Leicestershire is consulting on changes to Early Years support for children aged 0–4 with additional needs. The Council says it wants children to be supported close to home and for families to have more flexibility in how they use funded childcare hours across the year.

Those aims are reasonable. No one is arguing that parents should have less choice or that support should be harder to access.

But the way the Council proposes to achieve this matters, because it is not a small adjustment. The proposal would end the commissioning of specialist nursery places currently provided through four specialist settings (Menphys in Wigston and Burbage, Oasis Retreat in Melton, and Lift Beacon in Loughborough) and replace that specialist capacity with a new county-wide model delivered through mainstream early years providers.

That is a significant shift. It removes a proven safety net and replaces it with a promise that a different system will scale fast enough, evenly enough, and safely enough to fill the gap.

Good intentions are not provision. And when we are talking about the youngest children with the most complex needs, the margin for error is close to zero.

Specialist nurseries exist for a reason: they exist because there are children whose needs require consistent specialist expertise every day, not just periodic advice or a visiting service. They also exist because specialist environments are built around realities that many mainstream settings cannot simply retrofit: personal care, sensory needs, safe breakout spaces, specialist equipment, predictable routines, and staff who have dealt with complex cases repeatedly.

Some mainstream nurseries are exceptional and rise to the challenge. Many try their best. But not every setting has the building, the staffing profile, the experience, or the operational headroom to safely meet complex need at scale while still looking after all the other children.

The Council needs to acknowledge that without flinching. Otherwise, families will learn it the hard way.

The proposal offers three core assurances: more specialist Early Years SEND practitioners within the Local Authority; increased funding to help mainstream providers support children with additional needs, including a new £10/hour band for complex needs; and greater flexibility for parents because many mainstream providers can offer extended hours across the year.

Theoretically, it all sounds of plausible. In delivery terms, it is high-risk.

You can change a funding rate in a budget meeting. You cannot conjure up experienced Early Years SEND staff overnight, especially in a labour market where early years recruitment is already difficult and staff turnover is a constant pressure. You also cannot assume that every provider can safely scale up simply because a new funding band exists. Buildings are buildings. Ratios are ratios. Space is space.

A new band rate might make a placement more viable. It does not guarantee a placement will exist.

If you want to see how this plays out in real life, look at what happens whenever systems rely on a wide range of providers to absorb complexity at speed. Parents often do not receive a clean “yes” or “no”. They receive conditional offers: limited hours, limited days, phased starts that never quite reach full provision, or a “trial period” that ends with the setting concluding it cannot cope.

No one should demonise providers for that. Settings are being realistic about what they can safely manage. But for families, the effect is brutal. They are pushed into constant negotiation, repeating the same conversations, juggling work, and watching their child experience stop-start routines and disrupted relationships. For children aged 0–4, routine and stability are not optional extras; they are the foundation of progress.

If the new model increases churn—children moving settings because a placement collapses—then it is not an improvement. It is a redistribution of risk away from the Council and onto parents and providers.

The consultation makes a fair point: specialist nursery places are term-time only, meaning families using them cannot access that specialist place during school holidays.

That is a real issue, and it deserves a practical fix. But it does not justify dismantling specialist commissioning entirely.

If the problem is holiday coverage, then fix holiday coverage. Commission wraparound provision. Commission holiday sessions. Offer blended packages with clear criteria. Pilot what works and scale it deliberately.

Using holiday limitations as the reason to remove specialist places altogether is a disproportionate response, and it will look to many like a pretext rather than a solution.

If the Council genuinely believes more children can be supported in mainstream settings, then it should do what any competent organisation would do: build capacity first, prove it works, publish the outcomes, and only then reduce specialist reliance if it is genuinely no longer needed.

That means setting out, in hard numbers, how many additional specialist practitioners will be recruited, where they will be based, what caseload they will carry, and what response times parents and settings can rely upon. It also means setting standards for providers accessing higher-band funding and a credible quality assurance regime that is more than occasional monitoring.

What is being proposed feels like the opposite: remove specialist commissioning and assume that the system will catch up quickly enough. That is not controlled change but a leap of faith , and children should not be the collateral damage. Ever.

The proposal suggests repurposing the Menphys nursery buildings at Wigston and Burbage to provide additional SEND school places for statutory school-age children.

That may be necessary. Demand for statutory-age SEND places is rising and councils are under serious pressure. But if that is a key driver of this proposal, the Council should be honest about it because it changes the character of the decision.

It would mean specialist early years provision is being reduced to relieve pressure elsewhere. That might be a choice the Council is willing to make. However, it must be debated as a trade-off, with consequences clearly set out, not presented as a neat modernisation that carries no downside.

This does not need to be an ideological fight between “specialist” and “mainstream”. The correct approach is a blended model: support local providers to do more where they can, while retaining commissioned specialist nursery places for children who genuinely need that intensity of support and stability.

That is what responsible leadership looks like. It strengthens local provision without removing the backstop that families rely on when local provision cannot safely meet need.

If this consultation is to be meaningful, the Council needs to answer simple, practical questions. How many additional specialist practitioners will be recruited, by when, and where? What response times will settings and parents be able to rely on? What guarantees exist if mainstream settings cannot take complex need—what is the escalation route, and what is the backstop? How will success be measured publicly, using outcomes that matter: placement stability, reduced churn, parent confidence, readiness for school? And what is the transition plan that guarantees no child is disrupted mid-placement?

These are not technicalities. They are the minimum requirements before removing specialist nursery places.

I will be responding to the consultation, and I encourage families and providers to do the same. We can strengthen support in local settings. But we should not pretend that removing specialist commissioning is a harmless administrative change.

When you remove the safety net, you only discover what you have done when the first family falls through it.

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If you’re keen to let LCC know how you feel, sign this petition:

Save Our SEN Nurseries!