Labour MP and special educational needs and disability (SEND) parent Jen Craft writes for The Mirror as the government prepares to announce major overhaul of broken system
When some details of the Government’s special educational needs reforms leaked last week, unsurprisingly the aspects of the reforms most likely to cause anxiety and concern to parents led news stories. The Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) community is used to this, our concerns and fears, used both to spice up headlines and as a political football.
I have a different perspective, because as well as a SEND parent, I’m also a Labour MP.
Before I entered Parliament in 2024, I was the main carer for my young disabled child. When we found out her diagnosis while pregnant, I made a promise that I would do everything in my power to make her life easier and the world better for people like her. My daughter is still little and has a number of interacting disabilities, including Down Syndrome, and I am determined to keep that promise.
It motivated me to run to be an MP. And it’s my daughter’s determination and energy, and the countless experiences of so many families, that motivates me to change our fundamentally broken system.
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Early opportunities for intervention are missed, families’ calls for help go unheard, children are stigmatised, services don’t speak to one another, help often comes only after drawn-out and antagonistic legal process, and when support is provided it can be patchy and inconsistent.
Parents and carers are tired of fighting a system to get our children their basic rights. Trust has broken down between families and the authorities that are meant to help them.
Changes to the SEND system were always going to be met, with anxious caution. Particularly when too often talk of reform focuses so much on restricting support and changes to the legal entitlement to support for disabled children and their families.
If I’m honest, I don’t think initially we grasped the scale of the challenge when we came into Government.
But the need to improve things is now urgent. I know the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson wants to make life easier for SEND families and make education more inclusive and accessible. After all, we’re Labour and so we should be fighting and working for a fairer, just, and more equitable world for those in our society who are too often overlooked.
Recently I’ve seen how government ministers have sat down with teachers, disability groups, disabled children and parents and listened. As a SEND parent and an MP, it finally felt that for once the right people were sitting around the table talking about how policy should work. So, despite headlines that seem designed sell papers, not build something that works for SEND kids, I am hopeful.
When the proposals are published, I will be going through them with a fine-tooth comb and, like many SEND parents, I am ready to fight for my child, if needed.
But if this white paper is truly a reflection of the conversations that parents, carers, charities, young people and campaigners have had with the government, then I am hopeful. Hopeful, that we could see something truly transformative. That these changes could finally create a system that meets the needs of our children, first time, and every time. A system where parents like me are able to stop fighting for our child’s basic rights and instead focus solely on being that most amazing of things, Mum and Dad.