The Green Paper Excellence for All Children (DfEE, 1997) set out an agenda for the future of special needs provision which was further endorsed by Meeting Special Educational Needs: A Programme for Action (DfEE, 1998). Amongst the recommendations made within these documents was a reappraisal of the role of special schools to support increased opportunities for inclusion. This paper reports on research conducted in one English local education authority (LEA) to examine an approach to develop greater links between a special school and a number of mainstream schools, with the intention of enabling pupils with complex needs to be supported in mainstream classrooms. The research focused upon the procedures which had been developed to support pupils through a period of transition from segregated to mainstream education, and considered those conditions which had been created in order that inclusion might succeed.