Our response to the Spring Budget – 2024

All pain and no gain

For disabled children and their families, today’s Budget is all pain and no gain.

Families with disabled children were looking to the Chancellor to recognize and resource their needs, but once again over 1 in 10 of the UK’s children have gone unseen and unheard.

Many were already at breaking point, hit by Covid, cuts to local services and the cost-of-living crisis and more likely to be in poverty, out of work, hurt by the hike in energy bills, and facing drastic cuts to school transport, community help or respite services.

Key topics

A six-month extension to the Household Support Fund, which allows local councils to help families via food banks, warm spaces and food vouchers, will provide them with short-term comfort but no long-term relief – especially as on average, disabled households need an additional £1,122 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.

The NHS is a lifeline for many disabled or seriously ill children. A public sector productivity plan for long term NHS reform could help them down the line but right now it doesn’t address waiting lists for lists for assessments and therapies that they so desperately need.

We welcome the Chancellor’s acknowledgement of the childcare expansion, which suggests the Government are listening to concerns. The devil will be in the detail as to how a pledged guarantee of rates will support the childcare sector to make the new investment and deliver on the Government’s promise. However, we have seen no evidence of targeted measures that will end the exclusion of children with SEND from early years settings because their needs are not recognised or resourced. Fewer than one in five local authorities currently report that they have sufficient places for disabled children. In a ‘budget for growth’, where was the guarantee that childcare will expand to ensure that every disabled baby and toddler has a childcare place to meet their needs?

More school places for disabled children are welcome and can make a difference in the future, however right now as we wait for schools to be built there are thousands of disabled children who are not in education because the specialist support is not being provided. The Government has missed an opportunity to make a short-term cash injection to bring down waiting lists for disability assessments and support that would enable children and young people with special educational needs to access the right school place for them.