White Paper on SEND Reforms - What next?

As you will now be aware, the Government published its White Paper on School SEND reforms last week.  

We are aware that many of you may not have had the chance to go through the whole document yet, it is lengthy and there is also a huge amount of information in the media and from various groups and charities as they give their responses to the proposed changes to the system.

As a charity, we are concerned about the impact on legal rights of our children, if the proposals were to become law.  We are still working on understanding the full implications and are in the process of arranging some in-person and online focus groups to discuss, with the hope of being able to feed back into the consultation process.  

Here are some useful resources for information:

• Michael Charles - Specialist SEND solicitor at Sinclairs Law. Podcast streamed on 01/03/26, featuring other leading experts including IPSEA. You can watch on Facebook here.
• Special Needs Jungle (SNJ) “The 39 Steps: SNJ’s guidance to help you respond to the White Paper SEND Consultation” Read the article on their website here

We have also set up a tracker spreadsheet to try and record everyone’s concerns, views and questions.  You can access the Google document here.

And you can join our Whatsapp group by requesting to join the “SEND Reforms White Paper” group in the Sunshine and Smiles community.

We are here to try and help you understand these far-reaching implications and how you can make your voices heard.  Please join the Whatsapp group, ask questions and raise your concerns.  We would love as many of our families as possible to attend the focus groups, in order to formulate a unified response to the consultation, as well as submitting your individual responses.

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