Welcome to the Autumn 2025 edition of the Isos Partnership newsletter - we hope you had a good summer. We’re delighted to tell you about the work we’ve been doing in recent months, and to share some of the things we have in the pipeline.

If you want to chat to us about anything featured in this edition, or to engage with the discussions we’re having as a team, we’d love to hear from you.

Reports, blogs and announcements

Nat and Ben published a report for the Local Government Association on the drivers of increasing costs of home to school transport and the future of policy in this area, updating our previous research for the LGA and the County Councils Network.

Jodie was at the House of Commons in July to launch her report on social enterprise and the future of early years provision in the UK for the Early Years Social Enterprise Collective.

Ben and Nat published an addendum to our report on the future of the SEND system in England, based on a series of regional and national workshops with young people, parents and carers, health practitioners, educators, and local government officials and members.

We also published a report for the DfE exploring the views of stakeholders in local SEND systems about the impact of Safety Valve agreements.

You can see all of our recent publications here.

Talking about our work

Natalie spoke at the LGA annual conference on leading and managing change in children's services, revisiting our previous research on the enablers of improvement in children’s services and the lessons learnt by councils that have undertaken large-scale structural change. As authorities across the country prepare for a significant wave of reorganisation, the work we have done in the past on how best to manage structural change to children’s services has renewed relevance.

What we’re working on

We’re delighted to have started work on a project with Nesta exploring how early education and learning can be better integrated with family support provision.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on a research project exploring reports of rising needs in the early years, and looking to understand what is happening, why, and what - in the context of reforms of early education and childcare, and of inclusive education - needs to be done. Our report will be coming out shortly.

We’ll soon be publishing a report for the Government of Jersey, exploring parents’ and carers’ views of childcare on the island and their priorities for change. This research follows up our earlier work for the Government of Jersey on future childcare policy.

As part of the What Works in SEND programme, we are convening a local authority learning community to develop approaches to embedding youth voice in local SEND systems. We are also looking forward to working with a group of ‘young experts’ who will be collaborating with us on future What Works in SEND case studies.

Our role as Thrive at Five’s learning partner continues, and we are now in the process of finalising the Thrive at Five playbook, which consolidates the team’s learning into a practical resource, setting out how to replicate the approach with different communities, and how to adapt the model to local needs and context.

We've been working collaboratively with Tom Rees, Chair of the Expert Advisory Group for Inclusion, and several large Multi Academy Trusts to develop a credible estimate for how much mainstream schools are spending from their core budgets on supporting children and young people with SEND, over and above what they receive in top-up funding. We hope to be publishing this research in the near future.

If you need some light relief now the kids have gone back to school, Sam has made a website which lets you vote on your favourite local authority logo.

On the horizon

Jodie is leaving Isos Partnership in mid-September to take up a new position as co-CEO of Home-Start UK. Jodie will stay on as an Isos Partnership Associate, working on specific projects including our work with Nesta on early years integration. We’ve benefited hugely from Jodie’s expertise over the last five years, and are excited to see her move into this new role.

We’re looking forward to continuing our extensive work in the early years, supporting local authorities and partners across the sector as they seek to implement Best Start in Life.

Get in touch

If you want to follow up on anything we’ve covered in this edition of the newsletter, or discuss some ideas we might be able to help with, we’d love to hear from you. Or feel free to reach out to an individual member of the team.