Blog post Experts at Hand: Could this be the shift SEND has been waiting for? For years, one of the frustrations expressed by schools, families and professionals working in SEND has been remarkably consistent, we know what this learner needs, but we can't get the right expertise at the right time. A learner may be struggling with communication, sensory processing, attention, learning or emotional regulation. A teacher may recognise that something isn't working. The SENCO may have tried a range of strategies. Parents may be asking for help. Yet access to specialist advice can involve referrals, thresholds, waiting lists and sometimes a requirement for a formal diagnosis, all of which take time. The government's new Experts at Hand programme is an attempt to change that. From September 2026, local areas have begun to introduce new arrangements bringing specialist expertise — including speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, specialist teachers and educational psychologists — closer to mainstream schools, early years settings and colleges. On paper, it sounds like exactly what the system needs. But the interesting question is not whether schools need more direct access to specialists. They clearly do. The real question is what we do differently with that expertise when it arrives. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Experts at Hand is the potential move away from a predominantly referral-based model. Often, specialist expertise can feel like something schools have to apply for. A learner reaches a threshold, a referral is made, paperwork is completed and then everyone waits.
Experts at Hand is intended to be different. The government says the programme should enable earlier identification and timely, evidence-based support, while building the capability of the education workforce through specialist advice and coaching. Importantly, a learner should be able to access support without needing a diagnosis or an EHCP. That matters. If a speech and language therapist can work with a teacher to improve language-supportive practice across a classroom, the benefit potentially extends far beyond one learner. If an occupational therapist can help staff understand the sensory demands of a school environment, the outcome might be a better-designed classroom rather than a single intervention for an individual learner. Benefitting more learners. If an educational psychologist can help a team understand why a group of learners are struggling to access learning, the answer might be changing the environment or teaching approach rather than waiting for individual assessment. That is where Experts at Hand could become genuinely transformative. There is, however, a danger. We could take a new pot of money, create new specialist teams and simply reproduce the existing system under a different name. If Experts at Hand becomes another referral pathway, another threshold to navigate and another service with a waiting list, we will have changed the architecture without changing the experience. The guidance suggests a different ambition. In the first phase, local areas are expected to concentrate on building workforce capability and raising baseline knowledge across mainstream settings. Over time, more expert capacity should move towards bespoke advice and group-level support as education staff become increasingly able to deliver interventions themselves. For me, that is the crucial distinction.
Experts at Hand should not be about experts doing inclusion to schools. It should be about experts helping schools become more expert. That is a very different proposition. The danger is that every new initiative in SEND becomes another thing that lands on the SENCO's desk. "Can you refer this learner?" "Can you arrange the specialist visit?" "Can you coordinate the professional?" "Can you make sure the recommendations are implemented?" If that happens, Experts at Hand could unintentionally increase workload rather than reduce it. Instead, we should be thinking about how specialist expertise becomes part of a school's wholeschool approach to inclusion. The questions for SENCOs and school leaders should therefore be much bigger than "Who can I refer to?" They might be: What patterns of need are we seeing across our school? What expertise do our staff need to respond confidently? Which environmental barriers could we remove? What could be addressed through universal provision? Where do we need targeted specialist intervention? How can we make sure specialist advice becomes embedded practice rather than another report sitting in a learner's file? That last question may be the most important of all. Experts at Hand is not a national team, it is being developed locally through partnerships involving local authorities, Integrated Care Boards and other local partners. Local areas are expected to publish and communicate their local offer, with delivery started from September 2026 and developing over the following three years.
The first year is deliberately described as iterative. Local areas will determine initial priorities according to local need, while developing and refining the model. That means schools may experience Experts at Hand differently depending on where they are. And this is where implementation becomes critical. Schools will need to know who their local experts are, how they access them, what support is available and what the expectations are around collaboration. The £429 million allocated to local authorities for 2026–27 is intended to support this first phase, including specialist education and health support that individual schools could not reasonably commission alone. Perhaps the most exciting possibility is that Experts at Hand could help us stop thinking about SEND expertise as something that belongs only to the SEND team. If specialist knowledge informs curriculum design, communication, sensory environments, assessment, behaviour support and adaptive teaching, then the benefits could reach far beyond learners identified as having SEND. This fits with the wider direction of reform: a mainstream system expected to become more inclusive, supported by additional investment in workforce development and specialist expertise. But we should be realistic. Specialist capacity does not appear overnight. The programme has already started, but the Government expects local offers to develop over several years. And there will inevitably be questions about workforce capacity, consistency between areas and whether specialist time is sufficient to meet demand. So, will Experts at Hand work? I think the answer will depend less on how many experts we put into the system and much more on how the sector makes use of them. If it becomes a way of transferring specialist knowledge into classrooms, strengthening educator confidence, improving universal provision and enabling earlier intervention, it could represent a significant change in how we think about SEND support. The phrase Experts at Hand is therefore rather revealing. The ambition shouldn't simply be to have experts available. It should be to make expertise accessible, collaborative and useful in the places where learners actually learn. That means the real test of the reform won't be how many specialists have been recruited or how many referrals have been processed. It will be whether, three or four years from now, a teacher can look at a learner who is struggling and say: "We understand this need earlier. We know what to try. We know who to work with. And we don't have to wait until things reach crisis point before we act." That, ultimately, is the promise of Experts at Hand and it is a promise worth watching very closely. Learn more: welcome@nasen.org.uk Talk to us: 01827 311500
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