Council chiefs have defended sweeping changes to special educational needs services in Haringey amid concerns over their potential impact on children.

Civic centre officials insisted that joining the government’s ‘safety valve’ scheme to help cut spending on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) would benefit children after an independent member of a scrutiny panel warned it would have a “negative impact”.

Senior councillors agreed last year to apply to join the safety valve programme, which is designed to eliminate deficits in the dedicated schools grant (DSG) that the council receives from the government to fund school budgets.

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A report stated that if growth in spending on the high needs block of the grant continued unchecked, the authority would run up an £83 million cumulative deficit in the DSG by 2028 – posing a “critical financial risk”.

An update on the council’s bid was presented to a meeting of the children and young people’s scrutiny panel on Tuesday (January 3).

It revealed that the proposals – set to reduce costs by £47.8m over five years – will result in 611 fewer education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which are designed to provide SEND pupils with extra support.

The council hopes providing more early intervention work will reduce the need for the support plans, which numbered 2,637 at the beginning of August last year.

Speaking during the scrutiny meeting, Lourdes Keever, a co-opted panel member representing the Diocese of Westminster, warned schools were “struggling to deliver SEND at the moment” and were already “into serious deficits”.

She said: “I have serious concerns about what we are signing up to with the DfE [Department for Education] because there is going to be a negative impact.”

Lourdes added that EHCPs were often needed to get intervention and suggested that people from disadvantaged backgrounds found it more difficult to get help for their child. She said school governors had told her they knew “very little” about the safety valve scheme.

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Yvonne Denny, another co-opted panel member, from the London Diocesan Board for Schools, said she had “grave concerns” about the safety valve programme, warning that parents were “constantly crying out ‘why should we have to keep fighting instead of being able to get an assessment if our child has a problem?’”

She added: “What I am concerned about is are the children in the east of the borough going to get a better service if you put this [safety valve] in place than they have at the moment?”

Jacqueline Difolco, the council’s assistant director of early intervention and SEND, said the authority needed to address a “systemic problem”. She added: “This isn’t just about achieving savings – it is also about improving outcomes for children.”

Ms Difolco said there was a cohort of children that had to wait for EHCP plans, which “delays children getting help until a much later stage”.

The work being undertaken by the council meant children would not have to wait to receive specialist support, she explained, adding that youngsters who needed a plan would receive one in line with the authority’s statutory duty.

Zena Brabazon, cabinet member for children, schools and families, said she was happy to speak to school governors again if they had not been briefed enough. But she added that 50 per cent of local authorities were now in the safety valve programme and the council could not refuse the offer of joining.

Cllr Brabazon said: “We cannot keep sustaining a system where an EHCP is the only means whereby a child gets an intervention. That’s just not the right way to do it. The intervention should be there long before an EHCP – to avoid having an EHCP.”

The update on the application to join the safety valve programme also sets out plans to reduce costs by providing places for an extra 118 children and young people within mainstream education settings in Haringey.

It is one of several reforms focused on three separate workstreams: commissioning, demand management and culture, and governance and leadership. The council expects to find out whether its application has been successful by the end of January.