It is impossible to overlook the mess that is special educational needs and disabilities provision (SEND) across the UK right now.
With massive local authority budget shortfalls and families and schools under pressure, the situation has, rightly, been described as everything from a “vicious downward spiral” by former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield to “the worst it’s ever been” by teachers.
Struggles to ensure adequate SEND support are not confined to Britain. However, in the US, alarm bells are ringing beyond funding and resource shortages.
Recent events are a cautionary tale for anyone concerned about the possible effects of the rise of right-wing agendas on disabled people and their rights.
Threats reach new level
As part of Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts to multiple federal departments’ staff and budgets, threats to adequate, sustainable support for disabled children were taken to an entirely new level.
In October, the administration laid off Department of Education (DOE) staff (many responsible for special education), threatening provision for 7.5 million children and young people. Trump later reversed the decision but, as I write, this is not guaranteed as a long term fix.
SEND provision in the US has long been under-resourced despite considerable progress over the years, in particular the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which gave children and young people with disabilities a right to educational inclusion, such as programmes tailored to individual needs.
Advocacy organisations, families and carers repeatedly point out that underfunding and teacher shortages are issues in many places, while research documents the type and degree of problems.
A 2024 US Government Accountability Office report, for instance, laid out how a shortage of specialist teachers was harming disabled students. For those with learning disabilities, it said, staffing shortages often resulted in reduced access to vital intensive, individualised instruction.
While the DOE staff won a reprieve, long-standing issues with SEND are not being addressed.
The eventual dismantling of the DOE is a stated goal of Project 2025, the extreme right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term. The speed and scale with which many of its general objectives have been achieved is shocking. These include cuts to education.
Recent events are a cautionary tale for anyone concerned about the effects of the rise of right-wing agendas on disabled people and their rights
The mass culling of civil servants administering a budget of around $15 billion whose job it is to ensure states provide appropriate services for disabled children and young people was lambasted by educators and advocacy groups; it was seen by many as a cruel and wholesale abandonment of hard fought for educational inclusion.
The response from Jacqueline Rodriguez, chief executive of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, was typical: “There is no way [the government] can abide by the statutory requirements set out by congress in IDEA 50 years ago by laying off nearly all of the staff at the department that support our community.”
Illegal firings
Former Democratic Party presidential primary candidate and one-time special educational needs teacher Elizabeth Warren has been vocal about the culling of DOE staff.
Warren pointed out in an interview on news channel MSNBC that the firings were illegal, and condemned actions to remove vital oversight and law enforcement.
More than that, she reminded people of the importance of “access to opportunity” for youngsters. Undermining SEND, she said “is a form of cruelty that no leader of a nation anywhere should impose on the people he supposedly represents”.
The truly concerning thing is that what is unfolding in the US is not about budgets or tight resources, nor rising demand; it is a callous and unnecessary political choice to dismantle fundamental protections and support for millions of disabled children and their families.
In the UK, we do not have the luxury of thinking: “It could never happen here.”
