The insidious tactics of forked tongues pretending to care, while pushing to dismantle SEND rights

by Amber Windsor, neurodivergent parent-carer and SEND campaigner

Contents

Recently, right-wing think tank, Policy Exchange, decided to insert itself into the SEND arena with a report it claimed “identifies how poor incentives have driven overdiagnosis of mental ill health and neurodivergence in young people, stretching key public services to breaking point.” SNJ’s founder, Tania Tirraoro gave it suitably short shrift in a comment in The Guardian in response to Jeremy Hunt MP’s foreword:

“It’s a bit rich of Jeremy Hunt to claim this, given his government presided over deep cuts to public services, including Camhs [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services], a narrowed curriculum, meaning children who thrived in arts and practical subjects were cut adrift, and a botched response to the pandemic.
“What we are seeing now is the result of that – young people who have grown up in a hostile environment, trying to navigate an explosion of unregulated social media and without the support services they need. It is most certainly not widely accepted that there is an overdiagnosis – this is something put out by people like him to deflect from these failings.”
The Guardian

The report itself was as you’d expect— parent blamey, ignorant, and worth only of use as kindling. However, as if part of a coordinated plan, it echoed what we have been hearing about the Government potentially limiting EHCPs to children in special schools—the very thing our Save Our Children’s Rights campaign is about. It makes you wonder if we’ve even had a change in government when all sides, including the odious know-nothings of “Reform”, attack families of children with SEND. It feels like there is something deeper—and deeply insidious—at play, with the vulnerable the first, easy targets.

Amber Windsor, a neurodivergent parent-carer and SEND campaigner, took particular exception to the report and has succinctly put her thoughts down for us in today’s article. Amber says behind [pseudo] sympathetic language about struggling services lies a dangerous blueprint for dismantling disabled children’s legal protections. Her article follows…

Before the White Paper: Policy Exchange’s Blueprint for Dismantling Children’s Rights by Amber Windsor

Policy Exchange has released a 110-page blueprint for dismantling disabled children’s rights. They’re not calling it that, of course—they’re calling it “reform.” But strip away the sympathetic language about struggling services, and the message is clear: too many children are getting help, and it needs to stop.

With a Schools’ White Paper imminent and ministers already hinting at rollbacks to the 2014 Children and Families Act, this isn’t just another policy paper. It’s laying the intellectual groundwork for a devastating retreat from legal protections that families fought years to secure.

The Classic Divide-and-Conquer Playbook

This report uses the same tactics we’ve seen deployed against other marginalised groups. Create artificial categories of “deserving” versus “undeserving”. Suggest resources are finite, so someone else must be taking too much. Turn people’s justified anger away from systemic failures and towards each other.

They want families to believe that the reason your child isn’t getting support isn’t because of chronic underfunding; it’s because those “other” families are gaming the system. The middle-class parents paying for private assessments. The “diagnosis-seeking” families. The children who aren’t “really” disabled.

This strategy isn’t new. Parents and campaigners like SNJ have been documenting these divide-and-conquer tactics for months. But Policy Exchange’s report represents something more dangerous: it provides the intellectual framework to justify what’s already happening, dressed up as evidence-based reform just as the government prepares its White Paper.

The Trojan Horse of Sympathy

The report weaves together observations few families could dispute, but with deeply troubling conclusions. Jeremy Hunt’s foreword acknowledges that services are overwhelmed, that children are struggling, that something needs to change. For exhausted families, these recognitions feel validating.

But scattered throughout are far more problematic claims. Hunt suggests we need to ask “fundamental questions” like whether “a cash transfer—or a label that means young people are treated and come to see themselves as different” is the right approach. Instead, he advocates for “good work, physical activity, social connection.”

This sounds reasonable until you realise what he’s really saying: maybe we shouldn’t provide financial support or recognition of needs. Maybe children should just knuckle down harder at schoolwork, exercise more, and socialise better.

It’s a breathtaking misunderstanding of how human development works. You can’t bootstrap your way to academic success and “social connection” when your basic educational and support needs aren’t met. A child whose sensory needs aren’t accommodated can’t simply “try harder” their way to learning in an overwhelming environment.

Conclusions First, Evidence Later

The report claims to investigate rising demand, saying, “we need to understand the drivers of demand we are seeing.” But their conclusions are clearly predetermined. They go on to list what they think these drivers supposedly are: parents having too much influence, families being “diagnosis-seeking,” and—most tellingly—our “laudable desire to ensure young people are happy and well-supported.” [SNJ spoiler alert: these are not the drivers. See our post here]

Think about that. They’ve identified caring about children’s wellbeing as a problem driving unsustainable demand. This isn’t research, it’s ideology dressed up as evidence, working backwards from the conclusion that too many children are getting help.

The Double Standard at the Centre

Hunt’s stance reveals a fundamental contradiction that exposes the report’s ableist underpinnings. He claims to want a system focused on children’s strengths and potential rather than deficits. Yet he simultaneously argues that children shouldn’t be “treated as different” or have their differences recognised.

This is peak ableism dressed up as progressive thinking. The neurodivergent movement has spent decades fighting for exactly what Hunt claims to want—recognising strengths, celebrating different ways of being, moving beyond deficit models. But actually doing that requires recognising difference as valuable, not shameful. It means understanding that some mainstream spaces are fundamentally incompatible with certain sensory or cognitive needs, and that true inclusion means changing environments, not forcing children to mask their differences to fit in with neurotypical peers.

Hunt wants the outcome—happy, successful children—without the process of actually accommodating difference. He’s essentially arguing for inclusion while refusing to change anything to make spaces truly inclusive.

The impossible bind for SEND parents

The report systematically attacks parental expertise, arguing that parents have “excessive influence” and dismissing them as untrained amateurs whose advocacy is inherently suspect.

But here’s the contradiction that exposes their bad faith: the same system demands endless unpaid labour from families. Parents spend untold hours documenting needs, attending meetings, fighting appeals, and becoming experts in law and child development, just to secure basic support. Parents are expected to do all this work, only to be told the expertise and advocacy skills they’ve developed are the problem.

It’s breathtaking parent-blaming. Families are simultaneously required to become advocates whilst being attacked for advocating.

Key Content

a monkey in the jungle with a magnifying glass and a deerstalker hat

image includes graphics from the article

What is Policy Exchange?

As mentioned above, Policy Exchange is far from neutral. Founded by Conservative MPs, it’s consistently provided intellectual cover for austerity policies whilst presenting itself as “independent” and “evidence-based.” Rated as one of the least transparent think tanks in Britain, it refuses to disclose most funding sources.

As families have increasingly recognised the harmful tactics being used against them, Policy Exchange arrives with its 110-page “academic” justification for exactly those strategies. This is the same organisation that blueprinted welfare cuts and hostile environment policies. When Policy Exchange writes about SEND, they’re not conducting objective research; they’re providing theoretical respectability for policies designed to strip away children’s rights.

What’s really at stake for children with SEND

Their recommendations reveal the true agenda: make EHCPs non-statutory, strip away legal enforceability, restrict EHCPs to special schools only, give professionals “flexibility” to refuse support, and increase barriers to disability benefits.

This would return us to pre-2014 conditions, where support was charity, not rights, and families had to be grateful for whatever scraps they were offered.

Promoted

We’re in a fight for rights: don’t fall into their trap

Don’t fall for the divide-and-conquer strategy. When someone suggests “other families” are taking resources from your child, remind them: the problem isn’t that some children get support; it’s that not all the children who need support are given it.

When they talk about “overdiagnosis,” ask what’s the alternative? More exclusions of children who need help? When politicians present this as fiscal responsibility, expose it as ideology designed to pit families against each other while protecting the politicians who created this mess.

Our children are not the problem. Parent carers are not the problem. Existing rights are not the problem. The problem is a system designed to fail those it should be supporting. The problem is politicians who’d rather blame families than fund solutions. Don’t let them divide us. Our strength is in standing together.

About Amber Windsor

Amber Windsor is a neurodivergent parent-carer and SEND campaigner with experience across SEND, education and disability support. She has also worked with IPSEA and in services supporting neurodivergent adults.

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Special Needs Jungle was founded in 2008 as a personal SEN blog by Tania Tirraoro. It is now a multi-author, award-winning site covering special needs, disability, mental health and rare conditions in children & young people birth-25 years.

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