A mother-of-four recounted her harrowing experience at a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) tribunal, where she fought against her local council to reinstate essential speech and language therapy for her ten-year-old non-verbal disabled daughter, Annabelle. The mother, Kate Skelton, described feeling "sick with nerves" as a barrister representing the council argued against her, even suggesting she was seeking a "Rolls Royce service" for her child, a comment she found deeply offensive given she was only requesting one hour a week of professional help.

Annabelle was born with the ultra-rare genetic condition foxp1, which has led to multiple disabilities including autism, cerebral palsy, global development delay, and ADHD. Kate's battle for support began early, with doctors initially dismissing her concerns as those of a "neurotic mum." When Annabelle was eventually diagnosed as "catastrophically" disabled, Kate naively assumed help would be readily available. Instead, she faced two-year waiting lists for basic therapies, forcing her to pay for private sessions and become her daughter’s speech therapist, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, and advocate, a role that took a significant toll on her health, sanity, and marriage.

This was Kate's second SEND tribunal, the first in 2019, where she also had to fight the council and NHS for adequate therapy, winning weekly hour-long sessions of one-to-one speech therapy. However, that victory required hiring an expensive lawyer at a cost of £10,000 and was only valid for a year. The most recent tribunal in 2023 was triggered when Bromley Council cut Annabelle's therapy by 75 per cent without consultation or proper explanation, which Kate believed was based on a lack of funding rather than Annabelle's best interests, and therefore illegal.

Kate highlights that the tribunal process is "drawn-out, scary, exhausting and confusing," imposing huge financial and emotional costs on families. She believes local authorities exploit parents' lack of time, energy, and money, operating on a "cruel calculated risk." Despite parents winning 99 per cent of these cases, councils continue to flout the law by reducing or withdrawing services, then wasting taxpayer money fighting battles they often lose. The number of parents forced into tribunals rose by 29 per cent between 2020-21 and 2021-22, with approximately 13,000 parents resorting to this route annually.

Although Kate and her husband Phil ultimately won the second tribunal, and Annabelle's speech therapy was restored, there were no true winners. Even representing themselves to reduce costs, they were still hundreds of pounds out of pocket, paying for independent assessments, reports, and a speech therapist to attend the hearing, alongside lost earnings from time away from work.

The Skelton family's ordeal is not isolated. Two weeks prior to the article, Kate joined over 1,000 other SEND parents at the "Fight For Ordinary" rally outside Parliament. Organised by The Disabled Children’s Partnership, Let Us Learn Too, and The SEND Sanctuary, the protest saw parents sharing stories of children out of school due to lack of specialist places and years-long waiting lists for vital therapies. Dignitaries like Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey and comedian Alistair Barrie also shared their experiences, underscoring the widespread nature of the crisis within the SEND system.

The rally served as a powerful reminder to parents that they are not alone in their struggle. With the government’s white paper on SEND eagerly awaited, there is a "once-in-a-generation chance to get it right for disabled kids." A recent scathing report by the Commons Education Committee branded SEND provision as "broken" and "long past needing repair," recommending annual inflation adjustments for the £6,000 funding per SEND pupil, mandatory SEND-specific qualifications for new headteachers, and increased availability of specialist school places. However, Kate expresses fear that the government might prioritize balancing the books of cash-strapped councils over the fundamental rights of the most vulnerable members of the next generation.