Last month, the Government was busy updating its guidance around the Experts at Hand offer, part of the wider SEND reforms, including for the 2026/27 academic year. This is, of course, despite the fact we are still waiting for a response to the SEND consultation and do not expect to have this before autumn this year, increasing our worries that some of these reforms are being stealthily pushed through without proper engagement.
At the top level, the Government has promised a £1.8 billion investment in the new Experts at Hand offer, alongside £200 million in ‘transformation funding’ for local authorities. 80% of this £1.8 billion has to be spent on direct delivery of the Experts at Hand scheme with the grant covering:
- Provision of additional education specialists
- Outreach from AP, special schools, and post-16 institutions
- Clinical health professionals
It is worth noting, though, that the funding will flow through local authorities in co-operation with local Integrated Care Boards, rather than directly to the providers such as special schools. This will frustratingly leave providers at the mercy of local authorities and their opinions of where the money is best spent.
There is some attempt to mitigate this. In its Experts at Hand ‘year 1’ guidance, the Government has also laid out the ‘local area partnerships’ which should be involved in strategic planning and commissioning of the offer. These partnerships will include:
- The local authority
- ICBs
- Representatives from mainstream settings
- Representatives from alternative provision and specialist settings
- Health providers
- Parent carer forums
- Children and young people’s voice
It is welcome to see representatives from AP and specialist settings included, but who are these ‘representatives’? Will these be solely from maintained special schools? Or will they include independent, non-maintained, and academies? Will multiple schools be represented or is one enough to tick that box for the local authorities? Yet again, the sector is left scrambling for details for a scheme many are happy to be involved in.
Not only this, but the Experts at Hand funding was paid out to local authorities at the end of June, providing that they submitted their Local SEND Reform Plan, which detailed how the Experts at Hand offer will be budgeted and conducted.
As Schools Week reported, these plans do not require public consultation or publication, the only stipulation being that they are ‘signed off by a SEND board and senior local officials’. The Government claims to want specialist settings involved in these reforms, yet neglects to give them an opportunity to even see, let alone inform, these plans.
Below, we set out some more about what we know so far regarding what Experts at Hand will offer, as well as where specialist schools currently sit.
What’s being offered?
In the Government’s own words, the Experts at Hand scheme aims to strengthen the mainstream SEND offering ‘by providing a new route to access expert advice and support from education and health professionals’. The funding should support fully qualified professionals from four disciplines:
- Speech and language therapists
- Occupational therapists
- Educational psychologists
- Specialist teachers – both local authority-based and those based in specialist or AP settings
One area the Government has already gone into more detail on is SaLT, with every ICB area expected to get a specific new Speech and Language Therapist Advanced Practitioner. They will be tasked with building relationships between education settings and encouraging the growth of the speech and language therapy workforce, among other responsibilities. It is fair to assume that the other professionals will have similar goals, and we can hope that ‘education settings’ meaningfully includes specialist settings too.
As with the other aspects of the reforms, detail here is sparse, namely where are these professionals going to be coming from? When the scheme was announced, Schools Minister Georgia Gould suggested that the scheme would involve 7500 experts. This figure was missing from the SEND consultation, and the Department for Education have been unable to support this suggestion since or explain in any detail how the workforce requirement will be met.
NASS has long called for a practical workforce plan, and the ambition of the Experts at Hand offer only emphasises the urgent need for this. If specialist settings are expected to provide this expertise, we need some detailed plans to make sure that current provision within special schools is not diminished. This means we need to know how the Government aims to recruit the staff, and we are all aware how difficult that is at the moment.
Special Schools
The Government has stated that part of the Experts at Hand offering will include ‘additional outreach from alternative provision, special schools and post-16 institutions’ as ‘key partners in prevention, reintegration and supporting children and young people with more complex needs’.
It is always welcome to see the expertise our specialist settings offer recognised, and many of our member schools are receptive to the idea of helping mainstream settings with their inclusive provision.
If local authorities want to include specialist settings with their new local area partnerships though, there needs to be some trust built back into the system.
Yet the Local SEND Reform Plans, submitted by local authorities to the Department for Education by 19th June, are shrouded in mystery despite their focus on the Experts at Hand offer.
This currently leaves specialist settings knowing that they will be drawn upon as part of the Experts at Hand offering, but with little detail of what this looks like in practise making resource planning near impossible.
This is frankly a ridiculous situation, and DfE have assured us that they will be raising the strength of feeling around this to the relevant teams. We hope that DfE will change their minds on this and publish the plans they have received.
The lack of engagement is especially disappointing when our member schools have already shown what good outreach can look like:
- William Henry Smith Foundation is the Chair School for the Calderdale Specialist Provision Cluster (SPC) which is a non-profit making cluster of special schools that deliver an offer of support for schools, teachers and pupils in mainstream settings throughout the district. It combines training, consultation and professional supervision based on shared expertise, to ensure that provision is both effective and sustainable - enabling pupils to thrive within their school communities. Calderdale SPC has supported over 84 schools since 2022.
- Percy Hedley Foundation partners with several local initial teacher training providers to support observational placements and provide Teaching Placements within the school. Their specialist teachers have completed a range of mentoring qualifications from universities as well as working on Coaching and Mentoring at Post Grad study.
- In 2021, Muntham House School established its Therapy Hubs programme, providing therapy and counselling sessions to pupils from local schools who are experiencing a mental health crisis or are at risk of permanent exclusion. The programme is offered free of charge to a number of local primary and secondary schools, supporting children and families during challenging periods. Partnership schools report reductions in exclusion rates and referrals to CAMHS, alongside improvements in school attendance, pupil mental health and overall wellbeing.
These are just three examples which show that an Experts at Hand scheme which encourages strong, two-way partnerships, would be welcome across both the specialist and mainstream sectors. Specialist settings can provide their expertise to support mainstream inclusion, whilst mainstream settings can share their own practises and facilities with specialist settings.
This could be a real win-win situation if the Government follows its own mantra and ensures the programme is ‘inclusive’ of all settings from the outset.
Next steps
With the Local SEND Reform Plans already submitted, and the funding beginning to be distributed, NASS has already begun its work to obtain clarity on how the Experts at Hand offer will impact member schools, and when they can expect to find out what local authorities will be asking of them.
To be clear, our concerns sit with the lack of information and trust at this stage, not with the idea behind Experts at Hand itself. Increased collaboration between specialist and mainstream settings under an established partnership presents a real opportunity to assist all young people, and we’ll continue to push Government to make sure this is realised.