Support SEND kids

Support send kids charity

We believe every child has the right to be the best version of themselves. Yet without help, SEND children can fall behind, or out of education.

WHO WE ARE

We are a registered charity and these are our objects:

Our charity seeks to use technology to provide free, accurate guidance to those interpreting (and advising on) SEND law and other laws that affect SEND families. We provide a platform to publish interpretations of the law and facilitate answers to questions SEND parents have. Enabling SEND families and professionals to self-serve in law.

Our charity number: 1195895, our registration. Our accounts are filed at companies house and we are registered with HMRC for Gift Aid. Our address is:
2 Church Gardens Leeds LS17 6DH. Support SEND Kids Trading Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Support SEND Kids Limited and is registered for VAT.

WHY ARE WE NEEDED
Because the current system is hard for all parties to navigate and often fails to secure the right outcome, leaving families to manage a legal process they have no experience of. Access to justice becomes an issue for those who cannot afford expensive legal representation.

HOW DO WE DO IT

We publish easy-to-digest guides and answer questions to explain how the law affects any given situation that SEND families face.
We enable families to self-serve and self-advocate in the law
We aim to equip our visitors with the information needed to achieve the right outcome for the child at the heart of the process.

WHAT WE AIM FOR

To create lasting change.
To support activists, lawyers, policy makers and local authorities with data to effect change.
To empower SEND families to help themselves through data and transparency.

Our PLATFORM - Why join and what are the Rules?

We use our technology platform to reach as many people as we can as efficiently as we can. We spend your donations wisely.

Our community is everyone in the SEND space who is engaged in providing help to those who need it to self-serve in the law - to achieve the best outcomes for children. Including:

LAWYERS who want to find and use the law - we have some best in class guides to the relevant law, in multiple formats - its all in Q&A on the site, but also in pdf form as books with links to the questions and the case law. We will also sell these in hard copy form - please go to the books part of the site to access that or order them. If you use our resources regularly for your professional practice please consider making a donation.
PARENTS WHO NEED THE LAW - search the Q&A and see if you can use it - if your question is not already there (and if you start typing in your question our site will show you questions that may be the same as the one you have in a drop down menu) please ask it. Please keep it simple, and a closed question. Please don't include too much personal detail about your children (no one needs it to answer a legal question) and please ask multiple questions if you have them, dont include too much in each one. Multiple questions are fine. Please make it as EASY AS POSSIBLE to answer - so be clear and simple and phrase your question so it can be answered YES / NO. You will get a faster, clearer answer if you do this. These answers are free for you and contributed by our legal community but they are not legal advice, so if you need legal advice you will need to consult a lawyer one on one.
PARENTS WHO HAVE LIVED EXPERIENCE - if you are confident that you know the answer to question on the platform please contribute your knowledge. Please dont share personal data of other people if you do so, but we really value your experience and please feel confident to share it, including adding additional answers and / or commenting on answers already there - this helps keep our content current.
SEND PROFESSIONALS and LAWYERS. Please ask questions of your peers if you need help. If you share or copy our resources please give attribution and if you use our resources regularly for your professional practice please consider making a donation. If you are confident that you can answer a question or add to an answer please do so - more voices are better.
OTHER CHARITIES please send your clients to our site to ask questions about the law. If that is too hard for them, you can ask for them, just set up a profile and ask away!
EVERYONE ELSE - our resources are free and sustained by those who give us donations. You don't need to join as a community member unless you want to ask or answer a question and please access our resources for free. If you share our resources please give attribution and if you use our resources regularly for your professional practice please consider making a donation.

OUR RULES

Be polite.
Be yourself but protect your own and other people's personal data.
Don't make it personal.
Be useful, be helpful, be accurate, be kind.
Our community contributes for free - its is legal guidance and not legal advice.

If you want to complain, please email support@supportsendkids.org.

If you want to applaud, please share us with your community and contribute.

If in doubt please read our Terms and Conditions and our Safeguarding Policy.

governance and origins

Trustees and Directors

Why we set up the Support SEND Kids charity

Set up during lockdown, the charity is four years old.
Has five female trustees today (Rachel, Janvi, Emily, Caroline and Tamara) – all of them are either lawyers and/ or have run legal technology companies. All work full time and most have children with SEND and many of the trustees are also neurodiverse. All the trustees contribute their time for free.
None of the trustees is an education or disability lawyer but we have many lawyers who contribute their knowledge in these areas FOR FREE
The inspiration for the charity was the child of a friend and colleague who could not go to school during lockdown because the government changed the level at which local authorities had to provide support.
The trustees felt that this was a breach of the law and against children’s human rights, so they set out to spread information about what SEND children are entitled to legally in order to access their education.
This is needed because the legal landscape is confusing and full of mis-information. For time-poor parents of SEND kids this is a nightmare.
Support SEND kids is focused on the technical areas of the law for SEN (special educational needs) and D (disability) that other charities do not cover (although there are many amazing SEND charities out there). We sometimes work with other charities to increase the impact of what we do and we collaborate whenever we can. We also try and assist in other areas of the law. Our latest publication is the No-nonsense Nodi guide to the ALN law in Wales.
Our most important collaborations are with the lawyers who provide FREE help.
We use technology to try and scale what we do. We use a platform called the Senate which uses Q&A to try and surface what people want to know and provide answers to those questions which endure, grow and can be added to and every member of the site can access.
We also partner with law firms.