Specialist Provision Packages (SPPs) may help achieve consistency and keep costs within clear parameters, but can assigning children and young people to pre-defined bundles of provision really be the best way to ensure that everyone who requires it will be able to access support appropriately matched to their individual needs?
For children and young people with the most complex needs, SPPs sit at the heart of the government’s SEND reform proposals. Yet the consultation includes very little detail on what is a pretty radical change of approach. We don’t yet have a defined set of packages, clear eligibility thresholds, information on the provision each package will contain or how they might be combined, nor do we have any detail on the associated national funding bands. That’s a lot of unknowns. And when it comes to consultation questions, the government has skipped the fundamental question, ‘Are specialist provision packages the right way forward?’, in favour of inviting us simply to advise on their effective design.
The SPP approach seems to be more about gatekeeping than ensuring access to support. New eligibility thresholds will be set high in order to control the numbers of children and young people getting specialist support and the costs associated with providing it. In effect, it’s also a rationing of rights, as only those deemed eligible for an SPP will get the statutory protection of an Education, Health and Care Plan.
Categorising needs into a specific set of pathways also risks omitting some types of need, particularly where complexity arises from a combination of different needs and the interplay between them. Ultimately a framework that misses out certain needs translates into children and young people missing out. While there is only a brief reference in the proposals to some SPPs being ‘mainstream only’, the seven packages currently proposed are grouped into three broad types that suggest an underlying assumption that certain needs are best met in either a mainstream classroom, an inclusion base or a special school or college. SPPs may very well become a means of dictating setting type, regardless of individual circumstances or preference.
All of this amounts to an unwelcome shift away from person-centred practice to a much more medical model: ‘we’ve identified you as fitting into this category; therefore, you’ll get this type of support which will be delivered in this type of setting.’ It represents a move towards a system where children and young people’s preferences will be over-ridden and financial considerations and administrative neatness easily prioritised over needs.
The fundamental question that the government must ask itself is, ‘Will specialist provision packages be a highly effective vehicle for ensuring that children and young people with a higher level of need get the individual support they require, when and where they need it?’ If it can’t answer that with a confident, well-founded, ‘Absolutely yes,’ it really shouldn’t be going down the SPP path at all.