Ask your MP to stand up for disabled children’s health support
3 mins read
Friday 28 August 2026
Contact is asking you to invite your MP to attend next week’s parliamentary event on health support.
This advice applies in England only.
Families should be able to count on getting all the support in their child’s education, health and care (EHC) plan. Yet too many disabled children and young people are missing out on the health support set out in their plan.
This can include essential speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and help to manage health and care needs.
When health services do not deliver this provision, children go without, schools try to fill the gaps and local authorities may have to commission costly private services.
Families have limited ways to challenge failures
Families also have much weaker ways to hold health and social care services to account.
The SEND Tribunal can make legally binding decisions about the education parts of an EHC plan. However, it can generally only make non-binding recommendations about health and social care, and usually only when a family is also appealing an education issue.
This leaves families navigating different complaints systems or considering costly and complex legal action when provision is not delivered.
MPs to hear directly from families
On Thursday 3 September, Contact will join parent carers and fellow Disabled Children’s Partnership members Mencap and Sense at an event in Parliament hosted by Jen Craft MP.
MPs will hear what happens when health bodies do not provide the support children and young people need and why greater accountability is essential.
The event comes as Jen Craft MP has tabled an amendment to the Health Bill. The amendment is intended to strengthen the accountability of Integrated Care Boards for arranging provision within EHC plans.
Imogen Steele, SEND lead at Contact, said:
“Parent carers should not have to fight to secure support that has already been agreed for their child.
“Yet families have much weaker ways to hold health and social care services to account when provision in an EHC plan is not delivered. Children miss out, schools and councils are left trying to fill the gaps. Parents are pushed into another exhausting battle.
“MPs need to hear directly from families why health bodies must be held accountable for delivering their part of the support.”
Invite your MP
A personal invitation from a constituent can make the difference between an MP attending or overlooking an event.
It takes just a minute to invite your MP to meet parent carers and disability charities on 3 September.