Listening to Parents: Why Our Education Allies Course-Building Independence in Neurodivergent Young People Matters More Than Ever
- samreen shah
- Jul 10
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 9
For the past 25 years, I’ve worked in education, starting in mainstream schools before moving into a hospital school, where young people faced serious health challenges that had significantly disrupted their learning. Helping them return to education often meant working backwards - understanding why they’d become disconnected in the first place and what trauma they’d experienced alongside their health struggles.
When I later moved on from hospital education, I carried with me a deep understanding of the need for earlier support - long before a child reaches crisis point. It became clear that parents, carers, and professionals need far better access to resources to prevent children from falling out of education altogether.
Recently, through the Education Allies Course: Building Independence in Neurodivergent Young People, we created a space where parents and carers could come together to explore these issues- how to navigate complex education systems, advocate effectively, and strengthen the link between home and school.
This work feels more relevant than ever, as we’re seeing a growing number of young people struggling to attend school. Families are increasingly caught between overstretched education systems and CAMHS, especially with the additional challenges of securing support through Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). The gap between what schools can offer and what children need keeps widening, leaving many families to navigate it alone.
Bev Vincent, an experienced senior education leader, and I developed the course together. We’ve both worked in specialist settings, and as parents of neurodivergent children with EHCPs, we bring personal as well as professional perspectives. Our aim was to offer practical, compassionate support for parents, focused on behaviour, communication, and building confidence through realistic, strengths-based tools.
We know how isolating it can feel to raise a child who struggles to access education. School shapes so much of a child’s life: friendships, self-image, and their sense of belonging. But for many neurodivergent young people, schools simply aren’t set up to meet their needs. This course offers parents both understanding and practical strategies to bridge that gap.
One of the most powerful parts of the course has been hearing parents’ honest experiences - their hopes, exhaustion, and heartbreak. Many shared how difficult it was to help their children cope with school life.
Bullying was a recurring theme. Especially how schools often fail to protect neurodivergent children, who may not have the words to explain what’s happening or the tools to seek help. One parent described how their child was bullied repeatedly, yet the school couldn’t intervene effectively because their child couldn’t communicate the problem. Another parent shared how the school’s leadership dismissed their child’s needs entirely, with a deputy head saying, “Everyone’s on the spectrum these days—we can’t meet every need.”
The emotional toll on parents was another key theme. Many described the exhaustion of navigating systems that seemed stacked against them - doing everything they could to keep their children in education, only to face barriers at every turn. One parent had already removed their child from school, another was in the process, and another child was simply without a school, excluded at the age of five.
Despite their varied situations, all the parents in the group shared the same wish: to see their children thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them. In this group, they found a space where they felt heard, supported, and encouraged.
What became clear is that success isn’t just about academic progress or what’s written in an EHCP. It’s about whether children feel they belong—whether they see themselves as part of their school community.
Something has to change. Without a fundamental shift in how we support families and children with additional needs, the issues we’re seeing with attendance will only grow.
This course highlighted, beyond doubt, that much more research and work is needed to fully understand what parents are facing. Schools, services, and professionals need to collaborate with families, not work around them. It’s not just about adding support- it’s about closing the gap between home and school, so that parents feel empowered, not intimidated, when advocating for their child.
If a parent feels like an outsider, standing at the school gate watching their child struggle in an environment that feels alien, that sense of disconnection deepens for the whole family.
Real change starts by rebuilding those connections between child, parent, and school and restoring the social fabric that allows every child to feel they belong.
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