Hope is not a luxury in the SEND system. It is what keeps families going through years of assessments, exclusions, appeals, and meetings that too often feel adversarial. Hope is what allows parents to believe that change is possible, that their child’s future will not be predetermined by bureaucracy or budget lines or other people’s low expectations.
And yet, across the country, hope that the SEND system can ever work is running out.
This isn’t because families are resistant to reform. It’s because many of us have lived through a decade or more of promises that never materialised, and we are being asked, once again, to trust a system that has repeatedly failed to deliver for our children and young people. Parents are still being told to ‘believe’ that transformation is coming, while their child loses yet another year of education.
Across social media, the Department for Education and the Ministers continue to post upbeat videos and short interviews about the reforms, but the replies to these posts tell a very different story. Hundreds of parents are responding with fear, frustration and exhaustion – certainly there is little sign of hope. You would think it would be impossible to ignore the pattern when every announcement or sharing of handbag contents by a Minister is met with a wall of lived‑experience reality and despair.
The last reforms began with genuine optimism
It’s easy to forget now, but the 2014 SEND reforms were introduced with a remarkable amount of goodwill. Even those who had concerns about implementation recognised the ambition behind them. There was hope that things might change for the better.
When the Children and Families Act 2014 came into force, it was presented as the most significant overhaul of SEND in a generation. The reforms were launched by Edward Timpson CBE KC, then Children and Families Minister, who described the changes as “a landmark moment” that would “put children and parents at the heart of the system” and create “a simpler and more joined up system” designed around children’s needs rather than bureaucratic structures.
- Person‑centred planning was meant to be the beating heart of the system. Edward Timpson spoke repeatedly about families being at the centre of planning and decision-making.
- Personal budgets were framed as a route to flexibility, creativity and genuine choice.
- Joint commissioning was supposed to end the “who pays?” arguments that left children without essential support whilst professionals argued about budget pots.
- Local Offers were intended to be living, breathing maps of provision, shaped with parents and children/young people. They were never intended to be just a website, but were a commitment to transparency and accountability.
- And, crucially, health, education, and care were expected to work together, not in parallel silos.
And the reforms were developed in partnership with parents, signalling a genuine attempt to embed lived experience into policy design. For a brief moment in 2014, families believed the system might finally shift from adversarial to collaborative.
Reforms that were never allowed to succeed
The vision did not survive contact with the system. The vision was ambitious. The implementation was anything but.
Research from the Driver Youth Trust found that fragmentation across local authorities, school funding and the wider education landscape made navigating the system “next to impossible,” undermining the very coherence the reforms were meant to create. Joint commissioning remained largely theoretical. Local Offers became signposting exercises, rather than enforceable entitlements, with the report concluding that “signposting is not enough” and that families were still left without clarity or accountability.
Meanwhile, there were rising pressures on SEND funding, the inconsistency of EHCP quality, and an escalating number of appeals – a clear indicator that the system continued to rely on parental challenge as a gatekeeping mechanism rather than delivering needs‑led support.
Parents were told they would be partners, that they would be heard for both their own child and strategically in local areas. Instead, many found themselves treated as obstacles to be managed. And if they dared to speak up, they were often labelled “difficult” – a term that somehow seems to apply only to parents, never to systems or authorities that routinely ignore statutory duties.
Why this matters
The context in which the new reforms are being introduced is shaped by a mainstream system that has become increasingly inhospitable to disabled children and those who have special educational needs. Broader policy changes including punitive behaviour policies, exam reforms, and accountability pressures have had some of the greatest impacts on children with SEND, often overshadowing the intentions of the 2014 Act itself.
Punitive behaviour policies treat distress as defiance. Terminal examinations disadvantage those who need coursework or alternative assessment routes. A narrowing curriculum sidelines creativity and diverse ways of learning. Multi‑Academy Trust structures can prioritise performance metrics over inclusion, with limited accountability.
Families are not imagining the harm. Children are being traumatised. Some are being pushed out and are needing to be educated outside of school settings. Others are internalising the message that they are the problem.
This is the landscape into which the new reforms arrive.
So when the government asks families to trust the system again, the answer is quiet but firm: “Why would we?
Hope and trust cannot be demanded. They must be earned. It’s hard to talk about ‘restoring trust’ when families can’t even get a phone call returned without escalating to a senior LA manager.
Yet families are being asked to believe in proposals that reduce rights in the name of “consistency,” introduce new layers of bureaucracy without addressing the root causes of failure, centralise decision‑making while distancing it from lived experience and complexity, and assume that the problem lies in parental expectations rather than systemic dysfunction.
The issue is not cynicism or reluctance to accept change. It is memory. Families remember what was promised last time. They remember what happened instead. And they are not just recalling past disappointments, they are still living through the consequences, experiencing the ongoing reality of broken promises and unmet needs every day.
The absence of hope matters
Hope is not sentimental. It is structural. It is a precondition for meaningful reform.
If the government wants families to believe in the new reforms, it must first repair the damage of the last decade. That begins with acknowledging the harm that has been caused and continues to be experienced, not in vague terms, but explicitly. The system has failed too many children, and the consequences have been, and continue to be, profound.
Trust and hope must be rebuilt through action, not confused messaging. Families do not need more consultation exercises that ignore their feedback or online conversations with the chat turned off. They need visible, measurable changes in practice. Funding must match the level of need. Joint commissioning must become real and enforceable. And the culture of mainstream schools must be confronted honestly, because inclusion cannot be achieved in a system built around exclusionary incentives and schools who insist that they “cannot meet needs” before even meeting a child.
What needs to happen now
Most importantly, the system must start listening to and working with a wider range of parents in a way that is authentic, not curated. Not performative. Not gatekept by the big charities receiving DfE funding. Families are experts in their children’s lives. Their insights are not optional. They are essential.
Families are asking for honesty, accountability and an education system that sees their children as human beings, not budget pressures.
Hope can return. But only if the system stops asking families to carry the emotional burden of believing in reforms that have not yet earned their confidence.
Until then, the question remains: how can there be hope when the foundations have not been repaired?
Make your voice heard
- Join the SEND Protest on May 9th. On our new page you can find out more, how to register, help out, or organise your own. You can also find a new parent briwfing and presentation and how to email your MP using IPSEA’s template
- Respond to the Consultation
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Also read:
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- REGISTER NOW! WEBINAR on the Government’s plans to cut EHCP and EOTAS rights. With SNJ & SEND legal charity, SOS!SEN
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Why every child deserves Portage, wherever they’re born
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- What might the SEND reform proposals mean for specialist tutors, alternative provision and EOTAS?
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- How Twinkl Parents are aiming to give SEND families a voice—and some free resources
- Let’s write the true narrative of the SEND reform proposals: We want your unfiltered-by-AI views
- When “fine” at school isn’t fine at home: the hidden cost of autistic masking on families
- Should “highly valued” EHCP Independent Supporters return to help parents navigate the SEND jungle?
- Why my daughter’s SEND experience means we’ll take this consultation judicial review fight wherever it needs to go
- “Why would anyone in government think that was an okay idea?” #SaveSENDLegalRights
- ARFID: Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder is much more than just “fussy eating”
- Professor Brian Lamb OBE: Parent’s shouldn’t have to police the SEND system
- Fix SEND our way for 90% of SEND debt write off, Government tells councils, urging swift action on change. So much for co-production…
- The “enormous burden” of admin and monetary costs to SEND families, supporting a system that should be supporting them
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