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<p>The department is providing a range of support to ensure all childcare placements
are able to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
in early years.</p><p>The SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan sets
out how an effective single national SEND and AP system will be delivered. This includes
new national standards for identifying and meeting SEND. These new standards aim to
make consistent the provision that should be made available across the country for
every child and young person with SEND. There will also be new local SEND and AP partnerships,
strengthened accountability and dashboards, and reforms to funding.</p><p>High needs
funding will be rising to £10.1 billion in 2023/24, which is an increase of over 50%
from the 2019/20 allocations. High needs funding is for supporting children and young
people with complex SEND, whose support costs more than settings can meet from their
core funding, or who are in specialist provision. The extra funding will help local
authorities and settings with the increasing costs of supporting children and young
people with complex SEND.</p><p>Local authorities are required to establish a Special
Educational Needs Inclusion Fund to provide additional top-up funding to childcare
settings. This fund requires all local authorities to work with providers to address
the needs of individual children with SEND.</p><p>The Early Years National Funding
Formula contains an additional needs element to take account of the number of three
and four-year-old children with additional needs in an area. The Disability Access
Fund will be at least £828 per eligible child for 2023/24.</p><p>The department has
also committed to funding up to 5,000 early years special educational needs coordinators
(SENCOs) to get an accredited level 3 Early Years SENCO qualification.</p>
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