Category: National Impact

  • Early Years Engagement Events

    Early Years Engagement Events

    Dingley’s Promise is inviting parents of children with SEND under 8 to share their early years experiences and help shape national policy.

    Join us for a face-to-face engagement event, exploring the government’s new SEND proposals and feeding back directly into the consultation.

    Your voice matters! Places are limited, so sign up today. Learn more about the dates and locations here.

    If you can’t attend, you can still have your say through the national consultation: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/send-reform-putting-children-and-young-people-first

  • Response to the new Child Poverty Strategy

    Response to the new Child Poverty Strategy

    Dingley’s Promise welcomes the new Child Poverty Strategy, which recognises the urgent need to address the growing numbers of children across the country living in poverty. Families of children with SEND are amongst those most impacted by the ‘double disadvantage’ of higher living and care costs as a result of their child’s needs, as highlighted in recent research from The Sutton Trust linking poverty and SEND.

    The strategy recognises that affordable childcare is critical for giving children the best start in life and reducing the impact of child poverty. However, the strategy does not address the fact that access for children with SEND to early years education is a key barrier to equal opportunity. The link between poverty and SEND is clear and therefore any policy aiming to reduce child poverty must also actively consider how to ensure children with SEND have full access to education, health and care services. Without addressing the needs of this group of children, closing the gap cannot become a reality and a large number of children will continue to be left behind.

    We welcome the scrapping of the “two-child limit” on benefits (Universal Credit/child elements), which will provide much needed financial support to more families.  The strategy also welcomes a number of areas for extended support such as breakfast clubs and holiday and wrap around care. We are however, very aware that unless correct measures of support are put into place to make these sessions fully inclusive, children with SEND often face limited access to these services due to an inability to meet needs effectively, leading to greater inequality.

    The Strategy refers to strengthening “local services,” such as health, social care, housing and other support services, which would make a significant difference to families of children with SEND, who regularly have to repeat information within different formats. However greater integration between anti-poverty measures and local SEND services is needed for this to be impactful.

    The document demonstrates the intention to remove ‘structural barriers to employment’, which may in some cases, where children are able to access entitlements, help families to work more. However, we know for many families the demands on family life, medical appointments and levels of care and support required in reality make working extremely difficult – something which is not fully recognise or addressed within the strategy.

    We stand with our partners in committing to contribute to the Government’s upcoming childcare review and the Schools White Paper, to strengthen the equity in the system, by directly tackling the crisis in access to early education for children with SEND. This will build on what has been outlined in the Poverty Strategy and is critical for ensuring that we do not continue to uphold an inequitable system, in which children with SEND are already more likely to be living in poverty, and have less chance of accessing life-changing early education.

    You can read the full Governement Strategy here.

  • Solving the SEND Crisis report – our response

    Solving the SEND Crisis report – our response

    We welcome the ‘House of Commons Education Committee Report’ and were grateful to have been asked to provide evidence for this process, which has clearly been acknowledged within the recommendations. The report recognises that ‘there needs to be that value and recognition of the early years’ and aligns closely with the recommendations Dingley’s Promise made when giving evidence to the Committee to improve funding, access and workforce capacity in the early years. We are pleased to see repeated emphasis on early identification, which is especially vital for the growing numbers of children with SEND.

    The report identifies the need to ‘undertake further work to understand where the balance of resource should sit between early years and reception’ and we would strongly recommend the focus on a needs led approach in the early years and increased resource and investment to enable effective and smooth transitions between the two stages of education.

    The report addresses the current ineffectiveness of the funding in early years and the ‘inconsistency in the delivery of early years provision and (SENIF)’, and encourages the Department for Education to ‘establish a ‘set of national inclusivity requirements for early years settings’. We welcome this in principle but are clear that funding must be directed to both children with ‘High Needs’ and those with ‘Low and Emerging’ needs. Funding must be sufficient and sustainable to enable educators to respond effectively to meet a range of needs regardless of whether there is an EHCP, diagnosis or specialist input. This requires the ringfencing of the High Needs Block to support children in the early years and for SENIF funding to be available and sufficient for those with low and emerging needs. We also support the recommendation to delink Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and Disability Access Funding (DAF).

    We are pleased to see the report acknowledge the role of Best Start Family Hubs in ‘presenting a valuable opportunity to engage with families earlier and identify SEND needs at the earliest possible stage’. The need for greater integration of specialist services, early years teams and early years settings to provide holistic early support to families is unquestionable. To be effective, family hubs should support early identification of need and leadership of local support services for families of children with SEND. All staff need to have inclusion training, and the SEND staff should be skilled and experienced in supporting families of children with SEND.

    Upskilling the workforce to support inclusive practice is key to the success of any funding measures and we are pleased to see the report acknowledge the opportunity through the Best Start in Life strategy to ‘ensure that there is a ‘strong and consistent framework for building SEND capacity and good practice in early years settings’. It is vital that a whole setting approach to inclusion is taken in every setting, underpinned by high quality inclusive practice, accessible environments and inclusive curriculum. Without mandatory SEND Inclusion training across the sector for new and existing educators, we can not hope to achieve inclusion and give every child an equitable early years education, which improves children’s longer term outcomes and supports the government’s aims to improve child development levels.

    We encourage the government to factor in these clear recommendations to the forthcoming White Paper reforms and are keen to work with them to support reforms that ensure necessary system change in the early years and greater opportunity, access, support and funding for children with SEND and their families.

    Read the full report here Solving the SEND Crisis

  • Government ‘Best Start in Life’ Strategy – Our Response

    Government ‘Best Start in Life’ Strategy – Our Response

    Dingley’s Promise welcomes the Government’s ‘Best Start in Life’ Strategy and its vital focus on valuing and investing in early childhood. For too long, children with SEND have not been able to access their early years entitlements in the same way as other children, leaving them further behind their peers, and their families feeling isolated and frustrated.  

    The Government states that it will “increase access for children with SEND, by investing in the help available to them to support inclusion, and early intervention to prevent the escalation of needs.” We have actively called for changes to the system to improve access and life outcomes for children with SEND, and for a system which puts children and families at the centre and ensures collaboration for the best outcomes of each individual child. We are delighted that the Strategy aligns with many of our recommendations for early years SEND Inclusion.  

    There was recognition that ‘the early years funding system creates a barrier to delivering provision for children with SEND.’ We are pleased to see increased investment in early years SEND, through a new, easy to access funding stream in early years settings. This is intended to ‘help fund extra resources for providers to invest in inclusion and early intervention and prevent the escalation of needs at a time when additional support can have the biggest impact in a child’s development.’   

    In addition, we welcome the proposed funded partnership working between early years settings and schools, to allow for smoother transitions for children, seeing first-hand the impact of effective and ineffective transitions on long term educational outcomes for children. 

    Having developed an outreach service in each of our communities as well as online information sessions and digital resources, we are happy to see the expansion of Family Hubs. Having a dedicated professional in each hub who is trained to support families of children with SEND is absolutely critical. We welcome the drive towards ‘helping to identify children with SEND who may need extra help early on’ as well as building links with early years settings and health services and assisting parents at this early stage. We believe this approach will have significant impacts on families, many of whom have expressed the importance of feeling included and supported at what can be a confusing and isolating time. 

    The issues raised by families in our recent parent roundtable held in Westminster highlighted the complexity and ineffectiveness of current family support systems and just how critical it is for families to have this kind of support, information and signposting in the early years.  

    Dingley’s Promise has long called for an inclusive approach to early years education. We were encouraged to see a recognition of the importance of ‘strong inclusive practice’ for all children. The Government has demonstrated their intention to ‘make inclusive practice standard practice in the early years by embedding an inclusive approach in our workforce education, training and leadership opportunities.’ Our own research with providers reflected that 77% believe that inclusion training is a priority for their teams, and when considering inclusion as a whole, 63% of settings felt the best way to improve their support to children is through staff training. We have seen first-hand the impacts on individuals and settings who undertake high quality inclusive practice training, increasing confidence and knowledge to support a broad range of needs and welcome more children into their settings.  

    Chief Executive Catherine Mole MBE welcomes the proposed Best Start Strategy: “This strategy reflects the Government’s commitment to prioritising early years and children with SEND, and we are delighted that it addresses many of the barriers we have highlighted in recent months. Dingley’s Promise believes that these initiatives will make a significant difference to children with SEND and their families in the early years, opening up more places in early years settings, and driving strong inclusive practice within a skilled and valued workforce, from which all children will benefit. We are committed to working with the Government to bring this strategy to life and recognise that this is the first step in a longer process that we hope will enable every child to thrive in the early years.”  

    We look forward to hearing more about the direction of the strategy and the specific SEND reforms which will be outlined in the Schools White Paper in the autumn.  

  • Dingley’s Promise statement regarding planned reform of EHCP process

    Dingley’s Promise statement regarding planned reform of EHCP process

    We welcome the government’s attention to reform of the SEND system, including the review of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). We strongly advise that if these Plans are to cease, there must be an alternative process in place that does not erode the rights of children, and ensures every child gets the support they need at the earliest possible opportunity.

    We fully understand the concerns of families, who at the current time are unsure of what the reform of this process will look like. However as the government is clearly considering possible alternatives, we urge families of children with SEND to continue to contribute to the conversation, alongside sector professionals and organisations, to create a system that works effectively and in which services can be held to account.

    From an early years perspective, reform is urgently needed to remove current barriers. There are significant issues in accessing professional support during early years and diagnosing children when they are still developing rapidly can be unhelpful. The process requires families to complete deficit-focused application procedures at the very start of their educational journey, which can be traumatic and exacerbate worries and concerns about their current and future developmental potential. We also have an early years workforce which is struggling to meet heavy demands of an inadequate funding system and processes which place an unnecessarily heavy administrative burden on them. The current systems and processes in early years are not fit for purpose and place increased pressures later in the education system.

    We believe that an effective system of support for children with SEND in the early years should be based on needs and not on diagnosis. Changes to the funding process in the early years is required, to remove the current barriers and backlogs in the system which are leaving many children unable to access their next stage of education or without the support in place to thrive. A fully funded, needs-led and easily accessible process is paramount. A wider range of SENIF funding streams should be available to early years providers that enable them to support all children. These should use streamlined application procedures which focus on needs of children and place trust in early years educators to identify those needs in partnership with families.

    This approach would allow early years educators to use a graduated approach when identifying and meeting needs, removing the expectation from schools for children to have an EHCP before they can be accepted into the next stage of education. With rising numbers of early years children deferring entry to school because their EHCP is not in place, this change is critical in ensuring that children move on at the same time as their peers and are neither socially nor educationally disadvantaged.

    We believe that this will build strong inclusive practice from the beginning of every child’s educational journey, and reduce the over reliance on EHCPs in the early years. It places the emphasis on the individual needs of each child, reduces pressure on families and early years professionals and allows a wide range of children to play and learn together. The EHCP process, or any new process that is created must continue to hold educational settings to account once they have started school, but in the early years the needs led approach gives children the best start without the need to label or diagnose children earlier than is necessary.

    Catherine McLeod MBE

    CEO Dingley’s Promise

  • “Heads forced to ‘lobby’ for specialist provision in early years” – TES Magazine

    “Heads forced to ‘lobby’ for specialist provision in early years” – TES Magazine

    In an article for TES Magazine, Dingley’s Promise CEO Catherine McLeod highlights the importance of early years SEND provision amidst the concerns of many in the sector that not enough is being done to support children with complex needs in this crucial stage of development.

     

    Catherine McLeod, CEO of Dingley’s Promise, warned that creating specialist provision in early years has been an overlooked policy area until now.

    She leads the largest specialist provider of nursery education to children under five with SEND in England, running nine centres.

    “When it comes to creating units, specialist provision has never been properly considered in the early years,” she told Tes.

    Ms McLeod said this was strange given the prominence of such provision in schools, and suggested that in the past, there have been concerns that specialist provision in early years works against ensuring inclusion in mainstream.

    But she added: “I think people have to get their head around the idea that actually, if you get in early, you give the right intervention, you can actively move that child into the mainstream.”

     

    Read the full piece here.

  • Solving the SEND Crisis – Evidence from Dingley’s Promise

    Solving the SEND Crisis – Evidence from Dingley’s Promise

    Over the past few years, giving every child the best early years education has increasingly been considered the key to success in their educational journey and their life outcomes.

    Despite the importance of this stage of education, we are currently failing children with SEND and their families in the early years. Coram’s annual childcare survey in 2024 found that only 6% of local authority areas felt they have enough early years provision for children with SEND. This is a drop from 18% in 2023, showing a dramatic worsening in access to early years provision. Dingley’s Promise research in late 2023 found that one in five families had been turned away from an early years setting because of their child’s needs, something that is repeatedly being raised as a concern through our work with families and local authorities across the country.

    In this evidence, we offer key strategies for improving this untenable situation, highlighting areas of concern from the viewpoint of families, settings and local authorities.

    Click here for our full evidence submission.

  • Dingley’s Promise response to IPPR Report

    Dingley’s Promise response to IPPR Report

    Last week IPPR published a report paper assessing the situation facing the new UK government, as they try to ‘break down the barriers to opportunity’ whilst rolling out the new childcare entitlements. In considering some of the key delivery challenges and choices it faces and the potential impacts on children and families, it raises some important points.

    Read the full report here

    The childcare challenge: How can the new government deliver a real childcare guarantee? | IPPR

    We welcome this report’s detailing of the deep inequalities in funding, especially for children with SEND, stating that “the government should increase the generosity of funding for children with special educational needs (SEND) to ensure that settings are paid fairly and equitably for the additional support they provide and remove any disincentives to taking children with SEND – while also improving processes to make additional funding quicker and easier to access”. The new DfE guidance on EY funding once again states how these streams should be used and the importance of directing the High Needs Block funding to early years, which is vital in addressing the current inequalities in the system.

    We are pleased that the report acknowledges the improvements needed in SENIF and DAF applications, which are time-consuming and a significant barrier for settings trying to access vital funding in a timely way to support children. It highlights our concern about the impact of the current application process on families access highlighting that “it is only accessible to families who have the confidence and readiness to take this route. Many parents feel understandably reluctant to apply while a child’s needs are still emerging at such a young age. This may explain why there tend to be significant underspends in DAF (Dingley’s Promise, 2023).

    The report rightly states that the SEND system generally is at breaking point and needs weaning off such heavy dependence on EHCPs (Bryant et al, 2024), meaning greater recognition of emerging needs in the early years within mainstream funding. It recommends the need to find a ‘clear way to measure progress and needs of children’ but the report overlooks the recent launch of the SEND Assessment and Guidance created by Dingley’s Promise in collaboration with the Department for Education, which provide a clear and consistent method of identifying emerging SEND needs. This underlines the need for this resource to be shared more widely and adopted by settings, families, health professionals, LAs and schools, to create consistency in approach, where all stakeholders are using the same documents and the language and expectations are consistent for families, avoiding unnecessary repetition of information by families which is both tiring and emotionally triggering.

    The research highlights the need for ‘suitable provision available to all, stating, “free entitlement funding does not adequately meet the costs of delivering to more vulnerable or disadvantaged children. This means it is not a level playing field for those children or the providers who serve them – and it can be a disincentive to taking them” however we are disappointed that none of the recommendations in this section respond directly to the needs of children with SEND, whom it identifies as one of the failed groups by the system. We have seen first hand the difficulties accessing support which are acknowledged by the report as ‘not incentivising providers to go down formal pathways and put children on a long-term ‘SEND track’ unnecessarily’. Where effective early intervention is in place children’s long-term outcomes can be transformed.

    The report raises significant issues in the measurement of sufficiency within local authorities. “Although annual sufficiency assessments are required to be conducted, this often appears a tick-box exercise. The extent of local intelligence gathered about the market and where there may be real gaps that require action is limited by staff capacity and lack of commissioning expertise in early years teams’. From our knowledge working with local authorities, we know the importance of the Childcare Sufficiency Assessments, and how vital it is that they consider of the supply and demand of provision for children with SEND. Without this information,  local area decision makers cannot fully understand the scale of the issue and planning for improvements or next stages of education is impossible. We have developed a number of resources in collaboration with Coram Hempsalls as part of their Childcare Works Programme to support the assessment and planning of sufficiency as well supporting local authorities to be more inclusive, these can be accessed here.

    The report recognises the need to link SENIF to CPD; it refers to the Anna Freud survey of 900 nursery workers, which found that many feel extremely underprepared to meet some of the more difficult situations when dealing with children with challenging and complex backgrounds (Album J et al, 2021). which is important. To remove the current barriers to whole setting inclusion, we recommend that all practitioners are required to complete inclusion training, placing the emphasis on the role of inclusive practice with all professionals, rather than SEND focused support sitting solely in the domain of the SENCO.

    Finally, we must acknowledge that systems cannot be improved without SEND being integral to these discussions from the very start. The report recognises notes ‘The challenge of meeting the increasingly complex needs of children also relates to a lack of effective join-up and integration with wider support systems’. All too often major strategic decisions are made and only afterwards are questions raised about how this will affect children with SEND and their families. This is too late and the impact of this is extremely damaging.  SEND specialists such as Dingley’s Promise must be part of the conversation when consulting and coproducing with families and organisations working in the area, to assess risks of any new initiatives and to ensure that SEND does not become an afterthought but is a crucial consideration in every planning stage..

    Without a shift in approach and actively targeting an improvement of Early Years services specifically for children with SEND, the government will simply not be able to reach its target of 75% of children reaching a good level of development by the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) assessment by 2028.

  • Dingley’s Promise response to the Labour Party’s education milestone unveiled today

    Dingley’s Promise response to the Labour Party’s education milestone unveiled today

    Today we welcome Kier Starmer’s commitment to Break Down Barriers to Opportunity and Giving Children the Best Start in Life.

    The labour government are demonstrating a recognition of the barriers facing our youngest children with identified or emerging SEND needs, and a willingness to act to address them.

    They recognise that 80% of parents have struggled to access services and families of children with SEND are amongst the most impacted within this statistic, with many being unable to access their early years entitlement.

    Early intervention for children and support for families, such as is provided by Dingley’s Promise, is vital to the long-term outcomes of children and we are grateful for the acknowledgement that much more funding, training and support is required at in the earliest years of life to set children on the right track and help them fulfil their potential.

    We are encouraged to see the emphasis on training and have been working tirelessly to support the sector with early years training which can have a significant impact on levels of confidence in the workforce and the achievement of whole setting inclusion.

    Mr Starmer is correct in his statement that “high-quality early education and childcare to set every child up for success” and we are committed to ensuring that all early years educators have high quality training, which enables them to effectively meet the needs of all children with a wide range of additional needs in their setting.

    The responses of settings who have taken up our training directly reflect the impact it is having, and we hope to see many more settings across the country benefiting.

     

    “A valuable whole team exercise that enhanced our practice, informed our professional conversations and supported our growth to being better equipped to move forward our SEND inclusion practice”.

    “DP training has solidified the learning for all the practitioners in the setting.  Staff now have a greater insight as to why we do what we do and it has increased their passion to ensure we maintain our inclusive practice for the benefit of current and future children”.

    We look forward to working with the Department for Education and Ministers to ensure that positive action is taken to turn these statements of intent and to continue to raise awareness of the SEND Assessment Guidance  with settings and local authorities, to ensure it is adopted across the country to benefit children, families and settings

    Click here to read Labours Mission to Give Every Child the Best Start in Life: https://www.gov.uk/missions/opportunity

    Find more about Dingley’s Promise Inclusion training for early years educators here: About Our Training – Dingley’s Promise

    Explore the Early Years SEND Assessment Toolkit developed by Dingley’s Promise in partnership with the Department for Education here: https://help-for-early-years-providers.education.gov.uk/support-for-practitioners/send-assessment

     

     

  • Post Election Statement

    Post Election Statement

    Securing inclusion for children with SEND in the early years is our main priority and we are excited to work with the new government to make vital changes over the coming months to give more children with SEND access to early years education.

    In conversations with us, the Labour party have shown their understanding of the need to ensure that every child can access their early years entitlements, and Bridget Phillipson has emphasised how important the Bell Review will be in outlining the steps the new government will be taking around early years SEND. We are keen to see the party action the crucial de-linking of Disability Access Funding from Disability Living Allowance to take pressure off families and release funding quickly so that settings can welcome children with SEND. We also hope to see mandatory inclusion training for all early years professionals. It is also vital for the high needs block to be ringfenced to support children with high needs in the early years.

    We must focus on early intervention as this will give our children the foundations for a bright future in which they can achieve their full potential.

    Our young children with SEND need the fairer education system the government is proposing, and Dingley’s Promise are committing to helping them to achieve it.