SEN LEGAL LIMITED

Richard Nettleton and the SEN Legal team are gold standard. They know their stuff inside and out. They are pragmatic and outcomes orientated. They are smart, informed, experienced, on top of their brief at all times, always available and in touch, straightforward and lovely to deal with. I'm so grateful to them for their support and for the result they achieved.

We used Richard's firm as we had already been through a protracted, painful process to get our eldest son assessed under the EHCP with our local authority. This had been a slow process, (often outside of the statutory milestones), with poor communication and little understanding of how we would get to the right outcome for our child. Whilst we had better experience with some of the individual practitioners who assessed our child, we also had frustrating experiences including an educational psychologist who did not actually see our child in person.

This resulted in an assessment and initial plan where we simply did not have any guidance as to what the right educational placement was and significant delays in even naming a placement even after most children already had their school places decided. Richard was a recommendation from the manager of the special needs playschool our child had been attending, and was an excellent one. He quickly assessed the situation, patiently and cogently set out our options and took us through the process of issuing a pre-action letter to the local authority to force them to name a placement.

Richard then took us through the process of both appealing against the placement named by the local authority, which was blatantly inappropriate, and into the tribunal process. He was diligent, patient with us and excellent at taking us through the process step by step. He was also excellent at dealing with the local authority and identifying when they were pushing boundaries and when to push back.

As a result of Richards and Bethans input, we were able to get the right assessments done independently, identify the right placement and get our child into an excellent specialist school that is already benefiting our son. Was it cheap? Probably not, although I suspect you could spend a lot more as well. But, more importantly, was it good value for money? Completely. Whilst we are lucky we can afford to do so, I fully believe that we would not have been able to achieve the outcome we did without Richard and his team, and our son would not have the placement and package of care that he did. Highly recommended.

Simply amazing!! Helpful, informative and professional. They made what was an extremely worrying and stressful time so much easier to deal with ... and we were successful!

So grateful to the whole team, with a special mention for Nicole. I wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.

I simply cannot recommend the expertise of SEN Legal enough. Like so many others, we were in a hopeless situation with our ASD diagnosed child being forced to stay in mainstream by the LA - who had chosen to ignore all the evidence from medical and educational SEN professionals stating the help desperately needed. Despite being regularly sent home due to not coping and reduced to half days the LA refused to amend the EHCP or offer alternative schooling options. Other legal legal services we consulted gave us false hope/misled us and were not prepared. Thanks to SEN Legal our situation was resolved thoroughly, professionally and successfully. They immediately took control and we were continuously supported and updated. Our costs were managed efficiently and within our expectations and our child now has an educational path that will prepare them for life. From my now lengthy experience I would highly recommend that you do not waste your time negotiating with the LA or other firms who do not specialise the way that SEN Legal do. Early consultation and the right action at the start of your journey, could save months/years of suffering for your child and family, as well as unnecessary costs. SEN Legal are now assisting us with another of our ASD diagnosed children and once again we feel in safe hands knowing that they will achieve the appropriate and best possible outcome. We feel blessed to have had such amazing support.

We spent a HUGE amount of money with SEN legal. They lost the case and encouraged us to appeal. Offering to do this work probono only charging for admin. Now they are chasing us for fees and sending threatening emails. We went back to court with no representation and won. Please don't use them get advice from parents groups and SENSOS. You don't need to make yourself financially compromised. They encourage you to keep going and going with no results.