Autism Dadcast

Two SEND parents were inside the government meetings every week for months. Here's what they saw — and what they had to fight to change.

In this episode, Gaz and Andy sit down with Hayley and Aimee from SEND Sanctuary, who were part of the official SEND Improvement Group advising on the white paper. They break down what's actually in it, what nearly made it in that didn't, and why the bits that got quietly removed should worry every SEND family in England.

🔑 Key moments:

• The appeal right that was nearly stripped — and how they got it put back
• Why local authorities got off scot-free while schools carry the load
• The Children and Wellbeing Bill that could force you to keep your child in a failing placement
• The four-tier system explained by people who read it before you did
• The backlash they faced from within the community for being in the room

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#AutismDadcast #SENDWhitePaper #SEND #Autism #SpecialEducationalNeeds #SENDReform #EHCPTribunal #Parenting #Neurodiversity #SENDParents

We talk through the latest SEND reform leaks and why the “EHCPs protected until 2030” line doesn’t feel like protection at all. We get into the DfE promo videos, the staged “mainstream SEND classroom” example, and why it looks like the narrative is being set before the white paper drops.

Key themes:

- EHCPs “protected until 2030” and what that implies after

- Mainstream capacity promises vs real-world needsThe stereotype kit: fidgets, coloured cards, tidy optics

- Safety Valve scheme and the financial incentive to reduce EHCPs

- 90% deficit write-off and the conditions attached

- Reform plans, targets, and the fear of rights being weakened

- Teacher burnout and what happens when support is missing

- The human cost: meltdowns, exclusion, self-harm, families breaking

Zoom out and it all looks like money first, optics second, and families last. You can’t fix systemic failure with a glossy brochure and a box of fidget spinners. If the plan is to push more kids into mainstream, where’s the plan to build specialist places, train staff properly, and stop the constant crisis management.

If you’re living this, you’re not imagining it. You’re not being dramatic. You’re seeing the gap between what they say and what actually happens.

This episode isn’t about us.

It’s about you.

We asked families to share where they’ve been failed by the SEND system. What came back was overwhelming.

Draft EHCPs left open for months.
Support written into plans but never delivered.
Children kept “on roll” with no education.
Operational failures that destroyed trust.
Teenagers saying they’d rather be dead than go back to school.

These aren’t isolated stories.
The patterns are repeating across the country.

With SEND reform on the horizon, we’re asking a simple question:

If the system already isn’t delivering what’s legally required, what happens next?

If you recognise yourself in this episode, you’re not alone.

We’ve had SEND reform info leaked from a source being called credible, and it’s been picked up by The i Paper and the Financial Times.

If it’s real, it suggests a four tier non-statutory system before a child can even qualify for an EHCP, with the EHCP sitting above it all like some golden ticket. That matters because non-statutory support can’t be appealed, and it basically creates a fail-first pathway where kids have to struggle repeatedly before anyone is legally forced to help.

We’re not scaremongering. We’re reading what’s out there and reacting as two dads who’ve lived the EHCP reality and know how bad it already is even with legal rights in place.

We talk about what this could mean for families who’ve fought years for an EHCP, whether existing plans would be protected, and why a shift from legal duty to “discretion” is the bit people aren’t clocking yet. The support doesn’t just change, the power changes.

We also read a message from a family about a five year old who’s non-verbal, in nappies, and placed in mainstream with unsafe outcomes. That’s happening now, under the current framework. So what happens if the right to challenge disappears and the only thing you can appeal is whether the process was followed.

We get into the knock-on effect for teachers, schools, and neurotypical kids too. This isn’t just a SEND issue. If you overload mainstream with needs it can’t meet, it hits everyone, fast.

If this goes sideways, the only move is organisation. Flood MPs. Make it the only thing they can’t ignore.

We met with the Schools Minister this week. We sat with Georgia Gould on a panel for an hour and we asked the questions you sent in.

Georgia suggested coming on the podcast for a long form conversation. We didn't ask for it, she offered. That impressed us because politicians don't usually put themselves in uncomfortable positions like that.

Then we got a message from a parent who had to remortgage their house for £55,000 to get their child the placement they needed. Fifty five thousand pounds. We got another message last week about £30,000. This is what families are doing just to get their kids the support they deserve while there's already a legal framework in place that's supposed to be doing this.

The Discord went live on Saturday. Two days in and people are already helping each other with private assessments, sleep issues, mobility questions, everything. The Stim and Whistle had its first Saturday night lock in and it went off for two and a half hours. Zoe said she was shy and then became the life of the party and got everyone talking.

Thomas went to Sainsburys and scanned his own jelly at the self checkout. A few months ago we couldn't even get him through the doors. Lydia might be gluten intolerant so we're looking at food tolerance tests. Stephen sent a voice note about it after hearing what she eats.

We also talk about the Autism Barbie backlash that wasn't actually a backlash once we heard from a parent whose daughter saw it and said she's just like me. That changed everything for us.

First episode back after Christmas and we're catching up on everything. Andy talks about how lowering expectations made Christmas actually work this year. Gaz shares how Mish built Thomas a cardboard slide and put all his presents at the bottom so he could slide straight into them. Pot of Pringles was one of the presents and that was the win right there.

Lydia's eating fried eggs now. Full runny yolk. She's licking butter off toast and kissing TV screens when steaks appear. New foods are landing and nobody knows why but we're taking the wins.

We get into the reality of being constantly vigilant. Mish nearly opened the car door to put a bag in while the school bus was there and caught herself just in time because that one move could have derailed the whole morning. That's the chess game we're all playing every single day.

The Christmas special at Henry Tudor House went better than expected. People jumped on the mic and shared their stories. Steven came down and blew everyone's minds talking about spellers and non verbal communication. If you haven't watched that clip yet, go find it. Watch it twice.

Wednesday we're meeting with the Schools Minister to talk about the SEND white paper. We've got two questions we can ask and we've taken everything the community sent in and boiled it down. We'll see if this is real consultation or just going through the motions.

Plus we talk about going number one in Zimbabwe, planning ticketed events, building a Discord server, and whether anyone would actually pay to see two blokes from Shropshire talk about autism.

He had the house. The job. The wife. Three kids. On paper, everything was fine.

But by the time his son Mason was three or four, he was falling apart. Barely sleeping. Drinking too much. Finding any excuse to stay out longer. Supermarket runs for things they didn't need. One more round at the pub. Anything to delay walking through the front door.He wasn't a bad dad. He just didn't know how to be one — not for a child like Mason. Non-verbal. ADHD. Severe sleep issues. Smashing up the house. And a system that kept saying no.It took a huge row with his wife for something to shift. And it took a reckless, credit-card-funded trip to Disney World to finally understand what his son actually needed.Because in Florida, something changed. Mason — the kid who couldn't queue, couldn't wait, couldn't regulate — went on a roller coaster and came out a different child. Slept every night. Engaged. Calm. Two weeks of the son they always knew was in there.Then they came home. And within weeks, it all came back.This is what it's like to glimpse what's possible — and then have to figure out how to recreate it in a world that isn't built for your kid.Dan talks about the drinking, the guilt, the isolation, the fear of what happens when they're gone, and the relentless reality of raising a child who will probably need support forever. He also talks about hope. Because there is some. Even when it doesn't feel like it.

A mainstream school put their autistic son in a converted staff room and left him there for two years. They called it support.

Alan and his wife Alex fought for a specialist placement. Now Magnus is in a school with just 15 children total - five per key stage, one SEN teacher, and four teaching assistants. The transformation has been staggering. He's reading full books out loud for the first time in two years. He's responding to "now and next" language. He understands cause and effect in ways he never did before.

But getting here meant watching their son be warehoused in a room where nobody knew how to teach him. The staff were kind. The setting was wrong. And for two years, Magnus was left to his own devices while the system insisted this counted as provision.

This conversation captures what "night and day" actually looks like when an autistic child finally lands in the right environment - and the quiet fury of knowing it should never have taken this long.Alan also talks about the hidden logistics of raising Magnus alongside his neurotypical twin sister Freya. The two of them have vastly different needs, and balancing those needs means separate days out, careful attention management, and accepting that equal doesn't always mean identical.

Christmas in their household requires military-level planning. Presents hidden in locked cupboards and the boot of the car. Paper wrapped around the top of the stairs to buy an extra hour before the kids come down. Freya tears through her gifts in minutes while Magnus opens one, walks into the kitchen, and doesn't return to the rest for hours. They've learned to let him set the pace.

There's also the sibling dynamic that nobody prepares you for. Freya understands Magnus is different. She's fiercely protective of him. When a boy at soft play grabbed Magnus, seven-year-old Freya - who does MMA - Sparta kicked him down the slide. Alan was proud. The other kid was crying. No apologies were offered.

And then there's Anne, the next-door neighbour who deserves a shoutout. Magnus has a habit of bouncing on the trampoline and launching everything he owns over the fence. Once a week, Anne returns a carrier bag full of dinosaurs, Teletubbies, and number blocks. Her greenhouse is still standing. Somehow.

This episode is honest, funny, and full of the details that only parents living this life would recognise. It's a conversation about what support should look like, what it often doesn't, and the small victories that make the hard days worth it.

She spent her childhood in detention. Locked a teacher in a cupboard. Sat in corridors alone while everyone else learned. Missed the last six months of school because nobody wanted her there.She wasn't naughty. She was undiagnosed.Charlie was finally diagnosed autistic at 32 and ADHD three weeks before this conversation. By then, she'd already closed her business to become a full-time carer for her son AJ — non-verbal, tube-fed, PDA profile, sensory processing difficulties. A child the system repeatedly failed until she walked into school and said "help me or this kid's getting taken off me."Before his feeding tube, AJ didn't eat for six weeks. His lips were peeling. He was grey. His ribs were showing. He looked, in her words, dead. And still the support didn't come until she was already broken.Now she's raising three neurodivergent kids — all different, all on the spectrum, all requiring completely different approaches. She's also built Neurospicy, a clothing brand that refuses the puzzle pieces and the sanitised narratives. And she's planning something bigger: a sensory-friendly soft play hub where families like hers can actually exist in public without being stared at.This is what happens when no one catches you. And what it looks like when you decide to build the thing that should have existed all along.

Steven has no autistic children. No family connection. No commercial interest. He just watched a movie and couldn't look away.

In January, he was driving his van on the M1, listening to a documentary called The Spellers. It's about non-verbal autistic children who learned to communicate by pointing to letters on a board. 48 minutes in, he pulled over and cried.

The children in the film all said the same thing: "I'm in here."

Since then, he's read over 120 books written by non-speaking autistics and their parents. He's watched every video he could find. He wakes at 4am to research for three hours before his day starts. He's joined 20+ autism groups. He's created a free resource site called Presume Competence.

And he has one message for parents: the method has a 100% success rate. No one has ever failed.

In this conversation, Steven explains what he's learned — not from professionals, but from the people who've lived it. He talks about optical dyspraxia and why your child might not be able to catch a ball. He explains why screens flicker in ways neurotypical eyes don't notice. He describes the six sensory buckets that overflow into meltdowns. He shares why swimming pools regulate, why routines matter more than we realize, and why time perception might explain everything.

He sat with Paddy Curran, a non-speaker from Birmingham, and had a full conversation through a letterboard. Letter by letter. And he nearly cries just talking about it.

The spelling board is the world's cheapest education device. The entire internet is built from 26 letters. Your child already knows them. They just need a way to show you.

Steven's goal: a spelling practitioner in every town in the UK. Free resources. No cost to learn. Because if your child can point to a letter, they can say anything.

This is what presumed competence looks like.