County council and NHS officials are set to launch a new SEND Strategy next month, designed to improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in Hertfordshire.

Back in 2023, inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission found "widespread and/or systemic failings" in the provision of SEND services in the county.

And since then, the county's SEND Partnership – which brings together officials from education and health – have been on what they call "an improvement journey".

The new SEND Strategy – which has been developed in collaboration with children and young people, parent carers and schools – is designed to set out ambitions and priorities for the next three years (until 2029).

And on Wednesday (March 18), it was backed by a meeting of the county council's cabinet, where an officer's report highlighted SEND improvements as one of the council's top priorities.

"Whilst progress has been made, the Partnership recognises that there is still much more to do to consistently improve experiences for all children and young people with SEND," says the report.

"Improving the SEND system is a top priority for the council, and the Partnership wants to focus on what matters most to young people, families, schools and settings in this next SEND strategy."

According to the report, the new strategy is based around six priorities, or "ambitions".

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The first – "listen, engage, collaborate, evolve" – commits to listen to children, young people, families and staff to understand their experiences, for families to have opportunities to share their ideas to improve services and for disagreements to be sorted out "quickly and fairly".

The "early identification and support" ambition commits to timely assessments to identify need at the earliest point to enable early support and says this will be "based on the needs, not on a diagnosis".

"Local provision for children and young people" commits to providing children and young people with access to high-quality education, health and social care provisions that are local to them, with most children getting the help they need in their local mainstream school.

The "aspiration for all" ambition is for all children and young people with SEND to feel like they belong in their community, where they feel welcome, supported and able to learn.

Meanwhile, "preparing for the future" will support children and young people to be "ready for the next step in life", with services to support them.

The final "strong foundations" priority identifies the essentials to achieve the other five ambitions – such as good communication, strong workforce, good technology and partnership working.

And that includes an indication that officers will look at technologies – including artificial intelligence (AI) – to make processes more efficient.

At the meeting, councillors were also presented with the findings of the 12-week public consultation on the strategy, which were said to conclude that the public "broadly agree" with the priorities.

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There were just 128 responses to the Partnership's survey, 27 attendances at three focus groups aimed at parent carers, young people and special educational needs co-ordinators( SENCos).

Meanwhile, 10 families attended a coffee morning, and more than 50 young people attended sessions for the six SEND youth councils.

The level of response, according to the report, was lower for the consultation than during the public engagement in the run-up to the SEND Summit last summer (2025).

But presenting the strategy to the cabinet on Wednesday (March 18), executive member for education, SEND and inclusion Cllr Mark Watkin (Liberal Democrat, Nascot Park) suggested that the low response was a "positive", which suggested agreement with the priorities.

He said: "I think this is a great day, because we have gone from review, we have gone from consultation, we have gone from discussion, and now we have something that is accepted and agreed by the community it is designed to serve.

"And this is actually the first step of the journey that will lead us on to other policies that will follow downstream."

Cllr Watkin stressed that it was a joint strategy between the county council and health colleagues.

And he said: "The feedback we got from this particular consultation was relatively few, compared to what we had with the SEND Summit.

"But I think the SEND Summit was when we were laying out our expectations, our wish to listen and to hear from people.

"So in a sense, I think there was a sense that they had already told us what we needed to do, and so the numbers were much fewer in terms of response.

"But I take that as a positive because I feel that if we had got it wrong, we would have been told about it.

"So, fewer responses are actually a positive statement. And the consultation indicated broad agreement with six priorities.

"And we will continue to review this strategy annually – but we will be engaging continually."

In backing the strategy, the leader of the county council, Cllr Steve Jarvis (Liberal Democrat, Royston West and Rural), highlighted the Government's own ongoing SEND consultation and the need for national change.

"One of the things that we want to do is to make sure that we do a better job of meeting the needs of children in Hertfordshire with SEND, whilst recognising that national change is needed in order to complete that task," he said.

And he later added: "What the county council needs to do and what this strategy aims to do is to make the very best job we can with the resources and system that is at our disposal – and improve the experiences of parents, schools and children in the interim before there are national changes."

As a result of the consultation, a summary of the partnership's continuous improvement and priority action plan (CIPAP) will be published alongside the SEND Strategy.

Hertfordshire County Council and the NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board share joint responsibility and accountability for planning and commissioning services that meet the needs of children and young people with SEND in Hertfordshire.

Following the 2023 inspection by Ofsted and the CQC, the partnership developed a SEND Priority Action and Improvement Plan, which was published in January 2024.

In December 2025, a monitoring inspection by Ofsted and the CQC found that the partnership was taking effective action. And a full inspection of the SEND Partnership is expected later this year.