Help is coming for parents with SEND funding worries

Through my advice surgery as an MP and as an uncle, I have seen parents experiencing the deep, persistent worry that their child is not understood because their needs are not as straightforward as those of other children.

- WES STREETING

Worst of all, I have seen them forced to battle to get their kids the support they deserve. For far too many families, anxiety has not been occasional, but constant and exhausting. So it is with a sense of palpable relief that so many of us have cheered on Bridget Phillipson as she has gone into battle for those families, and for families like mine, to restore a sense of moral mission and purpose to our country's system for supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

This is about fairness and realising the potential of every child. It is also about health, as well as education, because when support comes too late, the consequences are not abstract. They are profound, harmful and too often life-changing in the worst possible way. By the time help finally arrives, it comes through the most costly and distressing routes that could have been prevented with earlier action.

That is why we're working together to make sure we are building a system that places children's mental and physical wellbeing at its very centre - right alongside great education provision. Phillipson's success in making sure that our education system meets the needs of all children is vital to achieving my ambition to create the healthiest, happiest generation of children this country has ever known. And vice versa, because unmet educational needs very quickly become unmet health needs, which, left unchecked, can become a safeguarding risk.