THE joint council and health authorities in Cornwall “need to do better” to support vulnerable children and young people across the Duchy.

That was the message at a meeting yesterday (Monday, July 14) to build on and improve special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision for young people in Cornwall.

The snappily titled Committee in Common between the Cornwall Health and Wellbeing Board and the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Partnership confirmed its support of a Joint SEND Commissioning Strategy 2025-2030 and Cornwall SEND Strategic Plan 2025-2028; and their adoption by Cornwall Council and NHS partners.

The strategy responds directly to a 2023 SEND inspection which found areas in need of urgent improvement. Cornwall continues to face significant financial pressures for a number of reasons, including rising numbers of pupils with complex needs, extended statutory duties and increasing reliance on high-cost placements.

The budgeted in-year deficit for 2025/26 is £27-million, with a cumulative deficit projected to reach £72-million by the end of March 2026.

Cornwall is ranked 144th out of 149 councils in terms of the per-pupil SEND funding. Having a low funding allocation, like Cornwall’s position near the bottom nationally, has “several serious and compounding impacts in terms of reduced support for children, strains on schools, escalating costs over time and equity and legal risks,” stated a report for the joint committee.

The key challenges in Cornwall’s SEND system are:

Sue McDermott, from Cornwall Council’s Together For Families department, told the meeting: “There are other pressures across our system in the local authority and health – we know our financial envelopes are going to be squeezed; we need to do better and we need to work together better in order to meet the demands that we have.”

She added the the authorities need to move away from what has been a very expensive reliance on independent specialist provision. “It’s about working together on responding to mental health challenges for our children and young people.

“It’s about better preparation for transitions for our young people with SEND as they move into adulthood. By not intervening early enough it actually costs the system further downstream as well as the lives it impacts.”

Committee member Tarn Lamb said: “These children and young people are vulnerable, and if we don’t get it right for them it’s going to have a massive impact on their lives, on their families’ lives but also on our whole system.”

She added that an area that needs addressing is children who aren’t in school and adapting a collaborative approach with their parents. “Quite often what we hear feedback on is those parents feeling extremely judged and isolated,” she said.

In response to its statutory duties and in recognition of the growing pressures within the SEND system, Cornwall Council and its health partners have co-produced a Joint SEND Commissioning Strategy to align resources, improve service delivery and ensure better outcomes for children and families.

This includes integrated planning and commissioning, early intervention and prevention, and improved access to services. While the strategy does not commit additional funding at this stage, it provides a framework for more efficient use of existing resources and supports efforts to address the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficit through improved commissioning and service.

In June 2025 there was a government announcement to extend the SEND Statutory Override until the end of the 2027–28 financial year. The decision is intended to allow councils to continue excluding SEND-related DSG deficits from their general balance sheets, providing temporary financial relief and avoiding potential insolvency for many local authorities.

The primary reason for the extension is that without the override, around half of all councils were projected to face severe financial risk or potential bankruptcy due to escalating SEND deficits, which are expected to reach £5 billion nationally.

The extension is intended to provide short-term certainty while the government works on long-term SEND reforms, including:

The committee report added: “Whilst this provides immediate relief, it is only a short-term temporary fix and there is continued urgent need given the scale of the risks associated with the current SEND policy agenda to deliver a permanent sustainable funding solution across health, care and education. In the absence of this, the underlying financial pressures remain and continue to grow between now and 2028.”

Cornwall’s SEND strategic plan identifies five core priorities, developed from the post inspection action plans, which are:

The SEND strategies will come before Cornwall Council’s Cabinet on July 30 for final approval.