Q8. Do you agree that the refreshed ‘areas of development’ will support educators to understand and address barriers to learning and participation? Please explain your answer.

The context: The ‘areas of development’ will replace the current ‘areas of need’ used to categorise and report on SEND. Current ‘areas of need’ are criticised for being poorly defined with some describing underlying needs while others are based on a diagnosis. The new ‘areas of development’ will aim to reflect developmental needs and each area will form the basis of a Specialist Provision package. Currently, the Government is proposing five areas: Executive Function, Motor and Physical, Speech, Language and Communication, Social and Emotional, Sensory. However, the Government is still consulting on this framework.

In your answer, you may want to consider:

• The move away from diagnosis-based categories of need may benefit some care-experienced children who have faced long delays in accessing assessments and diagnosis, especially for autism, ADHD and FASD.
• However, children with complex, overlapping needs and those with spectrum conditions are unlikely to fit neatly into any single one of these areas of development, risking a significant proportion of their needs being unsupported and unrecognised.
• The proposal is for Specialist Provision Packages to be defined by one of these areas of development. How will this work where children have significant needs crossing two or more of these areas of development?