27th March 2026 • My Family Our Needs

The new report from charity IPSEA has revealed the consistent inequalities in how children and young people from under-served communities access special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support and legal advice.

The report named ‘Breaking barriers: addressing inequalities and improving access to SEND legal advice for under-served communities’, explores the barriers that families face when trying to access SEND provision and understand their legal rights.

The research from IPSEA draws on work carried out between July 2024 and May 2025, including interviews with advice providers, focus groups with families and a review of existing literature.

The report examines the experiences of several groups facing additional barriers to accessing SEND support and legal advice, including:

  • Families with English as an additional language (EAL).
  • Care-experienced children including unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
  • Children from asylum-seeking, refugee and unsettled immigration status families.
  • Detained children and those involved in the youth justice system.
  • Romany, Roma and Irish Traveller communities.
  • Black and global majority children and young people.

The report highlights how overlapping factors such as poverty, migration, racism, care experience, detention and language barriers shape families’ abilities to access the support they need. Many families reported needing significant persistence, confidence and knowledge of the system in order to secure the support they need.

These challenges will be familiar to many working in SEND, however the research shows how they are intensified for families who are already marginalised, and for whom the consequences of delay or exclusion can be particularly severe.

The report identified the following four key areas of concern:

  • Early intervention is not early enough.
  • Parents’ concerns are frequently dismissed, meaning support is often delayed until unmet needs escalate into crisis.
  • Co-production with families is not a reality in practice.
  • Failures in SEND provision have wide-reaching impacts, including systems that struggle to adapt to changes in families’ circumstances and, in some cases, discriminatory practices.

Madeleine Cassidy, Chief Executive at IPSEA, said, ‘IPSEA’s work is rooted in a simple principle: that children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities have legal rights, and those rights should be realised in practice.

‘Families who face the greatest barriers to accessing SEND support are often those least able to access legal advice about their rights. This means children and young people are at greater risk of missing out on the education they are legally entitled to.

‘This research highlights how overlapping factors such as poverty, migration, racism, care experience, detention and language barriers can shape families’ access to support. It also underlines the importance of early, accurate information about SEND rights, the role of trusted community organisations and approaches that recognise the wider pressures families face.

‘The experiences shared though this research show how SEND law and policy are lived out in complex and unequal contexts. As the government considers reforms to the SEND system, it is vital that changes work for all children and families.

‘Following the publication of this report, our focus will be on using its findings and recommendations to strengthen our services and further develop our outreach approach, so that families and young people from under-served communities can more easily access timely and appropriate SEND advice and support.’

Catherine Hills, Director of A Fairer Future – Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, said, ‘This research highlights the significant barriers faced by those most in need, and strengthens IPSEA’s ability to take a proactive approach to ensuring that children and families receive the support to which they are entitled.’

You can read the full report at www.ipsea.org.uk/news/breaking-barriers-report

In other news, Award-winning publisher Every Cherry and Hasbro, a leading games, IP and toy company, have announced the upcoming release of the first Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) symbolised Peppa Pig book.