Mark That Disabled Green Party Guy

Posts

A Parents Guide - The SEND White Paper February 2026

Government's New SEND Plans: A Parent's Guide to What It Really Means for Your Child By Mark Webster – Parent, SEND Advocate, and Green Party Disability Officer Let me start with something we can all agree on: the system we've got right now isn't working. If you've got a child with special educational needs, you know this already. You've lived it. The fighting, the waiting, the forms, the feeling that you're banging your head against a brick wall just to get your kid the help they need. So when the government comes along with a big new plan, promising to fix it all, part of you wants to believe. I get that. I really do. But here's the thing. I've been doing this long enough – both as a parent and as an advocate helping other families – to know that you have to read between the lines. The government's consultation, published on 23rd February 2026, is full of lovely phrases like "inclusion," "experts at hand," and "rewardi...

SEND Canaries Down the Coalmine

‘The System is Collapsing’: A father’s plea to stop failing our neurodivergent children Let’s be clear from the start: there is no sudden “pandemic” of neurodivergent children. We have always been here. The shocking rise in school avoidance isn’t about our kids changing; it’s about an education system that has become intolerable for them. As a father to a neurodivergent son, and as the Green Party’s Disability Officer here in Telford and Wrekin, I hear this truth every single day. From parents, from young people, and from the dedicated education professionals who are trying – and often failing – to hold things together within a broken framework. My own son’s story is a microcosm of the failure . He spent nearly two years in an attached ‘hub’ at a mainstream school. In all that time, he attended just one solitary lesson in the mainstream classroom. One. He was out of his depth, and the other children looked at him like he was an outsider – someone not to be trusted or liked. The same he...

The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Collapsing

The System Isn’t Broken. It’s Collapsing. Families Are Holding It Up With Their Bare Hands. I remember the first time I sat down to apply for an Education, Health and Care Plan. I made a cup of coffee, cleared the kitchen table, and told myself it would take an afternoon. How wrong was I? Three months, four resubmissions, and a tribunal later, we finally had the piece of paper that said, in so many words: yes, your child is entitled to support. That was ten years ago. And according to a new survey from Twinkl, things have only got harder. The survey , which spoke to more than 600 families of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, found that 72% of parents are spending three hours or more every single week on paperwork, appointments, and chasing services. Forty per cent are spending six hours or more. And nearly a quarter—22%—are spending more than eleven hours a week. That’s nearly a day and a half. Every week. Just to access what their children are legal...

A Two Finger Salute to Our Children-The Chilling Plan to Strip Parents Rights

It is with a heart that feels really heavy, and feeling a sense of urgency and dread that I cannot shake, which draws me to put "pen to paper". Recent reports that the government is considering stripping parents of their right to properly appeal decisions about their children’s Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) are nothing short of chilling. Appeals will just be limited to just the process, and not the actual decision, is, as leading experts have called it, a “two-finger salute to the rule of law .” For them to justify this by pointing to a 96-99% parent success rate at Tribunal is an admission of catastrophic failure—not by parents, but by a system that is consistently letting our most vulnerable children down. There are over 600,000 children with EHCPs in England. This isn’t about statistics; it’s about childhoods, potential, and families being pushed to breaking point. Removing enforceable rights doesn’t magically meet needs. It leads to educational exc...

A Betrayal of Trust: Labour’s HMO Plan Fails

As the Green Party’s Disability Officer and a disability housing policy expert, I have reviewed the Council’s proposed borough-wide crackdown on Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) . My findings, detailed in a formal letter to Cabinet Member Councillor Richard Overton, reveal a policy so deeply flawed, so casually cruel in its omission of disabled people, that it demands public condemnation. I am profoundly disappointed, but sadly not surprised, that the Labour-run Cabinet has allowed these proposals to reach public consultation. They should be deeply ashamed. Once again, in a glaring act of institutional thoughtlessness , the housing needs and rights of disabled people have been entirely omitted from their thinking. This isn’t just an oversight; it’s a failure of duty and a betrayal of some of our community’s most vulnerable residents. Let’s be clear: the technical flaws in the evidence base are severe enough to sink the proposal. The report confuses co...

A Wolf in Reformist Clothing

A Wolf in Reformist Clothing: Dissecting the Structural Ableism of Reform UK's SEND "Vision" As a Green Party Disability Officer with three decades of experience, and as a parent who has spent 15 years battling intransigent local authorities for my neurodivergent son, and others, I watched Richard Tice’s press statement with a familiar, corrosive fury. This is not a blueprint for reform. It is a masterclass in the very structural ableism and neoliberal betrayal that has manufactured the SEND crisis. So come with me, and let’s dissect it with the critical eye that it demands. The Insidious Linguistics of Erasure Tice with his core creed: “Nobody's disabled, people are differently abled.” This phrase is not progressive; it is erasure. It is a feel-good, ablest euphemism designed to sanitise the reality of disability in a society structured against us. Disability is not a matter of “different ability”; it is an interaction between impairment and t...

£3 Billion SEND Investment

A Father's Fear: Will the Government's SEND Plan Repeat Past Mistakes? I read the government’s recent £3 billion announcement on SEND with a familiar, heavy feeling. (Edit Feb 2026 the actual figure is a little over £1bn - it was wrapped up in a £3bn package not entirely SEND!). As a dad who has navigated this system with my son, and as someone now working in disability advocacy, I see a glaring gap between well-meaning headlines and the reality on the ground. This isn't just policy to me; it’s my child’s life, and the lives of thousands like him. Our journey is a case study in what works and what fails. For years, my son was stuck in mainstream education, where he was progressively sidelined. He wasn’t “included”; he was just present, often isolated and struggling. The move to a SEND Hub was a lifeline—it boosted his education and confidence dramatically. But even there, the model showed its flaws. When the Hub tried to integrate him into mainstream classes, i...

MP's Descent into Prejudice and Populism

Shaun Davies's Dangerous Demagoguery: An MP's Descent into Prejudice and Populism Shaun Davies, the MP for Telford, stood in the hallowed chamber of the House of Commons this week (8th December 2025) and did not merely ask a question. He launched a calculated, prejudiced, and deeply corrosive attack on some of his most vulnerable constituents. Under the thin veneer of concern for public spending, Davies deployed the classic tools of the demagogue: unverified anecdote, harmful stereotype, and divisive rhetoric. His performance was a masterclass in moral abdication and a grotesque betrayal of the principles he, as a former solicitor, once swore to uphold. Let’s be unequivocally clear: Davies’s intervention on the Motability scheme was not responsible scrutiny. It was a naked appeal to the basest instincts of prejudice, wrapped in the flag and delivered with the smug assurance of a man who believes his title grants him the right to diagnose and disqualify. From Solicit...