We are originally established in 2002, by teachers wanting to help parents get the right educational support for their SEN children. Originally focused on education, we have developed to become a specialist SEN support charity.
Our primarily volunteer led team is made up of professionals (legal/education and other) and parents.
Our volunteer parent/carers (which make up 90% of our overall team) will almost always have SEN children and have been a previous recipient of our support. This means they will have had experience of navigating the system and securing better educational/health outcomes for their children. They are based across the UK and represent a widely diverse community of SEN parents.
Parent/Carers are at the centre of our services from its design to delivery and review. With our volunteer parents/carers being based in the communities they operate within, through the many trusted relationships they develop with other parents/carers of SEN children, and the wider SEN community they are able to collate direct feedback of the services being accessed and the difference they are making.
The specialist support we provide is unique and not available elsewhere in the UK. There are no other UK wide parent-advocate services like us, that provides a combination of peer support, and specialist advice in the same place.
In a world where lots of information is available online at the press of a button – this should make information more easily available and accessible but our parents/carers tell us that this is not the case.
SOSSEN make up a crucial part of the fabric of UK based SEN support services. We provide a combination of peer support and specialist advice, that is importantly, parent/carer friendly, understandable and accessible.
We hand-hold our parents/carers, initially navigating and setting out possible pathways for them, whilst they take a breath, re-gain their confidence, and then move forward with a clear plan of action.
We hold a range of relationships with the widen SEN supporting community. As well as signposting and linking parents into some of these other services, we also seek to work with them to ensure our services are mutually accessible -This is important as we all need to work together to achieve better outcomes for the parents/carers requiring our support. This includes inviting other organisations to speak at/participate in events for our parent’s carers and taking up invites to speak at their events.
