SEND transport services for kids cut due to squeezed local council budgets

As the parties prepare to deliver their manifestos, parents of children with special educational needs will be casting a close eye over them.

Services that their kids used have been squeezed because of local council budgets.

The cuts mean that they’re increasingly being asked to bear the cost of journeys to college or school as transport is taken away.

We’ve been talking to parents in London and Leicester – who say there’s no way they can afford to continue to send their children to school post-16, without financial support.

In a statement sent before the general election was called, the Department of Education told us that they recognise paying for transport for 16–19-year-olds can be “difficult” but they added “local authorities are required to make the necessary transport arrangements or financial support available” to ensure access for young people.