Getting your message across to Members of Parliament and the House of Lords—the decision-makers—is one of the most important ways to influence policy. So the SOCR campaign was delighted to have the chance to address MPs at a dedicated Parliamentary meeting hosted by Chris Coghlan MP.
Chris has made SEND a priority, working with the accountability group, Measure What Matters, uncovering maladministration and misconduct by local authorities that has had lethal consequences.
On Monday 7 September, members of the Save Our Children’s Rights team set out the overriding mesage to MPs: SEND reform must not come at the expense of children’s legal rights.
Chaired by IPSEA’s Catriona Moore, speakers included two of Special Needs Jungle’s directors, Tania Tirraoro and Gillian Doherty, IPSEA’s senior solicitor, Alex Stafford, Judy Ellerby of the NEU, Black SEN Mamas CEO, Marsha Martin, and SEND National Crisis campaigner, Sharon Pratt. Everyone who spoke had children with SEND and most had encountered denials and delays from local authorities.
NEW LEGISLATION PLANNED
The Government plans to introduce new SEND legislation later this year, following its recent consultation. But the Department for Education is not waiting for its recent SEND consultation, or its live consultation on EOTAS to report back; it is already pushing ahead with elements that don’t require legal change.
But while we support proposals to improve inclusion and early intervention, MPs must understand what is at stake if the legal changes are passed. We need them to fully realise what children and young people could lose, including their existing rights to special educational provision that meets their individual needs and to challenge unlawful decisions.
For the Save Our Children’s Rights coalition, this is not about opposing reform. It is about ensuring any reform improves accountability within the system, and protects and strengthens existing legal protections for children, young people and families.
We provided a briefing for MPs. Please download the PDF and email it to your MP
Chris Coghlan MP: “We can win this campaign”
Chris Coghlan MP spoke about the importance of protecting children’s legal safeguards, challenging the logic behind reducing legal protections as part of a reform intended to improve the SEND system. If the Government is confident that its reforms will make the system work better, he argued, there should be no requirement to reduce children’s rights.
“It is completely illogical to me that one of the government’s proposed solutions to this is to reduce legal protections.”
Chris emphasised the importance of campaigners continuing to share their experiences with MPs. It is these personal stories, he said, that enable MPs to understand what is happening within the SEND system and to advocate for change.
He also highlighted his work uncovering the appalling level of misconduct and non-compliance, including issues raised by an ITV whistleblower, and said he was optimistic that these concerns would not simply be ignored.
The problem is not that children have too many rights
Tania Tirraoro, founder of Special Needs Jungle, challenged the idea that rising numbers of EHC plans and SEND Tribunal appeals are evidence that children have too many rights.
Instead, she pointed to a system that is frequently failing to comply with the rights children already have and highlighted two stark figures: only 46% of new EHCPs are currently finalised within the statutory timescale, while 99% of local authority decisions challenged at the SEND Tribunal last year were ruled unlawful. These figures, she argued, should make us extremely cautious about weakening the existing legal framework.
“The reason we have got increasing numbers of EHCPs and Tribunal appeals is not because it’s a crisis caused by children having too many rights. It is, to a large extent, a crisis from failure to comply with the rights they have already got.”
The answer to widespread non-compliance cannot simply be to reduce the legal requirements. As Tania explained, doing so risks making failures that are currently unlawful lawful, without solving the underlying problems.
She also made clear that campaigners are not defending every aspect of the current system. They want better inclusion in mainstream schools, earlier support, better teacher training, stronger provision and properly resourced schools. But none of these ambitions requires children to lose their legal protections.
What happens when the system gets it wrong?
Gillian Doherty, Director at Special Needs Jungle, brought the focus back to the question at the heart of the campaign: what happens to a child when the system fails? She stressed that parents are not resisting change. They actively want reform, but they need reassurance that their children’s rights will remain protected.
“If the system often fails my child, even when I can enforce their rights, what happens when I can’t?”
Gillian also warned against moving from individually determined provision towards nationally defined packages of support without safeguards for children whose needs do not fit neatly into those packages. Children with the same diagnosis can have completely different needs. A child may also have multiple overlapping disabilities or conditions requiring a highly individual approach.
A legal right to provision based on an individual child’s needs is therefore not a bureaucratic technicality. It is the safety net that protects children when a standardised system does not fit them.
Gillian urged MPs to ask three essential questions before supporting changes to the law:
- Which children will have fewer legal rights than they have today?
- What happens when the new system gets things wrong?
- Will families still have an effective way to challenge decisions?
What happens when rights become discretion?
Alex Stafford, Senior Solicitor at IPSEA, drew on years of experience of seeing what happens when SEND duties are not properly followed.
She explained that public bodies frequently behave as though SEND provision is discretionary, despite the existing legal framework containing clear duties. This can mean children’s needs are not identified early enough, appropriate support is not put in place, and families are forced to fight to obtain provision to which their children are already legally entitled.
Alex raised serious concerns about proposals that would move away from legally enforceable, individually specified provision towards packages and plans that may not provide the same level of legal protection. She also warned that proposed changes could restrict the role of the SEND Tribunal, including limiting its ability to determine what provision or setting is appropriate for an individual child.
The consequence, she argued, could be profound:
“These reforms would remove the obligation to ensure that every child or young person receives the special educational provision their needs require, and it would enshrine in law not hard-edged legal duties, but the wide discretion that many public bodies currently think they have, and which has led in large part to the current crisis.”
The result would not necessarily be fewer problems. It could simply mean fewer avenues for families to challenge them.
The human cost of fighting for support
Marsha Martin, Founder of Black SEN Mamas, brought the meeting back to the lived reality of families.
She was clear that SEND reform is desperately needed. Parents are exhausted. Children are waiting too long for support. Schools and local authorities are struggling under enormous pressure. But the answer is not to remove the legal rights that families rely upon when everything else has failed.
Marsha described the constant state of hypervigilance experienced by many SEND parents: chasing professionals, attending meetings, making complaints, gathering evidence, challenging decisions and appealing, while simultaneously caring for a child whose needs may be going unmet.
The consequences extend far beyond paperwork. Families’ employment, relationships, finances and ability to parent can all be affected by the relentless fight for support.
She also highlighted the additional barriers created by racism, poverty, parental disability, single parenthood and other inequalities. Marsha challenged the idea that fewer EHC plans or fewer Tribunal appeals should automatically be considered evidence of a successful reform.
“Please don’t measure the success of SEN reform simply by whether the numbers go down….I need for us to ask why are the families having this appeal in the first place? And if parents are repeatedly challenging decisions, and those decisions are repeatedly successful, then surely the lesson is that parents aren’t just having too much access to justice. The question should be, why aren’t we getting these decisions right the first time? And I think that it takes us to the heart of what SEN provision and these reforms should actually do.”
She urged policymakers to protect children who sit at the margins and those who do not fit neatly into a standardised system. The real test of SEND reform is not whether it works for the child who fits the system. It is what happens to the child who doesn’t.
Reform needs resources, not weaker rights
Judy Ellerby, Senior Policy Manager, National Education Union (NEU) acknowledged that there are opportunities within the Government’s SEND reforms to improve outcomes for children, families and educators. But she expressed concern that organisations and individuals who responded to the Government’s consultation have yet to see how their contributions have influenced the proposals.
“The NEU also does not support dilution of children’s rights.”
Judy highlighted the reality facing schools: if more children are expected to receive support within mainstream settings, schools need the funding, staffing and capacity to make genuine inclusion possible. The ambition for more inclusive mainstream education can only succeed if the resources are there to support it.
She argued that the reforms, as currently proposed, are not deliverable without major investment in funding and workforce capacity.
All children matter
Sharon Pratt, founder of SEND National Crisis, returned to the fundamental principle behind everything the campaign is fighting for: All children matter and children need education that supports them, understands them and values their potential.
Sharon warned the proposed reforms could remove important safeguards, including the right to an EHC plan, the right to an appropriate school placement and the right to appeal.
“We are here today because all children matter. Our children, the centre serving education that supports them, understands them, and values their potential. But right now, the proposed centre reforms threaten to strip that away. These rights are not extras.”
Without them, she warned, too many children risk falling through the cracks of a system that already leaves families fighting for every ounce of support.
The rights of children must not become the price of reform
Campaigners are not asking for the current system to remain unchanged. They are asking for the Government to protect enforceable legal rights that remain available when the system fails.
The meeting in Parliament was a powerful reminder that behind every EHC plan, every Tribunal appeal and every legal provision is a child or young person.
We all want a SEND system where families do not need to fight so hard. But the way to achieve that is not to take away their ability to fight when they have to.
If the current system is failing, fix the failure. If schools need resources, fund them. If professionals need training, provide it. If children need earlier support, deliver it. If local authorities are struggling to meet their duties, address the capacity and funding problems that stand in the way.
But do not make children less protected simply because the system has struggled to protect them. Children’s rights are not the problem. They are the safeguard.
That is why the team at Save Our Children’s Rights will continue to stand together, speak to MPs, share families’ experiences and fight to ensure that every child and young person with SEND has the legal protection they need.
We’re currently preparing a video of the event, so stand by for that!
SEND YOUR MP OUR PARLIAMENTARY BRIEFING
We prepared a briefing for MPs. Please download it and email it to your MP so they can understand the issues more clearly
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