Paul is running the London Marathon 2023 to raise money for IPSEA and Ambitious About Autism (we'd like to keep funds as equal as possible)

Any of you who have seen us recently will know (and been subjected to a rant) about the struggles we are facing navigating this system to ensure the right education for Stanley.

If you don't have a child with special needs you may look at those who do with sympathy and think how hard it must be. It is true that having a child with additional needs comes with additional challenges, but that is nothing compared with the challenges that come with 'the system' you enter when you have them.

You see the SEND system does not support these parents, as you may expect.  It is riddled with unlawful decision-making.  It puts barriers in place, red tape in place, it holds back, sends complex forms, discharges, denies, reduces, holds back, and chooses.  This system is abusive and a lot of the trauma that these parents go through is not because their child has additional needs but because the Kafkaesque system makes it impossible.

We like many, many other parents have been forced to appeal to tribunal. LA’s spend approximately £73M a year taking families to the send tribunal – with only a pitiful 3% of LA decisions upheld at the hearing.

A SENDIST appeal is not something that families 'win'. What families are 'winning' here is the same right to an appropriate education that families of children without SEND naturally take for granted. There are no magic prizes, no golden tickets, no stairways to heaven.

The government knows that the SEND system is not working and has put forward solutions in its SEND Green Paper. These proposals will make it even harder for children to access support in education.  These leaders are not acting to save children with SEND from the system - they're acting to save the wider system from SEND.

40 SEND lawyers have sent a letter to the Education Secretary urging the Government to implement existing SEND law rather than redesigning the system.

“The SEND system is broken because it lacks local accountability. It is riddled with unlawful decision-making, with no negative consequences for local decision-makers – only for children and young people with SEND.” 

“The key to resolving the SEND crisis lies in finding a way to
ensure that local authorities comply with the existing law and fulfil their duties to children and young people, not in implementing a new set of reforms.” 

The system doesn’t need to be reformed again. It needs to be made to work.

IPSEA offer free and independent legally based information, advice and support to help get the right education for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England and are, at the moment, in greater need than ever.

Both these amazing charities are campaigning to mend the broken SEND system in which children and young people’s life chances are being permanently, repeatedly and sometimes irreparably harmed by its failure.