There are three aspects to the website service:
1) Knowledge is power - There is no A-Z guide for SEN parents, you are alone and isolated even once you have been given a diagnosis – we want to bridge that gap.
2) Safe Space - There is great comfort in connecting with your tribe – it normalises your experiences and stories – we want to bring that safety of connection with people who, ‘get it.’
3) Social Impact - Making this information public will shift the system – we want to enable improved outcomes for our young people and the experience of families in the future.
Why Do We Believe This Matters?
According to the Education Statistics Service data published in June 2021 - 12.2% of all children in Education have SEN but no EHC plan (SEN support) that’s 1,083,083 children and 3.7% of all children in Education have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan that’s 325,618 children. The most common type of need for those with an EHC plan is Autistic Spectrum Disorders and for those with SEN support, Speech, Language and Communication needs. Source: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england
That means that there are nearly 1.5 million families across the UK with stories and experiences of education settings and local authorities and since this number has been growing year or year since the records started we can safely assume there are only going to be more families walking the same path and in need of vital information to help them. Plus these figures only recognise the children/families categorised as having SEN and to get to that stage can take years of fighting to be heard in our experience.
There are Four Broad Areas of Special Educational Needs SEN, also sometimes referred to as SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability)
•Communication and interaction.
•Cognition and learning.
•Social, emotional and mental health difficulties.
•Sensory and/or physical needs
Children and young people with SEN are entitled to extra support with learning at nursery, school or college. By law, every state school and nursery must provide SEN support. This includes academies and free schools. (Private schools may manage SEN in a different way. They may not even offer SEN support.) There are usually 2 levels of support for children with additional needs:
•SEN support, which mainstream state schools must always provide (If your child does not have a diagnosis yet, you can still ask for SEN support)
•Education, health and care (EHC) plans, sometimes called EHCPs, for when SEN support is not enough to meet your child’s needs
To get an EHC plan, you apply to your local authority for an EHC needs assessment., the school or nursery should make this application on your behalf and if they don’t they need to be supportive of you applying. The local authority then decides if SEN support is enough to meet your child’s needs or if they need an EHC plan.
The quality and accessibility of SEN provision in different school settings varies greatly depending on the school’s attitude to SEN, inclusion and how they prioritise their budget spend. Local authorities are responsible for the SEN services but every local authority will have their own processes, systems and attitudes to providing these services so experiences can and do vary significantly in how transparent, fair and user friendly these are.
Special educational needs (“SEN”) can affect a child or young person’s ability to learn. For example, someone’s SEN might affect their:
•reading and writing, for example because they have dyslexia
•ability to understand things
•behaviour or ability to socialise, for example they struggle to make friends
•concentration levels, for example because they have ADHD
•physical ability to do things such as writing.
According to IPSEA, there are two questions to ask when thinking about whether a child or young person has SEN. https://www.ipsea.org.uk/what-are-special-educational-needs
1. Do they have a learning difficulty or disability?
A child or young person has a learning difficulty or disability if:
•they have significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age, or they have a disability which makes it difficult for them to use the facilities normally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or post-16 institutions.
•Someone has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out day-to-day activities. This definition provides a relatively low threshold and includes more children than many realise: ‘long-term’ is defined as ‘a year or more’ and ‘substantial’ is defined as ‘more than minor or trivial’. This definition includes sensory impairments such as those affecting sight or hearing, and long-term health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, and cancer. Children and young people with such conditions do not necessarily have SEN, but there is a significant overlap between disabled children and young people and those with SEN. Where a disabled child or young person requires special educational provision they will also be covered by the SEN definition.
2. Does that learning difficulty or disability call for special educational provision to be made?
•Special educational provision is any educational or training provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally for other children or young people of the same age. This is a wide definition, and could cover a wide range of things, for example:
•having materials provided in a larger font
•needing one-to-one support
•communicating through sign language
•needing small class sizes
•Some children or young people may need additional support which is not special educational provision; for example they might need certain treatments or medicines administered at school because of a medical condition they have. In order to be classed as having SEN, they must require support with education or training which is different from that given to other children or young people of the same age.
•Post-16 institutions often use the term learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD).