Would you be able to squeeze into your morning routine a 30-minute school drop off (each way) – at a school in the opposite direction to your other children’s local school? Would you still make the school start times?  

Did you see the range of articles scattered through media outlets following a Reform UK Freedom of Information request about school transportation for children with special needs brought up this headline,

“Parents paid £5k to take child to special school”

This toxic one-sided offering of someone’s life only further “others” and isolate the families of children with SEN.  

Instead of “Your hard-earned taxes are being handed over to money grabbing, benefit scrounging parents of children with disabilities.” 

Why not try, 

“EVERY child deserve an education” 

We have a system where special school places are insufficient to meet demand. Children need to travel to get to their specialist provision – often not with their siblings.  

A 3-mile journey in school traffic can take over half an hour – for some children their commute is double that – for what? 

To get an education like every other child in the UK.  

Nothing more. Nothing less.   

And this issue of transport is a drop in the ocean of all the things we are contending with. Recent news reports expose extensive community waiting lists impacting these same children.  

So, as a parent you are chasing appointments, looking for advice elsewhere – being ready to be scrutinised.  

Because there are no physio services, it’s impossible to get a speech and language therapist, the EHCP process is flawed and failing. 

And why is there a rising transport cost? Maybe it isn’t because parents are sitting back drinking tins of G&T and watching This Morning at 11am – maybe the rigidity of the current schooling system is traumatising and isolating children who, once upon a time, were able to be supported in their local school. 

Maybe the house fire which is SEN crisis means that without a diagnosis, and loud advocating voice – children are being failed.  

Children and their overwhelmed parents aren’t picked up and supported. 

They are chewed up and spat out.  

These headlines hint to laziness – when in reality they are symptoms of a broken system.  

If you couldn’t suddenly do a 1 hour detour before work, alongside the dysregulation and tears, the need for hands-on support to get dressed, chasing the medication which still isn’t at the pharmacy, rebooking the doctor’s appointment, following up the school email – then just because I have a child with SEN doesn’t mean I can either.    

Because we are both people – doing our very best to love our children well, but some of us face more barriers to access things which families in the UK take for granted – like an education.