Dear Sir Starmer and Ms Rayner, 

We are writing to you as parents and carers of children with special educational needs and disabilities and we have one simple request, please don’t ignore us. Give us the commitment now, that if Labour wins the next election you will fix the awful and cruel SEND system our children currently suffer within.

In 2014 the current government introduced the Children and Families Act. It expanded provision and the age range for support yet alongside didn’t match the changes with an appropriate funding formula. As a result the system was always set to implode and that is now happening. 

Parents now face local authorities following their own policies (which aren’t published) instead of the law, a tribunal system that is overwhelmed with parents winning 98% of the time, schools that cannot meet our children’s needs through lack of funding and more recently a Secretary of State that said we were “using the system of tribunals to get their children into very expensive independent schools”. Something we can assure you are not. We are constantly being blamed for a system that isn’t our fault and we are doing our best to follow. We just want our children to go to school, be able to learn and be happy.  

Rather than try and reinforce the rules in this system, the current government has refused to make impactful changes to rectify the issues we face. It took 3 years and 6 months to publish its lackluster improvement plan and through various means (eg. Safety Valve Agreements) has patted local authorities on the back for denying children what are meant to be their legal rights. In the meantime our children are suffering.

We write to you as a group representing over 100,000 parents and we are really concerned. So far you have committed to very little as a Labour Party that will have any effect on our situation and appear to be taking the SEND vote for granted. Our members don’t vote for change for the sake of it, we need to see real commitments and are issue led not politics driven. Early help is great but it doesn’t do anything to help the children in the system whose futures are being taken away now and this is the area which we need you to address. 

Please Sir Starmer and Ms Rayner, as two individuals who we know have lived experience of our fight in your own personal situations, make a commitment that if you are elected you will fix this broken system with 2 years and will no longer require families to have to go through this endless, cruel and emotional fight just to get their children an education. We love our children and will do anything for them - let us focus on them at home and not processes that are set up to be difficult for us and minimise levels of support. 

Yours in Hope