For many SEND parents, the trauma doesn't come from one big moment. It comes from years of paper cuts – small wounds that build and build until you realise how damaged you have become.

Today, Dale is joined by Nicola Hughes, psychotherapist, SEND parent, and author to discuss the trauma that so many parents face when battling the SEND system.

Nicola brings both professional expertise and deeply personal experience to this conversation. As a parent of two autistic children, she has fought for EHCPs, sat through tribunal, given up work to advocate for her children, and spent years sending emails into what often felt like silence.

Dale and Nicola explore the concept of systems-generated trauma – the harm caused not by individual bad actors, but by the policies, templated letters, and standardised processes that leave parents feeling dismissed, gaslit, and invisible. They discuss what it looks like when a school genuinely understands the trauma a parent brings with them and why statistics – OFSTED ratings, EHCP timescales, attendance figures – have become more important than the children they were designed to measure.

"I'm pretty sure nobody understands the depth of despair that some parents often go through."

— Nicola Hughes

An honest, moving, and at times quietly devastating conversation – essential listening for every professional who works with SEND families.

Nicola Hughes is a psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer, and an accredited member of the BACP. She is known for her warm, accessible and deeply human approach to therapeutic work, specialising in supporting grieving, neurodivergent and traumatised families. She draws on more than fifteen years of experience across bereavement services, universities, schools and the NHS.

Nicola runs a private practice offering individual therapy, couples counselling, creative supervision and outdoor sessions from her much-loved Caravan Clinic in Pudsey. Her work blends creativity, nature-based practice and gentle, trauma-aware support to help people feel heard and supported. Alongside her clinical work, she develops courses and resources for counsellors and advocates for the equitable treatment of SEN families.

Her book, SENT: The Emails I Sent, the Silence That Followed, is part memoir, part guide and part survival companion, exploring Parent Carer Trauma and the hidden emotional toll of fighting for SEND support.

Book SENT: The Emails I Sent, the Silence That Followed is part memoir, part guide and part survival companion, exploring Parent Carer Trauma and the hidden emotional toll of fighting for SEND support.

https://amzn.eu/d/0hatiPIt

• B Squared Website – www.bsquared.co.uk
• Meeting with Dale to find out about B Squared - https://calendly.com/b-squared-team/overview-of-b-squared-sendcast
• Email Dale – dale@bsquared.co.uk
• Subscribe to the SENDcast - https://www.thesendcast.com/subscribe

We have been involved with Special Educational Needs for over 25 years, helping show the small steps of progress pupils with SEND make. B Squared has worked with thousands of schools, we understand the challenges professionals working in SEND face. We wanted a way to support these hardworking professionals - which is why we launched The SENDcast! Find out more about how B Squared can help improve assessment for pupils with SEND in your school.

42% of the non-attendance of autistic children at school is school refusal. And that figure is almost identical across countries that punish non-attendance and countries that respond to it with support. So what does that tell us?

Dr Joanna Grace, sensory engagement and inclusion specialist, TEDx speaker, PhD academic, author, and founder of The Sensory Projects, returns to the studio to discuss the links and patterns between being neurodivergent and school non-attendance.

Together, they explore why:

– the language we use – school refusal, school avoidance – places the problem in the child rather than in the environment.

– the punitive approach to attendance – fines, threats, exclusions from school trips – has no long-term effect and actively causes harm.

– 100% attendance is a measure of whether a school is accessible, not a method of making it so.

– autistic and neurodivergent children who do attend school are not necessarily okay – and why those who achieve 100% attendance can still be profoundly harmed by the experience.

– engagement and belonging must come before attendance – not the other way around.

– the education system, designed for the workforce of the Industrial Revolution, is not designed for the children sitting in it today.

"There's way more flexibility in the adult world than there is in any school."

— Dr Joanna Grace

Joanna Grace is a sensory engagement and inclusion specialist, doctoral researcher, author, trainer, TEDx speaker and Founder of The Sensory Projects. She has worked with people with learning disabilities and neurodivergent conditions aged from 0–100 in a range of settings and contexts.

Through all she does Joanna is seeking to contribute to a future where people are understood in spite of their differences.

• B Squared Website – www.bsquared.co.uk
• Meeting with Dale to find out about B Squared - https://calendly.com/b-squared-team/overview-of-b-squared-sendcast
• Email Dale – dale@bsquared.co.uk
• Subscribe to the SENDcast - https://www.thesendcast.com/subscribe

We have been involved with Special Educational Needs for over 25 years, helping show the small steps of progress pupils with SEND make. B Squared has worked with thousands of schools, we understand the challenges professionals working in SEND face. We wanted a way to support these hardworking professionals - which is why we launched The SENDcast! Find out more about how B Squared can help improve assessment for pupils with SEND in your school.