18th May 2026

Your Healthcare comments on Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Reform

On 23 February 2026, the Department for Education published its long-awaited Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) reform white paper, the most significant overhaul of SEND provision in England since the Children and Families Act 2014. The consultation on the proposals ends today.

As provider of children’s speech and language therapy for the borough of Kingston, Your Healthcare is heartened that the vital role that speech and language therapists play in supporting children and young people with SEND, is recognised throughout the Government’s proposals. We also welcome the clear focus on the importance of working closely with families and other professionals.

It is encouraging to see a commitment in the white paper to invest £1.8 billion over the next three years to establish an ‘Experts at Hand’ offer, to provide early years settings, mainstream schools, and colleges with wraparound support from professionals including speech and language therapists.

In Kingston, we believe we are starting from a strong foundation. We already have established commissioning arrangements, strong partnerships with AfC, the Kingston Parent Carer Forum and SW London Integrated Care Board, along with a positive culture of multi-agency working. There are positive, well-established relationships across education, health and care services, and a strong culture of collaboration, openness, and shared problem-solving.  There is strong involvement of occupational therapy and speech and language therapy within the wider SEND system, with effective advice and consultation (e.g. via advice lines and termly clinics/meetings) provided to educational settings.

Schools across the system are engaged, with active participation in SEND panels, training, and wider decision-making forums. They are increasingly working collaboratively, sharing practice and supporting one another, and are playing a vital role in shaping system-wide approaches.

Clearly, speech and language therapy provision in Kingston is underpinned by a skilled and experienced workforce. 

According to Carmel Brady, lead for children’s speech and language therapy at Your Healthcare: “Speech and language therapy can change the course of young lives – removing barriers to effective communication and enabling children to learn, socialise and experience life, giving them the chance to grow into successful, happy and healthy teenagers and adults. In Kingston we are fortunate to have a team of particularly dedicated and skilled speech and language professionals. We are proud of our culture of innovation, and pleased to deliver services using a ‘balanced model’ of delivery, which includes specialist training for parents and the wider workforce, to enable them to work alongside therapists and amplify the overall resource. This allows us to manage our active caseload of around 1200 along with the 16,000 contacts we have each year.

“The expectation is for local authorities and Integrated Care Boards to work together to commission the new Experts at Hand offer, in collaboration with local settings, health partners, and families. We believe that the strength of partnerships that already exist in Kingston mean the foundations required for system transformation are already in place.  We look forward to continuing to work with our partners to ensure children’s needs are met early, effectively and equitably.”

“We would achieve little without the strong relationships we enjoy with partners throughout the system, most notably with our colleagues at Achieving for Children (AfC), children’s service provider for Kingston. Together with AfC, we ensure there is a broad offer of specialist support. This includes effective outreach services (e.g. autism outreach and the Education Inclusion Support Service); support for the government’s Best Start in Life initiative with programmes such as IChatter, one of the most effective ways to support communication development in young children with language delay; and the provision of specialist advice and tools to SEND support workers in early years settings (such as aided language displays).