A Bath education specialist has launched a new service to help families navigate the often complex world of SEND support, EHCP applications, school meetings and appeals.
InclusionFirst Education has been founded by Georgia Morris-Boyce, an experienced Inclusion Lead who has spent more than a decade working in education and SEND. The service works directly with parents and carers, helping them understand the support available to their child and ensuring their voices are heard when dealing with schools and local authorities.
For Georgia, the idea grew from seeing the same difficulties facing families throughout her career.
“I’ve worked as an inclusion lead in schools for seven years, and the same pattern kept repeating: parents who want the best for their child, schools who want the best for that child too but are constrained by budget, resource and time, and the two sides too often unable to communicate properly with each other,” she explained.
“The result is that children’s needs go unsupported, not through anyone’s malice, but through a system that pits good intentions against each other.”
Georgia began her career as a classroom teacher aged 21 at an inner-city school in Coventry, where she saw first-hand the challenges faced by children whose needs were not always being met. She later completed the National Award for Special Educational Needs Coordination and is also a trained Thrive Practitioner and School Genie coach, as well as holding the National Professional Qualification for Senior Leadership.
Over the years she has supported families through successful Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) applications, tribunal outcomes and moves into alternative and specialist educational provision.
One issue she has encountered repeatedly is the difference between how a child appears at school and how they behave once they return home.
‘They’re fine in school’
“Masking is a big one – a child who’s holding it together at school but falling apart at home, and a school that, quite genuinely, isn’t seeing the difficulty because it isn’t visible to them,” Georgia said. “That ‘they’re fine in school’ response is one of the most common reasons families get told support isn’t needed, even when the child is really struggling.”
Other common problems include delays caused by stretched school resources, parents not understanding what should be included within an EHCP and families receiving a diagnosis for their child without knowing what they should do next.
Georgia said, “Families are often given a diagnosis and then very little else – no guidance on the practical implications at home, how things might change for their child at school, how to approach that conversation with school, or what comes next in terms of an IEP or a possible EHCP application.
“That ‘what next’ gap is one of the most common reasons families come to me.”
InclusionFirst Education can support families at any point in that journey. Services include advocacy and support at school and local authority meetings, EHCP applications and reviews, tribunal support, advice on reasonable adjustments, school observations, transition support and help gathering evidence towards a diagnosis.
Georgia can also attend meetings with parents, take minutes and produce follow-up reports setting out what has been agreed.
“Advocacy is a big part of what I do – simplifying meetings and language so parents genuinely understand what’s being discussed, and feel that their views have been properly heard and represented,” she said.
She recently worked with a family whose child was masking their difficulties at school but experiencing significant dysregulation and sometimes unsafe behaviour at home.
EHC applications
Georgia helped the family prepare an EHC needs assessment application, carried out an observation at school and helped bring together evidence of the child’s behaviour at home and the child’s own views.
The initial application was refused, but Georgia continued working with the family to appeal the decision and provide further evidence, with an EHCP eventually secured.
“Since then, we’ve worked together to make sure the plan itself is fit for purpose, and I’ll continue supporting the family through annual reviews and school meetings going forward, to make sure the provision written into the plan is actually being delivered in practice,” she said.
While InclusionFirst Education is based in Bath, support is not restricted to local families. Much of Georgia’s work can be carried out remotely, while she also has hubs in Warwickshire and Cornwall and can travel further afield by arrangement.
At the centre of the service, Georgia says, is a belief that parents’ concerns should be listened to and the needs of the child should come before the pressures surrounding the education system.
“I’ve always led with the belief that parents are the experts on their own children – if there’s a challenge at home, it’s real, and it’s our responsibility as professionals to support it, not question it,” she said.
“The SEND system is genuinely hard to navigate – legal timelines, acronyms, forms that assume a level of prior knowledge most families simply don’t have. I wanted to make it attainable for parents to fight for the support their child needs, because too often our amazing children are being lost in the gap.
“That’s where the name came from – Inclusion First isn’t about budgets or how things look on paper. It’s meant to be the starting point of every decision, not an afterthought.”
Families who are unsure where to begin can book a free 15-minute initial consultation with Georgia through inclusionfirsteducation.co.uk or contact email hidden; JavaScript is required.
