Our lives in your hands: will the SEN reforms deliver ‘support and aspiration’ for disabled young people?

Currently children with autism are disproportionately bullied and excluded at school. Less than 1 in 4 young people with autism continue their education beyond school and children with a Statement of SEN are more than twice as likely not to be in education, employment or training at 18 than their peers. The Children and Families Bill is a chance to reverse these trends.

The Green Paper published in March 2011 promised ‘support and aspiration’ for all children and young people with SEN and disabilities and their families. But will the Children and Families Bill deliver that promise in practice?

In this report nine families of children and young people with autism set out their experiences of the current SEN system. We ask: ‘what needs to change so that their experience will be better under the proposed new system?’

These stories provide the acid test for the Government’s SEN reforms. They demonstrate where further changes are needed to the Children and Families Bill for it to genuinely deliver ‘support and aspiration’ for all disabled children and young people, for generations to come.