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How much do you know about your SEND Advocate?

  • Writer: Sarah
    Sarah
  • May 3
  • 4 min read

Updated: May 5

Learn how to identify reputable SEND advocacy support. Understand key risks, questions to ask, and why professional experience matters when choosing an unregulated SEND advocate.

Advocacy is unregulated, and so the support that you are paying for, or are considering paying for, must be from a reputable source.


Identifying this is becoming increasingly difficult for parents.


Just because someone has managed an appeal for their own child doesn’t mean that they have the knowledge, background, training and experience to run an appeal for another. One SEND child/young person, for example, is not everyone’s SEND child/young person.

Then there are the advocates who state that they ‘won’ at appeal – without sharing that they achieved this by paying someone else to support them. As far as those new to them are concerned, they flew solo and have all the necessary skills to take any SEND case through to a successful outcome. Only those who supported them know the reality of their ‘win’.

Beware also of those who pick and choose who they support, only wanting the straightforward cases, because this increases ‘success’ rates.


IPSEA trained? Yes, this shows a commitment, but this training is available to anyone who wants to buy it – it doesn’t provide experience or strategy, and it doesn’t provide education or safeguarding training.


Why are we concerned? Surely we are busy enough and this could look like being anti any ‘competition’?


Well, yes, we are extremely busy. We have a highly sought-after, highly regarded professional advocacy business. Our results speak for themselves, as does our over 60+ years of SEND and education professional experience.


What does concern us is the amount of work we are doing for parents who are paying twice because they unknowingly used poor advocacy services in the past, who subsequently failed to deliver a quality service.


We are supporting more and more parents who have had extensive amounts of very poor work undertaken elsewhere – extensive and expensive. This is increasingly worrying, because unless you ‘know’, how can you possibly know the quality of the advocacy that you are engaging?


Advocacy is an unregulated business, and that means that there is no one monitoring it or seeking a refund on your behalf if work that has been paid for is not delivered or is of poor quality. Unfortunately, you are at the goodwill of the advocate to provide a refund.

Who wants to know that someone has used the last of their savings or even remortgaged their home to pay for support that wasn’t forthcoming? For a draft check based upon a Q&A proforma? Advocates that just disappear, with radio silence.


Others who charge by the hour – sounds a bargain – until that hourly rate includes every single email, every minute reading through emails, messages, reports. How fast are they getting the work completed? An hourly rate for work which takes one person five hours is not the bargain you thought, when another person would do a more thorough job in half the time.


Things to consider:


  • Does the advocate have a clear business presence that demonstrates reputability? Have they made their experience and qualifications publicly available? Is their Employers’ Liability, Business Insurance, ICO Registration and Limited Company Registration Number publicly available?

  • Are all costs transparent? Do you have a written agreement of what work will be undertaken and for what cost?

  • Do you know the quality of the work before you have paid for any work to be undertaken?

  • Do they offer a choice of ways to pay, including PayPal, to protect your payment?

  • How many years’ experience in education and SEND law do they have? Is this just recent and as a result of having their own child with difficulties, or does their experience go the full scope of EHCPs from birth to 25?

  • Read the testimonials and reviews, ask for verification. Are these genuine, or are they from ‘friends’, who mean well but are not providing full transparency?

  • What is the scope of the reviews? Are they covering all the elements of the business that the advocate states that they cover? Are the reviews up to date? Reviews on websites will have been chosen specifically – Google and Facebook reviews are not.

  • If they have Facebook, what is the ‘tone’ of the support? Professional, with empathy and understanding? Is the language used appropriate? Do they have strict safeguarding and data protection policies to protect their members? Do they allow photos and names of children? Do they allow professionals to be named? Do they encourage you to post anonymously? Can you see daily active moderation with a robust presence of moderators and admins in the group? Are any of the admins and moderators also professional SEND advocates? Do they allow anyone to link anything into the group? Are they qualified in education and SEND law, DBS checked, insured, registered with the ICO as a minimum?

  • If the advocate is stand-alone, what measures do they have in place to continue your case should they or their children become ill, or need their own advocacy support?



We strongly support the above and agree with Ed Duff that advocacy provides parents with a valuable and affordable support system – but that all parents must be fully aware of the pitfalls and where they must be cautious.


It’s because we are so confident in our own business that we are comfortable highlighting this. Be very wary of anyone who is not happy to discuss this.



Empowering Families of Children with SEND Ltd. Certificate of Employers' Liability Insurance https://www.empoweringsendfamilies.co.uk/_files/ugd/5ecd07_6a1b090bf9d148319a88c22b9d1c2042.pdf


Empowering Families of Children with SEND Ltd. Business Insurance https://www.empoweringsendfamilies.co.uk/_files/ugd/5ecd07_0f82c9162bb94ce9b76dadd4f0eb72d1.pdf


Empowering Families of Children with SEND Ltd. Disability Confident Employer https://www.empoweringsendfamilies.co.uk/_files/ugd/5ecd07_a4af12afec8a418d95eaf81d86af7e9f.pdf



Empowering Families of Children with SEND Ltd. VAT number: 473 8777 34


Empowering Families of Children with SEND Ltd. Company Informationhttps://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/15347428


We are, and always will be, Stronger Together. 


You can find testimonials to our bespoke services on our website and Facebook business page - here 


 
 
 
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