We wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to contribute to our SEND Reform White Paper Consultation Padlet and share their thoughts with us.
We know how important this consultation is for all of our children and young people’s future. We were grateful for the honesty, passion and lived experience that so many families shared, and we took those views seriously when preparing our response.
Thank you for taking the time to speak up, share your experiences and help ensure that parent carer voices were heard.
We’ll continue to keep you updated as we learn more about what happens next.
This response is our best attempt to reflect what has been shared with us, clearly, honestly and thoroughly. It’s not a short document, but that’s because the issues aren’t simple, and everyone had a lot they wanted and needed to say.
We also encouraged SEND families to respond individually and to campaign about what wasn’t included in the consultation, because we want everyone to feel they can have their say in the way that works best for them.
This is about the future of the SEND system, but it is also about what SEND children, young people and their families are living with right now, and what needs to change..
We also fed everything into the national Parent Carer Forum (NNPCF) response, so these experiences form part of the national response.
Alongside submitting our own response, we made sure that the views and experiences shared with us were fed directly into the National Network of Parent Carer Forums (NNPCF) response to the Department for Education’s SEND Reform consultation.
The NNPCF response brings together the voices of parent carers from across England, and we are proud that the experiences and views shared by families in West Sussex helped shape this national submission.
📄 Read the full NNPCF response here.
You can also visit the NNPCF website here
Working together through the Sussex Parent Carer Forum Collaborative, we have now sent a joint letter to eight Sussex MPs, making sure the voices and experiences shared by local parent carers are heard by our elected representatives.
The letter has been sent to: MPs: Beccy Cooper MP, Alison Bennett MP, John Milne MP, Tom Rutland MP, Peter Lamb MP, Jess Brown Fuller MP, Mims Davies MP, Andrew Griffith MP.
📄 You can read the full letter here.
As soon as we receive any responses, we’ll share them here and keep you updated on what happens next.
We work to ensure that the experiences and views of parent carers help shape the decisions that affect children and young people with SEND.
If you’re not already a member of WSPCF, you can join us using the links below