Capacity
“Key impacts we have noticed in the past 12 month have been issues around teacher capacity – teachers time is stretched, and they’re less able to be released from school or participate in activities.”
A New Direction
“Additional strain on teachers because of staff shortages has a negative impact on their capacity to engage with us and general communications.”
Akademi
“Staff in SEND schools and other settings are more stretched than ever. Other schools / colleges simply don’t appear to have the capacity / infrastructure to respond and engage. Covid-19 was a massive blow to this sector.”
EFDSS
“Planning – Due to the school curriculum planning, all settings need to be planned at least two terms in advance, and with ongoing changes in staff, school priorities and the general pressures of day to day planning, staff time and availability for discussions being just in term time – these are all areas that have to be continuously taken into account.”
Snowbility and The Snow Sports Foundation
“The busy environment in which we work makes it tricky sometimes to visit or plan projects.”
Westminster Abbey
“Capacity of school staff to engage in developing partnerships.”
Arts Organisation
Funding
“Lack of funding.”
Paddington Arts
“Issues with our core funding from ACE where we lost money ring fenced for school’s work which we had received as a bridge organisation and changes to schools policies has meant there has been a significant reduction in the amount of SEND work we undertake over the last ten years. However there are limited opportunities for funding needed to deliver this work in a sustainable way.”
Apples and Snakes
“Schools have less funding to contribute to cost of projects (more demands on their budgets since Covid).”
Arts Organisation
“Financial constraints/reductions mean generally project work has had to be very carefully managed”.
Arts Organisation
Grants with geographic restrictions can make things difficult.
Arts Organisation
COVID
“COVID’s legacy on staff seems to be the most detrimental ongoing effect of the pandemic.”
RPO
“The pandemic meant that our organisation furloughed most staff for the majority of the scheme.”
Historic Royal Palaces
“Pre-pandemic partnerships have taken a long time to recover”
Arts Organisation
“The pandemic has caused levels of anxiety and disregulation to soar within the autistic community, affecting people with autism and their families whilst Brexit has created a chronic shortage of staff within the most needful settings. We can now no longer work within either of our two regular SEND schools, one in London, one in Brighton because they are both deemed to be too dangerous to our safety. I have personally witnessed an increase in violent and dangerous behaviour with NO competent staff on hand to deal with it. We have moved the delivery of our activities to neutral spaces.”
Flute Theatre
Additional arts organisation comments
“Needed to learn the different ways in which SEND schools work. Trust is key and it feels as if many of the SEND schools move in different networks.”
Arts Organisation
“Accessible spaces, timings (different timetables for SEND schools), cross empathy between organisations, staffing capacity of the leaders.”
LCO
“Not knowing where to start with SEND has impacted our ability to make progress in this field.”
Arts Organisation
“Having the right teachers to support our current SEND lead teacher has been a challenge.”
BEAT
“Parents seem less inclined to engage with services outside of the school setting.”
Unique Community Charity