Introducing our latest campaign

The survey of members of our Division of Educational and Child Psychology unearthed some alarming statistics, including that just over half of all educational psychologists say they feel unable to support children and young people with their current workload.

​It also found that 70 per cent of respondents feel that children and young people in their local authority didn't have fair and equal access to an educational psychologist.   

A quarter (26 per cent) of educational psychologists also said they are thinking about moving on from the sector or changing their employment model in the next 12 months. With a further 20 per cent undecided on their future, these are extremely concerning figures which could leave thousands more children without the support they need.

They should, however, come as little surprise. With over 20,000 children waiting for an Education, Health, and Care (EHC) assessment in England, and over 4,000 who do have plans waiting for a suitable school place, there are huge pressures which will inevitably filter through to the workforce.

While there were a number of issues flagged by the survey, we think our campaigns can be more effective with a specific area of focus, and with the new government committed to reviewing and reforming the SEND system, this jumped out as an area where we believe that we can have the most impact.

Therefore, we're urging a commitment to providing local authorities with ringfenced funding in the forthcoming budget, to make sure every local authority has enough educational psychologists. Specifically, we're calling on the government to:    

• Ensure every school has a named educational psychologist based in their local authority, providing services free at the point of delivery, where they can have maximum impact working in partnership with colleagues in education, health, and social care.   
• Increase focus on retaining educational psychologists working in local authorities, alongside a fully funded and costed workforce plan to make sure children have equal access to the additional educational support they need wherever in the country they attend school.   
• Undertake a holistic review of the positioning of SEND within the wider education system to enable increased focus on early intervention and preventative support for children and families and a truly inclusive education system.    

We've already secured meetings with key government departments and influential organisations in education and local government, and written to ministers, select committee chairs, and relevant APPGs. We're continuing to engage with stakeholder organisations to request their support for the campaign, and build positive working relationships for future activity. 

To support the campaign, we've published a case study with one of our members, Charlotte, telling her story of how she has struggled to get the additional educational support for her son. This really brings home how important this campaign is going to be.

As ever, we can only have the biggest impact with your support, so we're asking people to write to their MPs in support. More than 560 of you have done this already. All the details are on the website if you want to join them. We'll keep you updated on how the campaign develops through the rest of this year.