Simplified Support: EHCP, SEND & EBSA Support

17/08/2026

🌿 DAY 3 OF 30: EBSA

Start the evidence.

When your child is struggling to access school, it can feel like everything becomes about one thing: attendance.

But attendance is only one part of the picture.

Start keeping a simple record of what is actually happening.

📉 Changes in attendance or patterns of absence
📧 Emails and communication with school
🗓️ Meetings and what was agreed
🧩 Support and interventions that have been tried
👩‍⚕️ Professionals involved and what they have said
💚 Most importantly, your child’s own voice and experience

You do not need to create a huge legal bundle overnight.

Just start somewhere.

Keep the emails.
Write down the dates.
Make a note when something is tried and whether it works.
Record what happens before school, during the school day and afterwards.

Because if things do not improve, this information can become incredibly important when you are asking for additional SEN support, an EHC needs assessment, alternative education or challenging the idea that your child is simply “refusing” to attend.

Evidence helps turn “this isn’t working” into a clear picture of what your child actually needs.

And one more thing: evidence is not just what professionals write.

What you see at home matters.
What your child tells you matters.
The impact on your child matters.

Save this one. Tomorrow we’ll keep building from here. 💚

SchoolAttendance SchoolAvoidance ParentCarer AdditionalNeeds SimplifiedSupport

16/08/2026

🌿 DAY 2 OF 30: EBSA

“It’s not school refusal.”

And just as importantly:

“They’re fine once they’re in school” does not mean they’re fine.

Some children can get through the school day while using every bit of energy they have to hold themselves together.

They may comply.
They may smile.
They may complete work.
They may not show obvious distress.

And then they get home.

💥 Meltdowns
😔 Shutdowns
😴 Exhaustion
🤢 Physical symptoms
😰 Anxiety about the next school day
🎭 Masking that nobody in school ever sees

Being physically present in a school building is not the same as being able to access education safely and consistently.

This is why we need to stop judging need purely by what a child looks like during school hours.

Look at the whole child.

Look at what happens before school.

Look at what happens afterwards.

Look at how much it is costing them to keep going.

Because sometimes the child who appears to be “managing” is actually telling us, very clearly, that the current situation is not sustainable.

💚 Tomorrow: we’ll look at what EBSA can actually look like, because it is not always a child standing at the front door refusing to go in.

ADHD SENDParents EHCP EmotionallyBasedSchoolAvoidance SimplifiedSupport

15/08/2026

🌿 DAY 1 OF 30: MY CHILD CAN’T GET THROUGH THE SCHOOL GATE. WHERE DO I START?

If this is where you are right now, you probably have a million things going through your head.

Do I make them go?

Do I keep them home?

Do I speak to the SENCO?

Do I need a GP appointment?

What happens with attendance?

Can I be fined?

Do we need an EHCP?

And meanwhile, your child is struggling and you’re just trying to get through another morning.

So Day 1 is about keeping it simple.

You do not need to solve the whole situation today.

Here’s where I would start 👇

📧 Put it in writing

Tell school what is actually happening. Not just “they won’t attend today.”

Explain what you are seeing.

Are they crying? Unable to get dressed? Feeling sick? Not sleeping? Panicking the night before? Getting all the way to school and then being unable to go through the gate?

That detail matters.

📂 Start keeping evidence

Keep the emails.

Keep attendance records.

Make a note of difficult mornings.

Write down what your child says.

Record what support is offered and, importantly, whether it actually helps.

🏫 Speak to the SENCO

If your child has identified SEND, or you think there may be underlying needs, ask for a conversation about what is happening and what support can be put in place.

💚 Listen to your child

They might not be able to tell you exactly why school suddenly feels impossible.

That’s okay.

Don’t turn it into an interrogation.

Start noticing patterns instead.

Certain days?

Lessons?

People?

Transitions?

Noise?

Breaktimes?

The journey?

Sunday evenings?

After school?

And finally, try to move the conversation away from:

“How do we make them go to school?”

towards:

“What is making school so difficult for them to access?”

Because getting through the school gate isn’t really the starting point.

Understanding why they can’t is.

Tomorrow, Day 2:

🌿 It’s not “school refusal”. Let’s talk about why the language we use matters.

💚 Save this post if you’re at the beginning of this journey.

14/08/2026

🌿 30 DAYS OF EBSA STARTS TOMORROW

Tomorrow I’m starting a 30 Days of EBSA series 💚

For the next 30 days I’m going to talk about Emotionally Based School Avoidance in a really practical way.

Not just what EBSA is.

But what you can actually do when your child is struggling to get into school, attendance is dropping, you’re being told there isn’t enough evidence, or you’re starting to wonder whether you need to think about SEN Support, an EHCP, Section 19 or EOTAS.

Because I hear the same things all the time:

🏫 “School says there’s no evidence.”

📉 “Their attendance is getting worse.”

😔 “They’re fine once they get into school.”

🎭 “Nobody sees what we see at home.”

📧 “I keep emailing but nothing changes.”

⚖️ “I think they need an EHCP, but I don’t know where to start.”

💷 “I’m being threatened with fines.”

🏠 “My child simply cannot get through the school door.”

And somewhere in the middle of all of this is a child who is struggling and a parent trying to work out what to do next.

So over the next 30 days, I’m going to break it down.

We’ll talk about EBSA, masking, attendance, evidence, school meetings, SEN Support, EHCPs, Section 19, EOTAS and the practical steps you can take when you feel like you’re going round in circles.

No overcomplicating it.

No endless jargon.

Just useful information and clear next steps.

💚 Day 1 starts tomorrow.

Follow along, save the posts you need and share them with another parent who might find them helpful.

03/08/2026

We’ve been a little quieter on social media recently.

Not because we haven’t cared. Life has just been busy, and it’s given me time to reflect.

As we’re in the middle of the summer holidays, I’ve been seeing so many parents talking about the challenge of juggling work, childcare and trying to keep everyone entertained for six weeks.

It isn’t easy.

And it reminded me of a time when my child couldn’t attend school because of Emotionally Based School Avoidance.

At the time, I was a single parent.

There was no suitable education. No alternative provision. No childcare that could safely meet my child’s needs.

But the bills didn’t stop. The mortgage still needed paying. I still needed to work.

So what was I supposed to do?

Leave my child at home alone?

Give up the career I’d worked so hard to build?

Reduce my income and hope we could manage?

I honestly don’t know what people think the answer is.

Before I finish, I just want to say this.

I take my hat off to every parent trying to juggle work, children and family life over the summer holidays. Whether you’re a mum, a dad, a single parent, a parent carer or somewhere in between, it’s hard. Really hard.

But for some families, this isn’t just six weeks.

This is every week of the year.

There isn’t a countdown to September. There isn’t a point where everything goes back to normal.

So when people ask why some parent carers reduce their hours, leave work or need financial support, I wish they understood what comes before that decision.

Most parents don’t stop working because they want to.

They stop because, sometimes, there simply isn’t another option.

So I’ll leave you with one question.

What would you do if every day felt like the six-week summer holidays… with no end in sight?

07/07/2026

Big news.

Simplified Support is working with the Children’s Commissioner’s Office to help make sure children with SEND and neurodivergent children can take part in The Big Future survey.

We have created a child-friendly version to make the questions easier to understand, easier to access, and easier for children to complete with support if they need it.

This survey is about children.

Not systems.
Not paperwork.
Not adults speaking for them.

It is about what children find hard, what matters to them, what they need, and what they want the future to look like.

The Children’s Commissioner wants to hear from one million children and young people.

And we really want the SEND community to be part of that.

Because children with SEND are so often discussed in meetings, written about in reports, assessed, reviewed and measured.

But this is a chance for them to be heard directly.

Their worries.
Their experiences.
Their ideas.
Their hopes.
Their voices.

We need as many SEND children and young people as possible to complete this, so their experiences are part of the national picture.

Please share this with families, schools, parent carer forums, SEND teams, youth groups, professionals and anyone supporting children and young people.

The Big Future survey:

https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/the-big-future/

Child-friendly version created by Simplified Support:

https://simplifiedsupport.software/the-big-future

Let’s make sure SEND voices are not missing from one million children’s voices.

An accessible way for any UK child to take part in the Children's Commissioner campaign - fully anonymously.

04/07/2026

Last night, a family member sent me this ITV News clip.

A few minutes later, she sent me a voice note.

She was crying.

She told me she’d been physically sick after watching it.

This is a family whose child now has the right support in place.

But what I heard wasn’t about today.

It was everything coming back.

The years of fighting.

The sleepless nights.

The fear.

The feeling that nobody was listening.

It’s really hard to put into words how I feel about this.

Not because I don’t know what I think, but because I know exactly what this will bring up for so many families.

I’m one of those parents.

And every week I hear from others.

The mum who leaves me a voice note at 2am because she can’t sleep.

The dad who cries on the phone at 10pm because he thinks he’s failed his child.

Parents who tell me they don’t recognise themselves anymore because they’ve spent years fighting for something that should never have been a fight in the first place.

That’s why this hits so hard.

If what has been reported is true, families have every right to be angry.

Not because of one news report.

Because for many, it reflects exactly how their journey has felt.

I also need to say something else.

Over the years I’ve met people in local authorities and schools whose decisions I simply cannot understand. Decisions I’m challenging right now because, in my view, they don’t reflect the evidence and they don’t put the child first.

That is true.

I’ve also met people in those very same organisations who care deeply. People who’ve picked up the phone when they didn’t have to. People who’ve fought for children behind the scenes. People who’ve stayed late. People who’ve eventually walked away from their jobs because they felt they could no longer make the difference they wanted to make.

That is true as well.

Those two things can exist at the same time.

That’s why I don’t want this to become parents versus local authorities.

Because once it becomes “us and them”, we stop talking about what really matters.

The children.

If these allegations are true, there has to be accountability.

Not because anyone wants revenge.

Because families deserve honesty.

They deserve to know they were heard.

They deserve to know that lessons will be learned.

And they deserve confidence that no other family will have to carry the same trauma they’ve carried.

I genuinely hope local authorities respond.

Not with defensiveness.

Not with silence.

But by recognising why this has affected so many families so deeply, by listening, and by showing a commitment to doing better where improvement is needed.

That’s how trust starts to come back.

Behind every headline is a child.

Behind every child is a family.

Let’s make sure they stay at the centre of this conversation.

Jess & Nic 💙

02/07/2026

I have seen a lot of discussion today about the possibility of teacher strike action and the impact this could have on working parents and children’s education.

Those concerns are real.

Teachers deserve fair pay. Schools need proper funding. Staff cannot keep holding together an overstretched system through goodwill and exhaustion.

This is not about blaming teachers.

But I cannot stop thinking about the hundreds of thousands of children who are already missing education every single day.

Not because of a strike.

Because the support, provision or environment they need simply is not there.

Around 1.34 million children in England were persistently absent from school last year.

Around 176,000 missed at least half of their education.

That is not one or two disrupted days.

That is weeks, months and, for some children, years.

When school closures affect the workforce, it becomes national news.

We immediately ask what working parents will do, who will look after the children and what impact the lost education will have.

Those are completely valid questions.

But where is that same urgency for the families already living this every day?

Where is the national conversation about parents trying to keep their jobs while caring for a child who cannot access school?

Where is the same outrage for children waiting for assessments, EHCPs, mental health support, specialist placements or provision that actually meets their needs?

When disabled, neurodivergent and distressed children lose weeks, months or years of education, it is too often treated as an attendance problem.

A letter is sent.

A meeting is arranged.

Targets are set.

Warnings are issued.

Sometimes parents are threatened with fines or prosecution.

Yet the child is still not receiving an education.

That contradiction needs saying out loud.

Are we genuinely concerned about children losing education?

Or does it only become a national crisis when their absence disrupts the working lives of adults?

Many of these children are not refusing education.

They are unable to access the education currently being offered to them.

There is a difference.

They may be overwhelmed, frightened, exhausted from masking or already at breaking point.

Many have been telling adults for months that they are not coping.

Their families are trying to work, attend meetings, chase support, answer emails and somehow hold everything together.

We cannot be outraged at the possibility of children missing a day or two because of strike action while quietly accepting that hundreds of thousands of children are already losing huge parts of their education.

Their lost days matter too.

The real scandal is not only that schools may close for a day.

It is that, for far too many children, the education system has already been closed for far too long.

Jess & Nic 🥰🥰

29/06/2026

One million children are seeking help.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Every number in that headline is a child. A family. A story.

But we also need to be careful about the language we use.

Not every autistic child is seeking help because they are autistic.

Many are seeking help because the environments around them are not meeting their needs.

We are seeing increasing numbers of children experiencing overwhelming anxiety, emotional distress and school based difficulties. Too often, the response is to ask, “What’s wrong with this child?” rather than, “What is this child telling us?”

As someone who works with families every day, I rarely meet parents who haven’t tried absolutely everything before asking for help.

Behind this headline are children masking all day before falling apart at home. Children who desperately want to learn but can’t access school safely. Parents exhausted from fighting for support that should never have required a battle.

We don’t solve this crisis simply by increasing referrals.

We solve it by recognising needs earlier, listening to families, creating genuinely inclusive schools, and ensuring the right support is available before children reach crisis point.

Every statistic has a name.

Every family deserves to be heard.💙💙💙💙💙

Jess & Nic

23/06/2026

Today I had the privilege of supporting and representing a family at Tribunal.

And today we got one of those moments that makes all the late nights, phone calls, evidence gathering and emotional investment worth it.

During the Tribunal, agreement was reached that the family’s preferred placement would be accepted by the Local Authority.

I always have mixed feelings with outcomes like this. I’m genuinely so happy for the family… but I also wish families didn’t have to get all the way to Tribunal to feel heard in the first place.

Still, seeing the relief on a parent’s face when they realise they’ve been listened to and their child’s needs have finally been recognised is something I never take for granted.

A lot of my work sits around emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA) and helping families build the evidence picture properly. Looking beyond attendance figures and understanding what’s actually driving the distress. Pulling together lived experience, professional reports, patterns over time and helping families tell their child’s story clearly.

It’s a real privilege to do this work and to be trusted with such important parts of people’s lives.

Because I work one to one and keep numbers manageable, I do now have space to take on one new Tribunal family.

If you’re in the middle of an appeal, placement issues, EBSA, refusal to assess, or you just don’t know where to start, my inbox is open.

Also… hope everyone’s surviving this heat today ☀️

Jess 💙