(UK) Staffs: Moms of special needs kids fight local council for school places
- The end of childhood
- Jan 14
- 3 min read
Jan 13, 2026, StokeOnTrent Live: Meet the Staffordshire mums taking on council as children stuck in wrong schools
Three mums are staging a support event for parents struggling to find their children a special educational needs school placement. The event will be held at Leek Cricket Club at 6pm on Thursday January 15.
Hosted by Staffs SEND Warriors, the ticketed event will grant parents the chance to speak with ‘one of the UK’s leading special needs solicitors’, Michael Charles. Tickets cost £6 and include free tea and coffee.
One of Staffs SEND Warriors’ founders, Laura McCutcheon, had struggled to get her 11-year-old son Jonathan McCutcheon a school placement for three years. He has autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
Laura, of Uttoxeter, told StokeonTrentLive: “My son struggled with mainstream education to the point that he was throwing himself out of the car window. His anxiety about it was that bad that he’d kick, scream and run away. People think ‘well you’re the parent, just make him go to school’. But it isn’t that easy. He wasn’t just a normal four-year-old boy you could hand over at the door.
“I had no choice but to take him out of school. Then he was at home for years. For 12 months of that, there was a special school place waiting for him. But Staffordshire County Council refused to give him that placement as part of his ECHP. It wasn’t a case that there were no places. The empty table was right there waiting for him.
“Thankfully, we got him a place at Rugeley School in 2024. He’s doing brilliantly now. He still has some difficult days and complains that he doesn’t like school. He has the usual moans and groans of any normal kid that wants to play Xbox all day. But now he’s regulated and he’s happy. And he’s progressing as he should be with the support he needs.”
Mum-of-three Laura founded Staffs SEND Warriors with fellow mums Anna Brunt and Sally Marjoram in 2023. The trio created the online group to express their frustrations with Staffordshire’s SEN support system - and quickly gained over 400 members.
Laura explained: “We opened the Facebook group because we were all stuck in a very similar situation with no proper educational provisions being provided for our children. I’m a consultant nurse, Anna is a solicitor, and Sally is a special educational teacher herself. It’s not like society makes out, where we’re all just a bunch of lazy parents sitting at home who don’t care.
“We are a group of parents that have had problems for years and years with Staffordshire’s special education system. It’s not a new thing. And we know the issue isn’t just affecting our county. It’s a countrywide problem. But it’s clear to see that we have a real deep-rooted issue with it here. Staffordshire is definitely high up in the hall of shame.
“We ran a campaign with another national organisation last year, called ‘Every Pair Tells a Story’. We got parents who had been affected by the lack of SEN support to donate a pair of their child’s shoes. Each pair represented one child who had been failed. We got a lot of donations. In the end we had 12 bin bags filled with shoes, which represented around 150 families. Then we presented them at the Staffordshire County Council building.”
Now Laura says the January 15 event will provide SEN parents with a chance to arm themselves against the local authority - and potentially make a stand. . . .
Staffordshire County Council has sympathy with affected parents and children.
Councillor Janet Higgins, cabinet member for education and SEND, said: “The current SEND system is failing families and local authorities alike. It's overcomplicated, under-resourced and financially unsustainable. That's why this council wrote to the Secretary of State for Education last year calling for urgent national reform. As a council, we are doing all we can within the resources we have available, but we need the government’s support to deliver the changes our children and young people deserve. The government’s continued delay over revealing its proposed changes to the system is frustrating and wasting time that can be ill-afforded.”
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