Why, as a special needs parent, any changes to my child’s support frighten me

After seeing its controversial welfare bill narrowly progress through the House of Commons, Keir Starmer’s government looks poised to end the personalised education and support plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Labour has promised an overhaul of special needs provision, telling us it inherited a system “left on its knees” by the previous government.

But education secretary Bridget Phillipson has repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – the documents that spell out the support a child is supposed to receive from schools, local councils and other agencies. They are legally binding, and last until the recipient’s 25th birthday.

Instead, she has said the government would “make sure that every child gets the support maintained that they need”.

Taking on the long-suffering parents of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities is a dangerous game to play.

My wife and I are among those parents. And, yes, we can testify that it is indeed a right royal mess. To describe the system as “broken” doesn’t do justice to how bad it is. Reform is overdue.

Local authorities hate EHCPs because they can be used as a stick to beat them when they fail to do their jobs. Bitter experience has taught my family that this is all too common. Councils will resort to every trick in the book to deny parents desperately needed support.

It took us three years of wrestling with bureaucracy to obtain an EHCP for our child, while we watched, heart-broken, as they deteriorated. Redbridge Council – yes, I will name it – seemed to us to use every trick in the book to delay, deny and then delay again. We were left close to despair as we sat through case conferences, hearings and mediation sessions that appeared to have no purpose other than to waste time.

At one of them, we were even confronted with a lawyer. She insisted she wasn’t acting as one, but… well, colour me cynical. It is not easy to take on institutions with nine-figure budgets. Councils constantly complain that they are short of cash, but they always seem to find the funds for members of the legal profession to help them wriggle out of their responsibilities to SEND children and parents.

Special Needs Jungle, an invaluable resource for parents stuck in SEND hell, found families had registered 21,106 appeals with the SEND First-Tier Tribunal in the 2023-24 academic year – an increase of 54.53 per cent on the previous year. It further estimates that councils spent £153 million on defending them, despite a success rate barely above one per cent.

This is why EHCPs are so important. It is much harder for councils to play their cynical games when you have one (although, as we have learned, it isn’t a guarantee).

The issue has reached the top of the political agenda because when questions about their future have been raised with ministers, their responses have been characterised by the sort of tortured language and obfuscation that would make Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby swell with pride. Phillipson and her team seem to have taken inspiration from him in a determined quest to become the patron saints of non-answers.

I confess I fear that the education secretary has been captured by the powerful local-authority lobby, which blames “the system” for the troubles with SEND.

Sorry, but no. When you’re the Goliath but you still lose more than 95 per cent of tribunals to parental Davids, that’s a you problem, not a system problem.

Parent groups fear the Department for Education has spent too much time listening to councils and not enough time listening to them. They are also understandably sceptical when Phillipson claims this is not about money; she just wants to create a better system focused on mainstream schools.

She might not have spent much time with parents. But Labour MPs surely have.

After spending years fighting recalcitrant local authorities, those parents have become battle-hardened, skilled at writing letters, sending emails and calmly making their case. Those letters and e-mails have been pouring into the inboxes of Labour MPs. Ours – health secretary Wes Streeting – is about to get one from us.

MPs pay close attention to their postbags, particularly if they represent marginal constituencies. There are angry SEND parents in every one of them. They are people who give voice to that anger by turning out to vote. MPs’ jobs may thus depend on this.

So, coming up: yet another bruising fight the government risks losing.

I’m aware that money is tight. I write about economics. But landing your fiscal failures on yet another vulnerable group that has suffered enough over the preceding decade is not the way to proceed.

Needless to say, I will be among those cheering the rebels when they break cover. And break cover they will.