The 2026 SEND Reform: A “Watershed Moment” or Just More Invisible Children?

By Cathy Wassell, CEO & Founder, Autistic Girls Network & The Haven

The wait is over. The £4 billion “generational reform” has landed. On Monday, February 23, 2026, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson unveiled “Every Child Achieving and Thriving.” It’s a White Paper full of ambitious words that could have filled our Bingo cards: belonging, inclusion, experts-on-demand, ‘golden ticket’ and a £3.7bn capital splash for inclusion bases.

At the same time, the Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group (chaired by Prof. Karen Guldberg at the ACER centre at University of Birmingham, my old Alumni) finally saw their report published – a document that tries to inject some neuro-affirmative sanity into a system that has long viewed our children as “problems to be managed.”
But while the headlines talk about a “decade-long mission,” families on the ground are asking a much simpler question: “What about my child, right now?“

If you are reading the headlines and worrying that your child’s EHCP is about to vanish, breathe. The publication of a White Paper is not the same as a change in the law.
The Children and Families Act 2014 remains the law of the land. The SEND Regulations 2014 are still in force.

• Your child still has a right to an EHC Needs Assessment.
• Your Section F provision is still a legal mandate.
• The Tribunal still has the power to hold Local Authorities (LAs) to account.

The government is proposing a move toward Individual Support Plans (ISPs) and a reduction of 270,000 EHCPs by 2035, but those are intentions, not current reality. 

Do not let any school or LA tell you that your rights have been “downgraded”.

At Autistic Girls Network, we look at these reforms through the lens of the “invisible” child – the girl who masks, the quiet learner who internalises, and the late-discovered teenager who has spent years being told they are “doing fine” while they slowly crumble.

The White Paper promises “Experts at Hand” and “Inclusion Bases.” This sounds great. But there is a massive, gaping hole: Identification.

If a child is a “pro-masker,” they won’t be picked up by the “early signs” that teachers are being trained to spot. The White Paper mentions “Belonging Surveys,” but for autistic children with alexithymia (difficulty identifying emotions), being asked to “self-report” on their feelings in a school survey is like being asked to describe a colour they’ve never seen.

The £1.6bn Inclusive Mainstream Fund and the requirement for Inclusion Bases are the government’s biggest bets. But as the Task and Finish Group report points out, inclusion isn’t just about a physical space – it’s about the environment.

You can put a child in a “base,” but if the hallways are still high-sensory combat zones, if the transitions are still unstructured, and if the behaviour policy still punishes non-compliance (which is often just sensory distress), that child is still being excluded. We don’t need “velcro TAs” sitting next to our learners; we need schools that actually fit their neurotype.

The most glaring omission in this generational reform is a plan for the thousands of young people who have already crashed out of the Education System.

What is the offer for the children currently on EOTAS (Education Other Than At School)? What about the families paying thousands for unelective home education because the system broke their child?

The White Paper mentions “Alternative Provision outreach,” but for a child whose trauma is triggered by the very sight of a school uniform, “outreach” from a school hub isn’t a solution. We need to know:

1. How will the £1.8bn specialist bank be made available to children who cannot leave their bedrooms?
2. Will EOTAS remain a protected legal pathway, or will it be squeezed out by the push for “inclusive mainstream”?
3. Where is the recognition that for some children, the mainstream environment – no matter how many “bases” you build – is simply not safe?

The government wants to move toward Individual Support Plans (ISPs) managed by schools. They claim this is a “radical expansion of rights.” We see it differently.

An EHCP is a legal contract with the Local Authority. An ISP, as described, places the burden of appeal on the school itself. If the school is the provider, the assessor, and the first point of appeal, the “checks and balances” that parents currently rely on at the Tribunal are effectively dismantled. Given that LAs lose 99% of Tribunal cases, we have zero confidence that moving the “decision gate” closer to the budget-holders will help our kids. The equivalent of ISPs have already been tried (remember School Action and School Action Plus?) but if we’re losing 270,000 EHCPs who is going to write and assess for all the EXTRA ISPs – because the Education Secretary promised more need would be identified and more support given.

There are bits of the Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group report that we love—the focus on belonging, the move away from deficit-based models, and the call for needs-led support.

But as long as the government’s metric for success is “recovering attendance” and academic stretch rather than psychological safety and long-term wellbeing, our cohort will continue to be missed.

Our message to the DfE is simple: You cannot build an inclusive system by ignoring the children who have already been broken by it.

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What do you think? Is the ISP a “rights expansion” or a “rights bypass”? Let us know in the comments below.