Today I launch my Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) report.

130 constituents responded to my consultation, and the results are damning. I summarised the key findings last week in Parliament.

Nine out of ten families with SEND struggle to get the right support.

Only 6% of parents have a ‘very positive’ EHCP experience.

A quarter of parents have home-schooled their children for a time due to a lack of suitable provision.

The current SEND system does not work, and no-one trusts it to get better. This is a crisis of trust between parents, teachers, and local authorities.

North Northumberland has a higher-than-average number of children who have special support requirements in schools. Getting the right support or the right school is often a battle. Parents are exhausted.

The majority who had their EHCP granted on the first application said it took over thirty weeks to be completed, well beyond the twenty-week guideline.

One parent commented: ‘“It took for my child to have a breakdown [and] get medically signed of[f] school before they listened.”’

Another wrote that: “Parents need to be listened to, and teachers need to understand neurodiversity isn’t a problem and it isn’t going away.”

You can read the full results below. It is a sobering read.

This is not a post-covid problem, but a crisis that has been growing for years.

The Conservative Party watched the SEND crisis destroy families and were unwilling or unable to fix it. Reform believe that children who need support are just badly behaved and need to sit down and be quiet. Labour is the only party that can create a lasting SEND settlement between parents, teachers, and local authorities.

This Government will soon be announcing plans to overhaul this broken system and build a better way forward. I’ve shared this report with Bridget Philipson MP, the Education Secretary, and will continue to serve the parents of North Northumberland by championing our children.