decision, something that might happen just once a term. They receive no updates on their application and have no idea if they have been successful or not.

If they are lucky, they might one day spot that the additional funding has appeared in their bank account, but this could be for just 15 hours a week for a child that attends their setting for 30. Alternatively, it might well be that it takes so long to finally successfully demonstrate that a child needs extra support that by the time the funding is available, that child has started primary school – and often, the early years setting that has worked so hard to support them won’t receive a penny of additional funding, or any back pay, for doing so.

It’s by now well known that early years funding in this country is wholly inadequate, and that nurseries, pre-schools and childminders across the country are struggling to remain financially sustainable. Add to this a significant increase in the number of children with SEND over recent years, alongside a continued lack of adequate funding needed to support them, and it’s not hard to understand why so many providers delivering SEND provision say they are at breaking point.

All children should be given the best possible start in life and that includes those with SEND. But until the Government recognises the role that early years settings play in ensuring this happens, and crucially, funds them adequately so that they can continue to do so, we are risking of letting down a generation of children who deserve so much better.

Shannon Pite is communications and external affairs director at the Early Years Alliance.

Early years SEND children need support not just words - Shannon Pite