SEND HUGS

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Special Educational Needs and Disabilities - Help, Understanding, Guidance and Support
A coaching service and parenting community aimed at providing help, understanding, guidance and support to parents of neurodivergent children.

11/09/2026

I’m really looking forward to this event tomorrow. There will be some great stalls and resources there.

I’ll have my diary with me and have availability to do EHC needs assessment requests, draft checks, preparation for annual reviews and other EHCP tasks, as well as parent coaching and offering support with other communications with schools.

If you’re there, please pop along to my stall to say hello.

10/09/2026

Today is World Su***de Prevention Day.

I know very few people whose lives haven’t been impacted by su***de or suicidal thoughts in some way.

It was devastating to see only two days ago that PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Su***de had gone into administration and closed with immediate effect due to a lack of funding.

HOPELINE247 was a specialist crisis support service for young people run by PAPYRUS, and that service is no longer available.

This is devastating news, but there is still support out there, including the following:

Samaritans - free 24/7 support on 116 123
Shout - free 24/7 text support. Text SHOUT to 85258
In a crisis, you can also call NHS 111, dial 999 or go to A&E

There are many local organisations around the country which can help, and Young Minds can offer general mental health support and guidance.

Every life is uniquely valuable, and every person is precious.

To anyone who feels despair today, or feels that they would not be missed - please, reach out to someone. The world would be poorer if you weren’t here.

09/09/2026

There are some days, weeks or even months as the parent of a child with SEND when you need to grit your teeth and keep your opinions to yourself to avoid inflaming an already difficult situation.

During these times, there are things I constantly remind myself of. The first are when dealing with the comments of strangers in the street or in the supermarket:

"They've never experienced this themselves, so you can't expect them to understand."

"They don't have to deal with my child every day, so their opinion is irrelevant."

When dealing with people who will be dealing with my children and need to understand:

"They don't know what it's like, so I need to explain it to them calmly and clearly so that they'll have a better understanding next time."

And when dealing with the behaviour itself:

"I'm their safe person - they're able to do this because they're unhappy or feel unsafe, and they know deep down that they can trust me not to abandon them."

"They're not giving me a hard time - they're having a hard time."

My current favourite, which is sometimes repeated hundreds of times a day to keep me on an even keel:

"It's when their behaviour is at its most unlovable that they need the most love."

And to yourself:

"Give yourself the grace that you would give another parent in your situation."

None of us will ever get everything right. The important thing is that we keep showing up day after day, and nobody knows our children as well or loves them as much as we do.

08/09/2026

One of the most unreasonable fears that parents have when their children can't go into school is the terror of being fined or imprisoned.

The guidance on school attendance is very clear that schools should not be using fines and prosecution as a first line of attack against absence.

When a child has poor attendance, the school should first try to understand why the child's attendance has fallen and offer support in overcoming the barriers that prevent the child from accessing school. The guidance specifically says SEN should be taken into account in considering the school's response to persistent absence.

Parents should not be routinely required to provide proof of illness - the default position should be to accept the parents' word when they say their child is not fit for school. Further evidence should only be asked for if the school has genuine and reasonable doubt about whether the illness is real. Schools should not have blanket rules requiring evidence, even if they only kick in below a certain attendance level.

If a child arrives after the register has closed, the school must mark the child absent for that session - but this does not have to be unauthorised. The guidance allows the school to use "another absence code which is more appropriate".

My top three tips if your child is having trouble accessing school are:

1. Engage with the school. Let them see you're making an effort, email them every day that your child is absent with an update, and if you know what they're suggesting won't work, explain why and suggest what might help instead. Keep all the evidence of your engagement with them and their response.

2. Know what the guidance says and what both you and the school are required to do. The guidance is statutory - it has the force of law and the school can't have policies which are not in line with the guidance.

3. Report the reasons for your child's absence accurately. If your child is completely burnt out, or is too anxious for school, don't say, "I can't persuade her to go in" or "He's just refusing". "My child is not fit for school today due to anxiety and unmet needs" is usually a better description and should be authorised as illness.

07/09/2026

“Mummy, I’ve made a friend!”

“How lovely! What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, but he likes the same computer games as me and he hates people too!”

A match made in Heaven, apparently 😊.

05/09/2026

I had a(nother) letter from my child’s school yesterday, reiterating the message that “Good attendance is strongly linked to academic success, wellbeing, and positive future outcomes.”

I have no doubt that this is the case - in fact, it's one of the things that upsets me most about my daughter's inability to access school full time.

However, the very strong implication (made explicit in a lot of school and DfE communications) is that poor attendance is the cause of academic failure and poor outcomes - and that fixing attendance alone will reverse the trend.

But what if it's the other way round? What if it's the fact that a child has difficulty learning, feels unsafe and uncomfortable in school and feels like a failure that leads to the attendance difficulties?

And what if the correlation doesn't directly indicate causation at all, and there's a whole number of factors at play which make the picture a lot more complicated than a simple interplay between school attendance and success?

There's a strong correlation between ice cream sales and sunny weather, but some people buy ice cream all year round, while others never buy it. Forcing everyone to buy ice cream will not make the sun shine any more than forcing all children into school will make the environment bearable for those children who find it impossible.

There's also a strong correlation between special educational needs and persistent absence. On average, autistic children miss an estimated 78 more days of school than their neurotypical peers.

Interestingly, researchers at UCL found in 2020 that the chances of autistic children missing school were 100% higher in mainstream schools than in specialist schools, with 43% of the children studied being persistently absent from school. This statistic supports the often repeated observation by parents of children with SEND that their children are unable to attend school because their needs are not being met there.

Forcing children who are struggling into school will no more cure their underlying difficulties than stocking up on ice cream will make the sun come out. A much more nuanced approach is needed, taking into account all the factors involved.

04/09/2026

We have an extra source of dysregulation at this time of year.

Not only do we have all the anxiety around a new school year, but today is my birthday.

I try very hard to forget about it, or at least to move the “celebration” to a more appropriate day, but there’s no doubt that it adds significantly to the stress of the first week of school.

My daughter has a kind heart and her love language is gifts. She’s given me some lovely gifts over the years, all much appreciated, and has often made me a cake - the one in the photo is the one she made me last year, with much hilarity over pretending I was even more ancient than I am.

But the desire to make everything perfect competes with the realisation that everything (especially at this time of year) isn’t perfect. And sometimes the pressure is too much.

Meanwhile, my son offered to give me a special birthday treat by staying at home and giving me birthday snuggles all day.

It later transpired that he wasn’t happy to be going to school today, because his teacher (and current safe person) told the class yesterday that he wouldn’t be there today.

It only took half an hour in the car park to persuade him in, with a lot of help from a couple of members of staff.

Monday will be a normal day - I’m really hoping everyone will be happy and back in the swing of things by the end of next week.

03/09/2026

I witnessed a beautiful moment this afternoon.

Today was my son's first day at his specialist secondary school. There were all sorts of reasons why he could have struggled to settle in, but he got to know his new form teacher on his transition days, he knew what the school was like, and his teacher had sent a social story to take him through everything that would be happening on the first day.

This morning could have gone badly. He hasn't been going to sleep early enough, and I struggled to wake him up. He hadn't tried on his uniform, and a lot of it was new. He doesn't really like leaving the house. He gets nervous about meeting people, being in a crowd, finding his way round, having to stand up for himself and ask questions, and so much more.

His sister had all the support I could have hoped for when she started at her mainstream school in Year 7. She became very attached to two or three members of the support team, and when she made it to school, they were the main pull - they often still are.

But despite the relationships she has built with individual friends and members of staff, she has never felt completely safe at school. Some days she's able to push past the discomfort, seeking refuge in the people who do feel safe to her. Other days, she can't. Today she couldn't.

My son, on the other hand, arrived at school and went off with a teacher to his classroom quite happily this morning.

This afternoon, I arrived 15 minutes early to pick him up, and I waited for ages. About 10 minutes after school ended, it transpired that he had been waiting with his teacher at the wrong car park, and had presumably thought that I hadn't arrived to pick him up.

I expected him to be distraught when he finally arrived - but he wasn't. I saw him coming up to me, chatting with two members of staff, smiling, and not looking at his shoes or anxiously searching for me. He was happy to see me, but he was also happy before he saw me.

The beautiful thing that I saw today was a child who felt safe at school.

31/08/2026

Can we talk about shoes?

The DfE has trumpeted its new school uniform rules almost as much as it has bragged about breakfast clubs. It talks about making uniform affordable for parents.

For me, the single most expensive school item has always been the shoes - but shoes are only mentioned once in the new statutory guidance. It says if smart black shoes are required, this should be clearly stated.

Shoe shops never include school shoes in their end of season sales, and “smart black shoes” always seem to be at the top of the price range for children’s shoes.

Meanwhile, children’s feet grow, and in the early school years, we have to replace shoes two or three times a year.

What does “smart” even mean? For girls, it usually seems to mean a flimsy sandal, a very lightweight lace up, or even a court shoe. How practical are these for girls who like to run around the playground, or who have to walk to school in all weathers?

For boys and girls, anything that looks too much like a trainer is forbidden, even though you can get them in plain black and these are often the most practical and hard wearing shoes - and the most comfortable.

Everything about school shoes seems designed to make them as expensive, uncomfortable and flimsy as possible.

Add to that the peer pressure of getting the “right” shoes to satisfy the school fashion police and not be ridiculed (or worse) for your choice (or your mother’s choice) of shoe, and you have the perfect storm.

School shoe shopping is the biggest single trigger of back to school anxiety and meltdowns for us.

Three days before school starts, we still have no shoes for either child, but I am a lot better informed about everything one of my children is anxious about.

30/08/2026

Being a parent always involves a certain amount of juggling, and this summer I've had to spend a lot of time working.

I've tried to do as much of my work as possible while the children were either busy or asleep, and have also enjoyed some lovely times with each of them.

Sometimes, though, the other person's perception is different, and they're more aware of the "just wait until I've finished this bit" times than the unvocalised "he wants me now, so how much later can I push this piece of work so I can be available to him now?" calculations.

At bedtime last night, my son asked me, "How much do people pay you for an hour?"

I replied that a lot of the work I do is charged per job rather than per hour, but if I am charging per hour, my hourly rate is £30.

He replied, "If I give you £30, can I buy an hour of your time?"

He's never going to be this age again, and in four days he's starting at a new school and will have new experiences, new friends and new influences in his life.

For the next four days, my time belongs to my children.

Address

Chesham

Telephone

07930842137

Website

http://www.sendhugs.co.uk/

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