Here is the fact that changes the mood of the whole journey: expert help with the SEND system exists, and the parts you are most likely to need cost nothing. England has a layer of independent organisations whose whole purpose is to sit on your side of the table, and most parents discover them one crisis at a time, if at all. This is the map, in one place, so you know every door before you need it, and so you know which of them have a charge on the other side.
You are in enormous company. Over 1.8 million pupils in England have special educational needs, 1,858,327 at the January 2026 school census, about 20.8% of all pupils and up 91,400 (5.2%) in a single year (DfE, Special educational needs in England, published 11 June 2026). A whole ecosystem of support has grown up around those families, and it is stronger than most people expect.
The map at a glance
| Who | What they do | When to call |
|---|---|---|
| SENDIASS, your local information, advice and support service | Advice and information about SEN, arranged by every Local Authority under a legal duty | First stop for local questions: meetings, letters, processes, how things work in your area |
| IPSEA | Free, independent, legally based SEND advice for England, with free guides and template letters | When you need to know exactly what the law says, or you are preparing a challenge |
| SOS!SEN | Free term-time helpline and walk-in advice centres, with paid one-to-one advice and a paid document service alongside them | When you want hands-on help preparing reviews, appeals or tribunal documents |
| Contact | The UK-wide charity for families with disabled children | When the whole of family life needs support, not just the school part |
| Your Local Offer, disagreement resolution, mediation, and the Ombudsman | Statutory routes that cost you nothing | When you need local information, a way to settle a dispute, or a complaint about how you have been treated |
| SEN Help (us) | Free course, quiz, reform briefing and directory | When you want to understand the system, stay organised and know your next step |
Now the detail, so you know which door to knock on first.
SENDIASS: the service every Local Authority must arrange
This one is not a favour; it is a duty. Under section 32 of the Children and Families Act 2014, every Local Authority “must arrange for… the parents of children for whom it is responsible, to be provided with advice and information” about special educational needs, and the same duty covers children and young people themselves. Section 32(2) adds a matching duty about disability, covering children and young people in the area who have a disability, and their parents. In practice those duties are delivered through your local SEND Information, Advice and Support Service, usually shortened to SENDIASS.
Paragraph 2.8 of the SEND Code of Practice sets out the principles a Local Authority should take into account when designing these services. The information, advice and support “should be impartial and provided at arm’s length from the local authority and CCGs”, and it “should be free, accurate, confidential and in formats which are accessible and responsive to the needs of users”. The Minimum Standards for SEND Information, Advice and Support Services, published by the Council for Disabled Children, say the same thing in their own words: the service should be “an arm’s length, confidential, dedicated and easily identifiable service, separate from the LA”.
The part parents most often miss is paragraph 2.19 of the Code. It says the service should include “individual casework and representation for those who need it”, including “support in attending meetings, contributing to assessments and reviews”, and “help when things go wrong”, which should include “supporting children, young people and parents in managing mediation, appeals to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability), exclusions and complaints on matters related to SEN and disability”. Both 2.8 and 2.19 are written as “should”, not “must”, so what is actually on offer varies from area to area. That is exactly why it is worth asking for by name. To find yours, search “SENDIASS” together with your Local Authority’s name.
IPSEA: what the law actually requires
IPSEA, the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice, is a charity providing free, independent, legally based advice on the SEND system in England. Parents turn to IPSEA when the question is legal: what the Local Authority must do, what an EHC plan should contain, how mediation and appeals work. Its website carries free guides and template letters for almost every situation, and its advice services, which include the Advice Line, the Tribunal Helpline, the Call-in Helpline and the Information Service, are free.
Two things are worth knowing before you call. First, deeper help with an appeal does exist, but it is not open access. IPSEA says its Tribunal Support Service “is only available by referral after speaking with an adviser on our Tribunal Helpline, who will assess whether this level of support is required”, and that what it can offer depends on “your circumstances and our availability”. The way in is a Tribunal Helpline appointment, and a referral is a possible outcome of that call rather than something you can request directly. Second, IPSEA states that “if you are receiving ongoing support from a solicitor or other advocate then regrettably IPSEA is unable to give you advice”, which it explains is to avoid conflicting advice and to keep the helpline free for parents who have no other support.
IPSEA also trains parents and professionals in SEND law, and that part is not free: parent and carer courses are currently priced at £79 a place, with subsidised sessions run for families who cannot meet the full cost. Current services, training dates and booking details live at ipsea.org.uk.
SOS!SEN: hands-on help when you are in the thick of it
SOS!SEN describes itself as an independent registered charity started in 2002, helping parents secure the right educational support for children and young people with SEND. Two of its services carry no charge. Its helpline is “a free, term-time, national helpline, staffed by a team of volunteers”, and its walk-in advice centres are free too, also running in term time, with pre-registration rather than an appointment. Because both are term-time only, check the dates before you plan around them. At the time of writing the helpline is closed for the summer and reopens on Monday 7 September 2026.
The rest of what SOS!SEN offers is charged, and its own services page is direct about it: “There is no charge for our helpline or walk-in advice centres.” One-to-one advice appointments are priced by the hour, currently £65 with a volunteer adviser, £125 with a legal adviser and £175 with a SEN solicitor. Recorded webinars are sold individually, mostly between £5 and £40. The document service, which checks the quality of a draft EHC plan and drafts parental grounds of appeal and other tribunal documents, is priced per document, from £145 for an EHC plan analysis up to £600 for grounds of appeal about the contents of a plan. That service also opens and closes with capacity: its page carried a notice dated 6 July 2026 saying it was “at capacity and unable to take on new document service cases at the moment”, so check before you count on it. SOS!SEN adds that it never wants cost to be a barrier and asks anyone in financial difficulty to get in touch.
Two boundaries to keep in mind. SOS!SEN does not act as your solicitor: its terms say “we do not act as solicitors/lawyers or legal representatives on the user’s behalf”. And, like IPSEA, it will not double up on support you already have, saying that “if you are already receiving support from a solicitor, legal adviser, charity or advocate in relation to the issues about which you are seeking advice… we regret that we are unable to help”. Details and current services are at sossen.org.uk.
Contact: for the whole family, not just the school file
Contact calls itself “the charity for families with disabled children”, and it works UK-wide with every shape and size of family. Its free helpline supports parents and carers of disabled children from birth to 25 on questions that reach well beyond education, including medical conditions, social care and family life. It offers Listening Ear appointments, one-to-one calls for parents who need emotional support, runs workshops and events where you can meet families in the same boat, and campaigns nationally on the inequalities families with disabled children face. Start at contact.org.uk.
Three statutory routes that cost you nothing
The charities above are not the whole map. Three routes are built into the law itself, and none of them asks you for money.
- Your Local Offer. Under section 30 of the Children and Families Act 2014, every Local Authority must publish what it expects to be available for children and young people with SEN or a disability. Schedule 2 to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 sets out what has to be in it, including sources of information, advice and support in the area, how to request an EHC needs assessment, the procedures for making a complaint, and the arrangements for mediation and for resolving disagreements. Paragraph 2.3 of the Code adds that the Local Offer must include details of how information, advice and support can be accessed and how it is resourced.
- Disagreement resolution and mediation. Paragraph 11.6 of the Code says Local Authorities “must make disagreement resolution services available to parents and young people”, that using them is voluntary, and that the service must be independent of the Local Authority. Paragraph 11.10 confirms that choosing not to use it has no effect on your right to appeal. Mediation is the separate route under sections 51 to 57 of the Children and Families Act 2014, and it is worth understanding because it gates most appeals: paragraphs 11.18 and 11.23 say you may register an appeal only after contacting an independent mediation adviser and obtaining a certificate. The exception, at paragraph 11.24, is an appeal solely about the name or type of school, college or institution named in the plan, or the fact that none is named. Either way the money side is settled: paragraph 11.26 states that “parents or young people do not have to pay for the mediation session(s)”, and regulation 41 of the 2014 Regulations puts your travel, registered childcare and loss of earnings, up to set limits, on the body that arranges the mediation.
- The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. Free to use, and it matters most for a problem the SEND Tribunal cannot solve. The Ombudsman’s special educational needs fact sheet explains that the law generally prevents it from investigating an issue that carries a right of appeal to the SEND Tribunal, but that it can look at delay within the EHC needs assessment and review process, and at a Local Authority’s failure to ensure a child receives the provision set out in their EHC plan. So if the plan is right on paper and the support is simply not happening, that is an Ombudsman complaint, not a tribunal appeal.
Where SEN Help fits on the map
Our lane is understanding and organisation: the layer that makes every other call on this page shorter and more effective, because you arrive knowing what to ask. Most of what we make is free, and where we charge, we show the price.
- SCOPE: our free course on the whole SEND journey, 38 short lessons across 7 modules, from first concerns through to tribunal, with template letters where they help.
- The SEND Rights Quiz: free, about two minutes, and a clear read on where you stand and what to do next.
- The 2026 SEND Briefing: a free reference on what the Government’s reform plans actually say and when anything would change, checked against the primary documents.
- Find an Expert: our directory of SEND professionals, free to search, being assembled carefully rather than quickly, which is why no listings are live on it yet.
One thing on this page does cost money from us: our SEND Parent Booklet, at £29. Nothing in this article depends on it.
How to use the map
Start local: SENDIASS for your area’s processes and a first conversation that costs nothing. Go to IPSEA when the question is what the law requires. Call on SOS!SEN when you want hands-on help putting documents together, remembering that the free parts of it run in term time. Bring in Contact when the pressure spreads wider than school. Check your Local Offer for what your area says it provides. And use SEN Help in between: understand the system with SCOPE, check your position with the quiz, and keep the record that makes every adviser’s job easier.
One caution on stacking them. Both IPSEA and SOS!SEN decline to advise anyone who is already being supported elsewhere on the same issue, IPSEA saying it “is unable to give you advice” if you are receiving ongoing support from a solicitor or other advocate, and SOS!SEN saying the same about anyone already supported by a solicitor, legal adviser, charity or advocate on the issues in question. Pick the right door for the problem in front of you rather than knocking on all of them at once.
No single organisation does everything, and none needs to. Together they cover the journey, and every one of them exists because families asked for help and kept asking. The SEND system asks a lot of parents. You do not have to meet it alone, and the help that matters most is free.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Everything we publish is checked against primary sources; the law is stated as at August 2026, and the service details, prices and opening times above were checked on 8 August 2026. Charities change all three, so follow the links before you rely on them.