Sonal Desai

Sonal is an experienced senior special educational needs and disabilities leader with a proven track record of bringing leadership and strategic direction to local authority services and schools enabling SEND pupils to achieve their best outcomes. She holds collective responsibility for developing service improvement and ongoing development with partners, including schools and services, to achieve effective and excellent multi-agency working focused on the child.

In her current role, Sonal is a key member of Croydon’s SEND transformation and strategy team. Ahead of, and now in line with the Green Paper (2022), she is currently co-leading an innovative SEND strategy to provide earlier identification and better targeted support to SEND pupils in all mainstream schools within the local authority. With full knowledge and experience of relevant education and children’s services, national and local legislation, policy, procedure and practice requirements, she directly supports schools. This is both to use their existing SEND resources in the best interest of SEND pupils and to allocate additional support where schools may have insufficient resources to meet emergent needs.