The never-ending tidal wave of panic and desperation I've witnessed reporting on SEND crisis

I started telling the stories of parents in Somerset who were struggling with getting the education they wanted for their children around the time I became a parent myself.

There is something about the raw hopes and dreams you have for your children that feel like such a given - they’ll grow up, they’ll go to school, perhaps to university and on into independence, a career and maybe a family of their own.

Of course, the reality is not so rose-tinted for many families.

While many people live hugely independent and successful lives while having special educational needs - otherwise known as SEN or SEND - the fact is that others need considerable support.

For children, they need an education tailored to them. The snag? At the moment in Britain, it is often a huge battle for parents to achieve that.

When I first started meeting families whose children were not in education it hit a nerve. These were children with their whole lives ahead of them, but those lives were essentially on pause.

Many of the children I met either didn’t have a school place at all or their parents were keeping them away from school because the place assigned to them was not suitable. This is often because they will have been given a place at a so-called ‘mainstream school’ - like your local primary or secondary - but their needs are too acute for staff there to properly support them.

Children with SEND will often struggle with speech and language, their behaviour, emotions and concentration. There are, of course, specialist schools that are designed to support children who are autistic, for example, but the number of places are limited.

Parents, therefore, have to fight the system. However, the system is complicated, full of jargon and legal complications and they find themselves up against local authorities who will fight them back.

For many the process often ends in court, with a tribunal deciding in favour of one of the parties. Families often win at this stage, but by then so much time has passed with the child having had a broken or very limited education to that point.

I have found the process of reporting on this issue both heartbreaking and incredibly important. It is heartbreaking when a mum tells you her daughter simply is not happy, as Ellie Elliott from Somerton did.

I met with Ellie in August 2023 as her daughter faced the upcoming academic year without a school place. She told me: "She's so, so far behind where you would hope for a child her age to be and it just affects everything in her life. And she's not happy."

In 2022, I met the Barnes family from Highbridge who told me about the impact of large class sizes and how the setup of mainstream schools makes it very hard for her children to learn effectively.

Mum Julie said: "I don’t want to go through my child telling me she’s poorly every day and kicking and screaming on the way to school, then coming home from school and going straight to bed because she just can’t function and she just doesn’t want to be alive at seven years old."

Julie's son Tom said his experience of school had impacted his mental health.

"I’m not very confident at all anymore, compared to what I used to be," he said. "It feels like when you whack yourself with a hammer - you feel constant pain. Every time I go 'oh, yeah, I could probably do that again,' and then I'm like 'no, you can't do that again, not after that'."

I find it equally heartbreaking that since the very first report I put together on the issue, other families are regularly getting in touch with me to say they are in the same position - it is a seemingly never-ending tidal wave of panic and desperation.

I have covered this story for years now, and will continue to, but my work is one example - many colleagues in ITV News have been doing the same in their parts of the country.

Hopefully this collaborative effort will help families long-term to get the change they are calling for - but, most significantly of all, their determination, resilience and pure love for their children is inspiring and deserves our attention.

You can hear the stories of other families impacted by the SEND crisis and watch the full report on Sarah's experience on ITVX.

• If you are affected by this story, support and guidance is available from The National Autistic Society and Action For Children.

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