‘The Tribunal was the most stressful thing: more stressful than my son’s diagnosis or behaviour’: the experiences of families who go to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDisT)

Abstract

It is more than 10 years since the Special Educational Needs Tribunal was established in 1994 as an independent panel which arbitrates in disputes between parents of children with the label special educational needs and Local Education Authorities (LEAs) in England. In 2002 the Tribunal began hearing claims for disability discrimination and was re‐named the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDisT). Since 1994 over 20,000 appeals have been registered. This article, which forms part of my ongoing Ph.D. thesis ‘Parents as advocates: the experience of parents who register an appeal with SENDisT’, offers an analysis of parents’ Tribunal stories. Here, the key question is what affect the process of going to SENDisT has on the social, emotional and financial well‐being of the family. Through a process of narrative inquiry the aim is to foreground parents’ unheard stories and to reveal their ‘hidden’ experiences.