Our story
We were you.
Pa and Ancha spent a decade fighting for their three sons through a SEND system that never asked the boys themselves. This is why FADA exists.
Every seat at the table was taken. Every seat but the one that mattered most.
Not for me, without me.
01The moment we knew
We didn’t set out to build a charity. We set out to be parents.
But somewhere between the twelfth panel meeting that decided our son’s future without inviting him, the sixteenth report describing a child none of its authors had properly met, and the annual review that closed with “these plans are all pretty much the same anyway”, we understood the pattern.
The system wasn’t broken. It was working exactly as designed. Its design had never included the voice of the child at the centre of it.
That is what makes it a systemic failure. Not the professionals — many were doing their honest best. The structure. Which is why FADA is a systemic response.
02Three sons. Three stories. One alliance.
The children the system decided about.
Abdou
17 · autistic
Formally diagnosed as autistic in February 2026 — after ten years of asking, of assessments deferred, of referrals returned. His EHCP has been contested at every annual review.
What we know: one of the sharpest minds we've met. What the system knows: a case number. The gap between those two is what FADA exists to close.
Jibreel
16 · Anti-MuSK MG
Misdiagnosed for eight years — passed between clinicians who wrote his symptoms up as psychological. Correctly diagnosed with a rare, life-threatening auto-immune condition in 2025, now under specialist care.
If eight years of a life-threatening condition can go unrecognised, the question isn't what went wrong in his case. It's what is going wrong, right now, in every case we cannot yet see.
Imran
13 · unassessed young carer
Has grown up alongside two brothers with significant needs. The Care Act 2014 requires councils to assess any young person providing care. The council's own records acknowledge Imran provides care. He has never been assessed.
We could have made his invisibility a case. Instead, he asked us to make it a movement — so other siblings in the background of a diagnosis are seen.
Each son has consented, age-appropriately, to be named and to have his story shared. That consent is documented and revocable at any time — the same principle we ask of every professional.
03The book we wrote for them
Not For Me, Without Me
The book is written as three letters — one to each son. Because the letters they should have received, from the state, the schools, the clinicians, the panel meetings, were never written. So we wrote them ourselves.
It is respectful of the professionals involved. Most of them tried. It is specific about the system. The system did not.
What if the child at the centre of every decision was actually asked first?
04The framework that emerged
The Voice Method
Not a warm exhortation to “listen more” — a specific, teachable framework, in six elements. None of it is radical. All of it is doable. Almost none of it is being done.
Ask, before you write
Every professional report begins with a documented conversation with the child, in a format the child can respond to.
Quote, don't summarise
The child's own words appear verbatim in the report, not filtered through the professional's interpretation.
Consent is granular
The child agrees, section by section, to what appears in their report and what does not.
Panel presence
The child is in the room — or their proxy is, with the child's brief — when decisions about them are made.
Disagreement is recorded
Where a decision differs from the child's expressed preference, the reasons are recorded on the face of the decision letter.
Review is asked
Every annual review begins with the child's answer to one question: how is this working for you?
05Why “alliance”, not “charity”
We don’t want to be a charity that keeps families dependent on the charity. We want to be an alliance that makes families independent — of the charity, of the local authority, of the system that has failed them.
An alliance is horizontal. It joins families, professionals, funders, and policymakers around a shared commitment. You are not a beneficiary. You are a member. What you bring — your story, your evidence, your professional insight, your MP letter — is what makes it work.
ENDORSEMENTSWhat people will say
Endorsements, when they come.
We’re showing these empty on purpose. When an endorsement is real, it will appear here with a name against it — and not before.
“Endorsement to be added.”
— Name, Title, Organisation
“Endorsement to be added.”
— Name, Title, Organisation
“Endorsement to be added.”
— Name, Title, Organisation