What’s happening with SEND funding in the UK?

In 2025, the crisis in SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) funding has

reached a critical point in England. Multiple investigations have revealed that local

authorities are struggling to meet rising demand, with some warning they may soon

be unable to fulfil their legal duties to children with SEND due to unsustainable

financial deficits.

Key developments include:

• Forecasts show SEND related deficits growing to over £5.2 billion within the

next year.

• At least 20 councils are facing significant challenges due to the costs associated with high

needs provision.

• Delays in EHCP assessments, provision reviews, and specialist interventions

are being widely reported.

The SEND system, as it stands, was never designed to accommodate such volume

and complexity. While the intention is to provide personalised, inclusive support, the

reality is that many families are encountering long waits, inconsistent provision, and

a system too stretched to respond meaningfully.

“We’ve been passed from one department to another for months. In the end, we

were told there just wasn’t any capacity. We felt like we’d fallen off the radar,” shared

a parent currently home educating their autistic child.

These pressures are particularly acute for families who have chosen, or felt

compelled, to educate their children at home, often following exclusion, unmet

needs, or poor experiences within mainstream schooling. Yet, even outside the

school gates, these families still face barriers to accessing essential support,

including therapies, assessments, and emotional wellbeing services.

At the heart of the issue is not only a lack of funding, but a fundamental

misalignment: families are seeking responsive, relational, child-centred support,

while the system continues to rely on slow-moving, process-heavy mechanisms that

often feel impersonal or inaccessible.

In response, a growing number of families are:

• Navigating services independently, often at great personal cost

• Turning to peer led communities, forums, and local networks for emotional

and practical support

• Exploring how to use personal or EHCP directed funding more creatively and

meaningfully

This shift is quietly reshaping the way support is accessed and delivered.

Increasingly, parents are seeking out professionals and organisations that bring

genuine expertise, lived experience, and a value led approach. Those who

understand not just policy or paperwork, but the real-life complexities of parenting,

education, and neurodiversity.

While public services remain an essential part of the support system, many families

are beginning to ask:

• Can we do more by directing our resources differently?

• Could working with trusted individuals or organisations offer more consistency

and flexibility than waiting for overstretched services?

• Maybe it’s time to think about support differently, not just as a service or

resource, but as something built on trust, real understanding, and ongoing

connection.

In this changing landscape, authentic, specialist led alternatives, those rooted in

compassion, collaboration, and lived insight, are becoming not just a backup plan,

but a preferred pathway for many.

Families aren’t abandoning the system, they’re adapting. They’re reimagining what it

means to find support, and more importantly, who they can trust to provide it.