Newsroom
For journalists and editors.
FADA was founded by a family the system spoke past for a decade. If you're covering SEND, disability, or children's rights, here's what you need — and how to reach us.
STATEMENTThe founders’ statement
We wrote a book because a system refused to write to our sons.
For over a decade, our three boys — Abdou, Jibreel, and Imran — were decided about in rooms they were never invited into. Panels met, reports were written, plans were signed, without any of them being asked. Every parent of a disabled child knows exactly what we mean.
Everyone in those rooms was doing their honest best inside a system that made centring the child structurally impossible. The design is wrong — and it’s wrong in the same way for every family, in every local authority. So we built the alternative.
The Family and Disability Alliance is a home for that alternative. Four programmes, one mission: no decision should be made about a disabled child without asking that child.
FACTSThe facts, quickly
- What FADA is
- A national alliance for the voice of disabled children and the families who love them.
- Founded by
- Pa Joof and Dr Ancha Bala-Joof — parents of three sons, after a decade in the SEND system.
- Structure
- A project of Making It Happen Now CIC, transitioning to an independent charity (CIO).
- The book
- Not For Me, Without Me: Three Letters to Three Sons from a System That Refused to Write to Any of Them.
- The campaign
- The Right to Be Asked — statutory reform of how Article 12 UNCRC is delivered in English SEND law.
Figures we cite — 99% of EHCP appeals upheld at tribunal, ~88% of children’s SEND complaints upheld by the Ombudsman — are drawn from published tribunal, LGSCO, and National Audit Office data. We can provide sources on request.
Press contact
Interviews, comment, and the full press pack, launch essay, and images are available on request.
The founders are available
Pa Joof and Dr Ancha Bala-Joof can speak to the family’s story, the SEND system’s design failures, and the case for the Right to Be Asked.