This week Sharon Pratt and Poppy Rose will be the two fantastic guests on Women’s Radio Station’s weekly ‘All things Autism’. You can listen to the programme with Dr Anna Kennedy OBE and her guests at 1pm everyday.

Nadia Turk the co-founder with Poppy, started to look at the current SEND structure and legislation. She quickly realised that it is flawed, and that thousands of children and young people were not being provided with correct or adequate education provisions.

Sharon and Poppy began chatting with Nadia through social media groups and although the distance between is hundreds of miles, they became good friends and following an off the cuff comment from Nadia about taking action instead of keep talking about then SEND National Crisis was born!

Nadia and Poppy discussed the 2014 reforms was implemented to end the adversarial system that often sees parents in battle with local authorities over SEND provision. But the new 0-25 system that covered education, health and social care provision was never likely to come cheap, however despite the rising age for support no extra money was put into the system. 

In a time of austerity, parents have come together to fight for what’s right and for the greater good of their children, they’re saying enough is enough!

It’s 2019 and we have thousands of parents and carers in this amazing country, fighting for a fair education for disabled children and young people. Why? Because their/our children do not fit the normal criteria for accessing education.

Parents have been fighting for their children’s educational rights for years, however, there continues to be a lapse of support and assessment resulting in tens of thousands of children and young people being left without an appropriate education. In some cases, left without any form of education; or even worse, left within an education establishment that is unable to cater for their needs. The latter resulting in some very damaging mental health, trust and confidence issues.

Their aims

• Funding to increase to match needs and ring-fenced for SEND.
• Assessing, monitoring and accountability for improved educational outcomes for each child with SEND.
• One consistent SEND process that all local authorities must follow.

Join the group

We want to emphasise that the campaign has only gained its momentum and impact thanks to the relentless work and support of our volunteers and coordinators. We thank all our members and followers for their support.

Thanks for joining the and being part of the process of change. Follow them on Twitter too. And please join over 3,000 members and find your local march on Facebook. 

Dennis Relojo-Howell is the world’s first blog psychologist and founder of Psychreg. He writes for the American Psychological Association and for Free Malaysia Today.