When the Children and Families Act was published in 2014 it was described as the biggest reform to child welfare legislation in 30 years. It set a strong vision for a system which put children and families at the centre and was built on joined up services which focused on delivering the best outcomes. There is no doubt that was its intent. So how did we lose this?

Partly those joined up services changed, the reorganisation of health services and schools had a fundamental impact on structure and accountability, local authorities also entered a period of austerity and then there was a pandemic.

One of the unintended impacts of the changing education system was the creation of a hostile environment for children and young people with SEND. The previous government’s focus on narrow attainment measures reinforced by an attendance and behaviour approach which did not recognise an increasing number of children and young people struggling to find a confident and secure environment at school, led to a system where children who could not conform where increasingly excluded.

The SEND system also acquired its own identity and bureaucracy, leading to an ‘othering’ of children with SEND, a view that there were children, and then a separate category of SEND children, where the same understanding of valuing childhood and achievement did not apply. If we add to this the fundamental impact of the pandemic on young people and the broader understanding of the impact of autism on girls and young women, and the rising prevalence of mental health needs, a system which needed greater flexibility became increasingly inflexible.