SEND National Crisis

If a council identifies a pothole, it recognises the problem and takes steps to fix it. But when we identify barriers facing care-experienced young people — homelessness, discrimination, financial hardship and lack of opportunity — why is recognition so often where the action stops? We carry out assessments, publish reports, acknowledge inequalities and discuss the same problems year after year. Yet the barriers remain. And then, when young people leave care and become homeless, when we read reports about premature deaths we scratch our heads and ask, how is this still happening? Year after year, we commission reviews, publish reports and spend millions of pounds of taxpayer's money dealing with the consequences of a system we have failed to fix.