SNJ in Conversation: Why we need to talk about race and SEND

As parents of children with additional needs, we experience many difficult situations and feelings that give us a great deal of shared understanding. It's what makes us a community. But within the SEND community, there are people from many cultures, colours, countries, and walks of life. And that means we can never assume all our experiences are the same.

With this in mind, today's SNJ in Conversation tackles the often overlooked (or ignored) issues around race, racism, intersectionality and disproportionality within the SEND world. Joining me to discuss these difficult but vital issues are SNJ's associate editor, Marguerite Haye, who is a former headteacher, and now head of SEND at Sunshine Support, and Venessa Bobb, founder of A2ndvoice, a small voluntary group run by parents and carers of autistic children and adults, and branch officer of the National Autistic Society (NAS) Lambeth Autism Group.

Intersectionality: Coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics “intersect” with one another and overlap.

Disproportionality: When a minority group's numbers in special education are statistically higher than they should be, they are considered disproportionate.

Why we need to talk about Race and SEND

Links referred to in the episode

Here are links to all the references mentioned during this conversation:

Foluke Adebisi (2019): The Only Accurate Part of ‘BAME’ is the ‘and’…
Bernard Coard (1971): Making Black Children Subnormal in Britain
Oxford University (2018): The unequal representation of ethnic minorities in special educational in England: Extent, causes and consequences
Sir William Macpherson (1999): Report of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry
Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury(2020): Racism in Secondary Schools
YouTube video (2017): Privilege/ Class/ Social Inequalities Explained in a $100 Race

YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Anchor

See all SNJ In Conversation episodes

Further articles

Join the SNJ “Patron” Squad & get exclusive content!

Become a Patron!

- Your Squad Patrons' EXCLUSIVE February SEND update Newsletter is out now! If you're a patron and you haven't received it check your spam. No joy? Get in touch.

Don’t miss a thing!

Follow me

Renata Blower

Co Director at Special Needs Jungle

Renata is co-director of Special Needs Jungle as well as being on the board of Hertfordshire’s Parent Carer Forum. She also sits on a variety of steering groups including the coordinated care of rare diseases (CONCORD) study funded by the National Institute for Health Research, community and public health strategies, delivering coordinated care and strategic planning for SEND. She also sits on various advisory committees for children’s charities.

Previously Renata has been at the forefront of successfully changing government policy so interventions are needs-led and no longer diagnosis-led, and creating the world’s first specialist nurse for undiagnosed children at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

She also helped establish and grow the first online support community for families of undiagnosed children and spearheaded the very first undiagnosed children’s awareness day, including producing information videos that were shown in parliament.

She is a regular speaker on TV and at events, is an RSA Fellow and the mother of three children with disabilities, two of whom have complex needs and one of whom also has complex medical needs.