One of the few things that everyone in the education world agrees on is that the special educational needs and disabilities system is broken. Parents are deeply frustrated at having to fight for their children to have access to necessary resources.

Mainstream schools feel unable to provide the support they know pupils need, due to a lack of funding. Special schools are in an even tougher financial position. Many local authorities have been plunged into debt they have no route to paying off, which risks the financial health of the whole council.

Central government knows this situation is unsustainable. Gillian Keegan, the last Conservative education secretary, called it a ‘lose, lose, lose’ system. Her new Labour replacement, Bridget Phillipson, has firmly agreed with this assessment. But solutions are not obvious, or at least not affordable ones, given the straightened times.

It feels like a lot of important questions – many of which are highlighted in this valuable guide – have been ignored for a long time. Not least, why have we seen such a substantial rise in the number of young people with certain conditions, that has driven huge year-on-year cost increases. This applies to conditions like autism and ADHD but also broader behavioural challenges, and mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.

There has been a remarkable lack of curiosity about these trends among policymakers, perhaps because there are no easy or obvious answers. But without halting, and ideally reversing these trends, or at least applying different approaches to managing them, it is hard to see how any government can get a grip. They tie into a wider array of problems affecting the most vulnerable young people, including rising poverty and an increase in instances of abusive or neglectful parenting.