My daughters were so let down I’ve set up a support group for other dads of SEND kids

42-year-old Ian Ball and his wife Catherine from Great Ecclestone have two daughters aged 11 and 17 with autism along with other SEND needs.

Triggered by their own parental experiences, Ian and his friend Callum Galbraith -who has two sons aged six and seven with autism, ADHD and learning difficulties- have set up a Facebook group for dads, granddads, step-dads and male carers of children with SEND which offers “a safe space for guys to unload, vent, share issues and find some support, whether by finding a sympathetic ear, or speaking to people with shared experiences.”

Explaining why a support group for male carers is particularly needed, Ian, who works as an insurance consultor, said: "One of the things that we've realized is a lot of these groups are predominantly for the mums of the children and there's still a massive stigma attached to men's mental health.

“You have the phrases grow a pair and man up when someone's finding something tough, suggesting the masculine role is to push through and crack on. Society's views are changing somewhat and I want to be part of that, I want to bring people together and break down those barriers.

“Especially coming up to Christmas -which can be a really difficult time for anyone's mental health, but is even harder if you have children with special needs- we just got chatting about how there wasn’t anything out there specifically for the dads and we both said ‘let's get something going’.”

Starting off as a Facebook group, Ian and Callum hope to develop it into a bigger organisation with localised or national meetups if that’s what people want - “we just want to be the facilitators of a safe space for them, we’ll do whatever suits them best”, Ian added.

Discussing how being the dad of children with SEND has affected his mental health, Ian said: “I've always felt that the role of a husband and dad in a family unit is to be the anchor point, the strong and stable role model. There's been times where I've been the sole breadwinner to allow Catherine to be the carer for both of our children but with that comes significant strain.

“Work commitments mean my attention can't always be on the home environment so that responsibility falls almost solely on Catherine. I then witness how much of an impact that has on her, and how much the girls are struggling but I don't have the time capacity to be both the sole breadwinner and also the supportive husband and father. That then has an impact on me as there are times where I've really struggled to have that balance but I feel I can't burden Catherine with my issues because I know that Catherine’s struggling and Catherine's been the one that's dedicated her time to supporting the girls and their struggles. So you get to a point where you internalize the issues and don't find a way of dealing with it.”

Thankfully through Ian’s work, he was able to access counselling but it’s exactly because he knows that’s not available to everybody, that he wanted to set up the group.

He added: “The feedback has been really good with people saying there used to be something out there that people had access to, but it was shut down and they hadn’t known where else to seek advice until now.”

Currently it is Lancashire County Council’s duty to provide extra support for SEND pupils across the county but Ian says it does not do anything to support their parents.

In fact, Ian adds that the local authority adds to the stress on parents “because they make the process of arranging for an Early Health and Care Plan so hard and so challenging” which is what happened with both his daughters.

Ian elaborated: “The council’s default position is say no and hope that a parent will then go away. The first stage of applying for an EHCP is you have to get them to agree to an assessment, but they'll push back and say that they're not going to. You have to then go to tribunal to get it overturned but it’s at least a year before you can get heard at a tribunal. If you get them to agree to start the tribunal process, they'll challenge you to get supporting medical evidence, and then suggest that the medical professional hasn't got a right to have the opinion they've got regarding your child. There's meant to be a legal framework of timescales, and they'll just miss every single one; they'll not give you any indication of when things have been completed and they say things are going to happen, but they don't.

“For example, with our youngest, we went through the complaints process, and they even took us to the Local Ombudsman but it hasn't changed anything. The Court were issuing court instructions to the local authority, and the local authority were disregarding the tribunal orders, and we were flagging this back to the tribunal, who just issued another tribunal order, and even that was ignored.

“They don't come across as having the appreciation of what impact that then has on a child. If that child is now in an education environment that's just wholly unsuitable for them, it puts extra pressure, anxiety, sensory overload onto that child which then induces trauma. So our eldest, for example, was diagnosed with PTSD following the failings of a mainstream school and then that obviously has an impact on the rest of the family.

“It also could mean the child comes out of formal education and is instead reliant on parents doing their best to home educate and people's ability to home educate varies.You can apply for things like private assessments, which can cost 1000s of pounds, but that’s added financial pressure on a family so it's all just a kind of a melting pot of horrible experiences.

“The vast majority of tribunals are also overturned in the parents favor. So if you go all the way through this and the local authority pushback doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, it just feels like they’re putting parents through a treadmill process that's really demoralizing and straining on families.”

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County Councillor Jayne Rear, cabinet member for Education and Skills, Lancashire County Council, said: "Nationally, there is a huge increase in the number of children seeking Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support along with an ever-increasing demand for education, Health and Care Plans (ECHPs).

"We recognise the unique challenges faced by parents of children SEND and seek to support mums and dads, who, like us, want to see their children thrive.

"Parents in Lancashire can get information, advice and support from our Information, Advice and Support (IAS) Service.

"There is also a range of other organisations who provide free information, advice and support such as helplines, email, face-to-face support, legal advice and tribunal representation."

The group link is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3100788930061466/?ref=share