I’ve recently returned from Great Ormond Street Hospital, where my daughter has undergone a significant - though relatively non-dramatic - procedure. 

I am broken. I am raw and grumpy and exhausted and unable to concentrate or string a sentence together. 

My daughter is groggy, but has been kicking the football around, refusing to bin her rubbish and insisting on watching the latest reality-TV show until way past her bedtime. So nothing significantly different from usual.

It made me think. This, and the incident where our eldest had to get grommets twice at a young age, will always remain with me. Seeing our children vulnerable is bloody hard.

Support for SEND pupils

And then I got a message from a friend say that - as regulars - they’d been at GOSH today as well. And I thought about the clubs advertised and the play areas, and about how many other parents have to visit hospitals over the country numerous times a year - or a month, or a week.

And I got to thinking about another piece of research I’m doing at the moment, on how we help young people with special educational needs and disabilities to cope in mainstream classrooms. 

This is not to say that SEND requires regular hospital visits.

But I thought about the parallels: the constant worry that your child might struggle as others do not; the fear that others might misinterpret or judge; the worry that your baby could be further hurt and damaged, if not through malice and intent, then through insensitivity, oversight and clumsiness. And I wondered how it must feel to go through this every single day.

I’ve spoken to many parents of SEND students who are over the moon about the support they receive from their schools. I’ve spoken to more who rant and rage alongside the teachers about cuts in funding, shortage of provision, redundancies of invaluable teaching assistants. And I’ve spoken to a very significant number who are at the end of their tether: angry, broken, frustrated and furious.

Checking my privilege

I’m checking my privilege, as I have learned to do when it comes to whiteness. Just as having worked with refugees in multicultural city schools does not exempt me from white privilege, so having only had to get through some grommets and a benign lump means I cannot possibly, fully understand how it is to have a child with SEND. 

I understand the rage and protectiveness I feel when my child comes home hurt or upset from school. But what if that hurt or upset comes from another child who has - possibly unwittingly - failed to understand that my child simply cannot, does not, understand the rules and norms? 

What if my child refuses to go to school because a teacher picked up their stress relief toy and - apparently jokingly - called them a baby? What do you do with the rage and protectiveness, then? Let loose at the parents and the school? Hold it in?

I’m not saying there aren’t some bloody difficult parents out there. I’m not saying that there aren’t cases where, as a hard-working and dedicated teacher or leader, you just feel that you can’t ever win. 

And I’m not saying that there aren’t parents who were so jaded by their own school experience that they cannot and will not trust schools. I’m not saying that some of these parents might not also be parents of children with SEND.

No excuses

What I am saying - having recently spoken to SEND expert Helen Shakespeare, of Aspire Academy Trust, who also has a son with SEND - is that the majority of the students who end up in pupil-referral units have a SEND that has been unmet or undiagnosed. There’s something huge to chew over. 

I’m saying that I know how busy and exhausted teachers are, but there is no excuse not to have read up on a student’s SEND requirements, and to have made reasonable adjustments for them in your classroom. 

If something needs to slip to the bottom of the pile, let it never be the education, health and care plan. There is no excuse not to talk to the teaching assistant (if you’re still lucky enough to have one) - they will often know the students with the greatest needs best. And speak to the Sendco, if you’re struggling to understand why a student with SEND is behaving as they are. 

I am positive that their parents would far rather you admitted you were struggling and sought help than let their child slip to the bottom of your to-do pile.

I don’t know who or what I’d be - how much energy or imagination or independence I would have - if I had to feel by turn the urge to beg, hug, cry on, demand answers from and push out of the way the professionals who were there to help my child today. And that was just one day.

Dr Emma Kell is a secondary teacher in north-east London and author of How to Survive in Teaching. She tweets at @thosethatcan