The White Paper (Every Child Achieving and Thriving) sets the overall direction. The government has also published SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First, which gives more detail on SEND plans.
First: nothing has changed today
This is really important. The White Paper sets out proposals. It is not law. Before any of these proposals change your child’s legal entitlements, they would need to:
- Go through Parliament
- Be debated and potentially amended
- Pass into legislation
- Receive Royal Assent
That takes time.
The proposed transition runs through to 2030, and no child would lose their current legal protections overnight.
So if anyone tells you that your legal rights have changed because of the white paper — that is simply not correct.
Your current legal protections remain fully in place, please continue to use those rights exactly as you would have done last week. Nothing in this White Paper removes them.
What looks potentially promising
1. Individual Support Plans (ISPs)
One of the more hopeful proposals is the introduction of Individual Support Plans. These could provide a legally recognised support plan for children with additional needs – without having to wait for an EHCP.
The consultation gives more detail here. ISPs would be digital, would record barriers to learning, day-to-day provision and reasonable adjustments, and would follow a child through transitions. Schools would have a legal duty to create them for children with identified SEND, and they are described as being co-designed with families.
For many PDA families, the current pattern looks like this:
- Needs are visible.
- Support is patchy or informal.
- Things escalate.
- School says they cannot meet need.
- Only then does an EHCP assessment begin- and by that point lots of children have been so traumatised by the experience they are out of school.
What ISPs could offer, if implemented well, is a rolling, responsive assessment of need. Support would be reviewed and adjusted as difficulties emerge, rather than waiting for crisis. In some ways, it feels like a return to the old “School Action” and “School Action Plus” system, where support could be graduated without needing a full EHCP – but this time with clearer statutory underpinning and national consistency.
For PDA children, whose needs can fluctuate with anxiety levels and environmental demand, that could be a very sensible shift. The detail will matter. We will need to understand how enforceable these plans are, how accountability works, and what happens if provision set out in an ISP is not delivered. Making something that sounds this simple work is always difficult to do. But the principle, earlier recognition of need, without waiting for breakdown is something we can cautiously welcome.
2. “Experts at Hand”
Another proposal in the paper is “Experts at Hand” intended to give schools quicker access to specialist advice and expertise.
The aim is that more children’s needs are met earlier in mainstream settings, without having to wait for statutory assessment.
If that includes genuine understanding of PDA and other kinds of demand avoidance, it could be transformative. We will be feeding back how important it is that PDA-informed practice is embedded within that offer from the outset.
3. Specialist Provision Packages
Alongside ISPs, the consultation proposes nationally defined “Specialist Provision Packages” for children described as having the most complex needs. In future, only children who require one of these packages would have an EHCP. The package would set out the overall evidence-based provision required, and the EHCP would guarantee that entitlement.
There is currently no single definition of “complex needs” in the document. Instead, complexity will effectively be defined by the categories of Specialist Provision Packages that are developed over time.
Greater national consistency and clarity of entitlement could be positive. But we are mindful that many PDA children mask extremely effectively. Their distress can be profound without always looking externally “complex” in the way systems sometimes define it. If complexity is narrowly interpreted, there is a risk that some children with very significant needs may not meet thresholds.
We believe there is an opportunity here for the government to invest in an evidence based approach to working with children with a PDA profile of autism. A robust ‘Specialist provision package’ designed to meet PDAers needs could be transformative for PDA learners. We will be advocating for investment in this.
We will also be paying very close attention to how “complex” is defined in practice.
Where we have concerns
1. The strong focus on attendance
The White Paper repeatedly emphasises improving attendance and uses firm language about attendance not being optional and children needing to be in school. There are proposals around strengthened attendance teams, mentoring, data sharing and multi-agency working to tackle absence.
What we didn’t see is explicit recognition of:
- Fractional timetables
- Hybrid provision
- Education other than at school (EOTAS)
- The reality that some children cannot tolerate full-time mainstream environments at certain points in their lives
The paper talks consistently about engagement in school, rather than engagement in education more broadly. That distinction matters. Not all children can be in school at all times. But it should be possible for all children to receive educational support every day. Education is the right. School is one way of delivering it — not the only way.
For some PDA children, insisting on attendance without flexibility can escalate anxiety and prolong absence rather than resolve it. We would like to see greater nuance in how this is framed as proposals develop.
2. Behaviour and expectations
The paper speaks about consistent behaviour standards and high expectations. It links inclusion with calm environments and shared responsibility between schools and families. There are proposals for refreshed behaviour guidance, attendance and behaviour hubs, and more structured reintegration meetings after suspension.
While it does refer to understanding root causes of behaviour, the tone leans toward compliance and consistency.
For PDA children, behaviour is a response to perceived threat or overwhelming demand. Non- compliance is not a choice, but a sign of distress and should be treated as such.
If implementation focuses primarily on compliance rather than underlying anxiety and relational safety, there is a risk of repeating patterns many families have already experienced as harmful.
The White Paper also proposes strengthening home–school partnership arrangements, including clearer, and in some cases more formalised, agreements setting out expectations on schools, parents and pupils in relation to attendance and behaviour.
In principle, shared clarity can be helpful but given the existing power imbalance between families and schools, we are concerned that these agreements could become another mechanism through which parents feel blamed or pressured, particularly where they are trying to protect a child from distress or harm.
No parent should feel forced into the impossible position of choosing between complying with approaches that are not safe for their child and being seen as “non-cooperative” for advocating for them.
So where does that leave us?
There are elements here that could move the system towards earlier, more responsive support – particularly through Individual Support Plans, clearer national standards and quicker access to expertise.
There are also elements, particularly around attendance, definitions of “complex” need, and behaviour compliance, that raise legitimate questions for families of PDA children.
As this is the beginning of a consultation process, we are hoping to share our hopes, raise our concerns and work productively with the government to ensure that any new legislation makes things better for families, not worse.
What I know is that getting this right is about much more than the letter of the law. It is about funding, about implementation and about culture change. It is about whether schools understand PDAers needs and are supported to respond safely and flexibly.
We intend to keep communicating with government through the legislative process and beyond to do our best to ensure PDAers get access to educational support that works for them.
We’ll be sharing opportunities over the next few days for you to feed back to us and help shape our consultation response, so please keep an eye on our socials if you’d like to contribute.
As always, our role is to make sure policy reflects the reality of children’s lives — not just the theory on paper.
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