with Natalie Lauren and Jo Clayton
A team of academic and media professionals is creating a short film illustrating the “immense pressure” faced by SEND families. Whether it’s the difficulties around getting support, or the inappropriate imposition of fines and, sometimes, prosecution for non-attendance, the team want to highlight the systemic injustice, inflexibility, and inhumanity heaped upon families by schools and local authorities “just doing their jobs.”
The team, Natalie Lauren, Jo Clayton and Dr Lucy Foulkes, has also penned an open letter that’s been signed by at least 18 of the country’s leading academics, lawyers, educators and paediatricians. They’re launching a crowdfunding and awareness campaign to coincide with the launch.
The film, “Unauthorised Absence”, is an empathy-driven, collaborative approach to try to change policy to be supportive of, instead of punitive to, disabled children. A bit of empathy is definitely needed right now, especially after recent ignorant attacks from certain (ignorant) quarters.
They’re on SNJ today to tell you about their project—and time is of the essence if you want to support their project— their Kickstarter ends next week!
Why we’re using film to highlight the injustice of inflexible school policies by the Unauthorised Absence team
We want to tell you how our short film script, written by a SEND mum, has started a grassroots campaign that is set to unite all stakeholders against the inappropriate application of attendance fines on parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). By shining a light on the immense battles that families face behind closed doors, we hope our film will foster empathy and inspire much-needed action to reform a better Education system for everyone.
On November 5th, we launched this campaign on Kickstarter for our proposed short film, Unauthorised Absence. But one look should quickly reveal that this isn’t any ordinary short film: written by SEND Mum and Storyteller Jo Clayton, it comes with a BAFTA winning, Golden Globe nominee cast member, a four-time Emmy Award Certificate winning editor and, at time of writing, is personally endorsed by more than 30 leading professionals and organisations.
Why we’re making the film
Jo wrote this film to show audiences the causes of what became an eight-year struggle in the shattered SEND system. A struggle that, to protect and care for her daughter, left her out of work and fighting at the SEND tribunal
Jo says,
“Like many SEND parents, I was threatened with fines and prosecution because of her daughter’s Emotionally Based School Non-Attendance (EBSNA). I experienced a remarkable lack of understanding in this area: leading to judgement, burn out and, ultimately, despair. I wrote the film as a way to increase awareness about the reality lived every day by families like mine. But this problem does not start and stop with parents. It is a systematic issue that’s felt across Health, Education, and Legal professions: causing vast, disproportionate damage to the wellbeing and education of neurodivergent children.”
Natalie says:
“People can be quick to think that conversations about attendance are about getting cheaper holidays, poor parenting, or stubborn children. This film will put an end to that convenient myth in an instant.”
The open letter
With the support of Oxford University academic psychologist, Dr. Lucy Foulkes, Natalie, who is the script’s producer, drafted an open letter to combat this misconception. The plan was to unite the voices of respected academics in the fields of child & adolescent mental health and neurodiversity.
Natalie says,
“The letter was circulated along with a copy of the film’s script so signatories were informed of exactly what we want to make. Neither of us could have predicted the speed and willingness with which these leading researchers responded. It was incredible, but also totally devastating, because it demonstrated just how widespread and deeply felt this problem is.”
Parents are placed in a difficult position: choosing between their child’s wellbeing and incurring fines and threats of prosecution, or trying to comply with inflexible systems that “too often feels adversarial, fragmented and under-resourced” [3]. All while managing the novel and complex demands of SEND parenting.
We believe that pitting parents against schools, and children against systems meant to support them undermines the mental health and wellbeing of all involved. We do not believe these outcomes were the intention of the existing regulatory framework, but intention alone is not enough. A truthful representation of these lived experiences, as depicted in the script Unauthorised Absence, can help to catalyse urgently needed conversations among policymakers, practitioners, and the public.
School absence is a deeply misunderstood issue and we believe this film will foster better care and understanding for those wrongly affected by the penal aspects of the education system. It will highlight the misattribution of blame, an inappropriate application of financial fines, and inspire empathetic conversation about the challenges of supporting children with special education needs and disabilities.
We wish to promote better care, better understanding, and better systems: for children, families, educators and authorities alike.
An extract from the letter
Then, following this LinkedIn post, we received an incredible amount of professional support from individuals in a variety of fields: academia, psychology, paediatrics, psychiatry, law, and education. We immediately broadened the letter to include these perspectives in our call for change, realising our best chance of impact is to be a united front.
“This is a vital film about the terribly misunderstood problem of school absence. For too long, young people and their parents have been judged and punished for something that isn’t their fault. What they really need is compassionate understanding — about why school becomes impossible for some young people, and the huge impact this all has on the parents trying to help.”
Dr. Lucy Foulkes
Jo reached out to the many groups, charities and organisations that had helped her as an SEND parent. They found it a compelling and accurate account of the experiences they’d seen, and added their endorsement.
Heading for Hollywood
The script started getting encouragement from people in the entertainment industry. We picked up praise from Oscar-winning production company, Slick Films, and at Bath Film Festival’s IMDb Awards. People working in the very top end of Film & TV began to reach out to offer their services, often, sadly, coming with their own connection to SEND and attendance difficulty.
“A spectacular short. A potent social commentary on the failures of bureaucratic systems to address the needs of vulnerable families. With raw emotional honesty, the script captures the intimate, often invisible struggles of a parent navigating a broken system with lyrical precision and brutal realism.”
Outstanding Screenplays
It has truly become a community project. Everyone working on it and supporting it has some kind of connection to the SEND system. We keep everyone updated on progress as if they were investors; we want to bring everyone along on the journey.
Our lucky stars really shone, though, when a chance meeting between Jo’s sister and BAFTA-winning, Golden Globe-nominated actress, Cathy Tyson led to her reading the script, our pitch, and offering to sign on to play a role in the film. Neither of us has fully processed how incredible this is, and what it means for the film’s reach outside of the SEND community.
We believe this kind of collaboration is unique, with so many different viewpoints coming together in support of one aim. For our message to be delivered through the medium of film is a huge testament to the power and potential of art.
Our Catch-22: hard cash
We’ve had incredible support and encouragement from the SEND community, but the only barrier is, of course, the money needed to make it happen. We can’t attract a great director until we raise some funding, and we can’t raise funding until we attach a director— a real, and frustrating, Catch-22. This is what led us to “kickstarting” the project with the community. ]
We’d be delighted if you, or someone you know, is in a position to donate—whether it’s £5 or £500—check out the campaign and all the information about what we’re doing, and offering in return here. We completely understand if donating isn’t possible; you can still help us reach our goal by sharing what we’re doing with your network.
Key Content
Follow our journey to (hopefully) success
The impressive, growing list of our professional, charitable, and organisational supporters is available to see on the film’s campaign page. You can also follow the film’s journey on our Instagram, and Facebook. We reply to everything.
Some of our academic supporters have published research around the same issue:
- Neurodivergent adolescents experience twice the emotional burden at school than their neurotypical peers.
- “I felt shamed and blamed”: an exploration of the parental lived experience of school distress.
- School distress and the school attendance crisis: a story dominated by neurodivergence and unmet need.
- Missing: the autistic girls absent from mainstream secondary schools who want to be learning.
- “Treated like criminals”: The SEND families forced into court.
About the team
Natalie Lauren is an award-winning Actor, Filmmaker, and mentor from Norfolk. She has a degree in Psychology & Philosophy from Oxford University, and a Master’s from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She won an award for “Commitment to Educational Equity” this year, alongside releasing five short films.
Jo Clayton is a writer, storyteller & SEND mum from Surrey. She has worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital, Shakespeare’s Globe and the Southbank Centre, storytelling with thousands of children. She now mentors and tutors online. Her script has picked up five shortlisted and finalist positions at prestigious competitions this year.
Dr Lucy Foulkes is an academic researcher at Oxford University. She specialises in adolescent mental health, authoring books like “Coming Of Age” and “What Mental Illness Really is… And What It Isn’t”. Her work has been covered widely in mainstream media, and she’s led workshops and given talks on adolescent development, most recently focusing on School-based interventions.
Disabled Children’s Rights are Under Attack.
We’re fighting, but we can’t do it alone: we need your help more than ever.
We’re volunteer-run, but costs are rising. To help us keep going, please consider a one-off or, if it’s possible, a regular donation.
Read more about being a regular donor here.
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Also read:
- Big ideas belong to everyone: Education, rights and lifelong learning for people with learning disabilities
- As The Guardian prints our joint campaign’s open letter, it’s clear people with lived experience don’t want to lose SEND rights
- How do you ensure pathways to education, health, and social care support, meet both diagnosis and needs?
- Researching flexi-schooling: How beneficial is it for children with SEND?
- Oops, we did it again… The Government must now listen to more than 100,000 people who do not want to lose SEND rights
- Experts at Hand: When is an occupational therapist also a SEND expert?
- Could using AI to filter Government consultation responses lead to “algorithmic silencing” of neurodivergent voices?
- A council’s “improvement journey”? How determined SEND parents catalogued the trail of their LA’s unlawful behaviour
- Research: Social networks in special schools. Friendships, bullying and play
- CrowdJustice SEND accountability: When the law says “must”, local authorities cannot treat it as “maybe”
- DfE must give its SEND reform Child Rights Impact Assessment a do-over; this time, without marking its own homework
- Research: SEND case officers are LAs’ “human shield” gatekeepers. But parents shouldn’t have to be their own key workers
What kind of government is “bold” enough to scrap statutory EHCPs from vulnerable children?May 16, 2025
The SEND reforms in the Schools White Paper reveal rights given, and rights stripped awayFebruary 24, 2026
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She is a rare disease & chronic pain patient advocate with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.
- Oops, we did it again… The Government must now listen to more than 100,000 people who do not want to lose SEND rights - October 1, 2026
- Could using AI to filter Government consultation responses lead to “algorithmic silencing” of neurodivergent voices? - September 30, 2026
- DfE must give its SEND reform Child Rights Impact Assessment a do-over; this time, without marking its own homework - September 24, 2026
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