Snakes and Ladders

Parents who reach out for support usually have no idea the rollercoaster they’re about to ride. The ups and downs of fighting to be heard, fighting to be believed, then fighting for the right sort of help. Diving down rabbit holes only to find it’s the wrong one, and starting from zero again and again.

It’s like a crazy, maddening game of snakes and ladders, that belongs in some kind of Alice In Wonderland dystopian reality - except you’re not the one rolling the dice.

We’re told about time limits, and how councils have deadlines. But that clock usually starts months after the initial conversations with schools or GPs ever happened. And regardless of whether your local authority is meeting its 20-week legal limit (most don’t), you’re typically looking at a process that can take years, not months.

Here’s what that looks like in the numbers. Last year, only 46.4% of EHCPs were issued within the legal 20-week limit. Nationally the figure sits at 51%, ranging from 32% in the East Midlands to 63% in London. Some councils have missed the deadline more than 95% of the time. That’s before you even reach CAMHS, where more than 60,000 children have now been waiting over two years, and the typical wait for treatment has stretched to 128 days.

And in the middle of all of this is a child. A child who is in crisis.

Here’s what nobody tells you at the start: a wait is not a pause button. A survey of 736 families found that 92% said their child’s mental health deteriorated during the referral process to CAMHS alone, before treatment had even begun. Research into young people’s own experiences found the same thing repeatedly: participants felt that longer waits led to real deterioration, meaning that by the time they finally reached CAMHS, they were significantly more unwell than when they were first referred. One young person put it simply: “there’s a high chance that you’ll get worse while you’re on the waiting list.”

In a 2022 Young Minds survey, over a quarter of respondents said they had attempted suicide while they were waiting for support. Not after being let down by treatment. While waiting for it to start.

I’ve seen this play out for 35 years. A child who could just about hold it together in mainstream school at the point of referral is in crisis, or out of school altogether, by the time anyone actually assesses them. A family managing, just, on the daily reality of an undiagnosed need is exhausted, fractured, or in crisis themselves by the time a plan finally lands.

The wait doesn’t preserve the situation. It escalates it.

But the truth is that much of this is gate-keeping rather than simple incompetence. It’s basic arithmetic. Every EHCP a council issues commits them to funding whatever it describes, sometimes tens of thousands of pounds a year for a single child. Local ombudsman investigations have found that delay can function as a deliberate strategy. Every week without a plan is a week the council doesn’t have to pay for one. And if a family gives up somewhere along the way, exhausted and defeated or jumps ship, sells the car and goes private, the council never has to pay for anything at all.

That’s not a broken system failing by accident. That’s a system where the wait itself is doing useful work, for everyone except the child. So our children are reduced to metrics, until they become yet another statistic of school avoidance, mental health crisis, or worse.

^{A note: this piece touches on suicide and self-harm statistics. If anything here has affected you personally, please reach out to someone you trust or a service like Samaritans (116 123, free, 24/7).}

Rebecca Briggs is a parent coach, author, speaker, and content creator with 35 years of experience working with neurodivergent children and their families. She is neurodivergent herself, and the mother of two neurodivergent sons. Her first book is published by Jessica Kingsley, a division of Hachette; she is currently writing her second, The Nutrient Poor Childhood.

For free support and advice, find her on all platforms @squarepegkids.

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^Sources:

• ^{IPPR, SEND Crisis report, 2025 - EHCP assessment demand and 20-week completion rate}

• ^{Children’s Commissioner for England, fifth annual CAMHS report, June 2026 - referral numbers, waiting times, two-year+ waits}

• ^{Families for Reform of CAMHS survey, 2024 (Ireland) - 92% deterioration during referral process}

• ^{EN-CAMHS mixed-methods study, NIHR Journals Library, 2025 (UK) - young people’s experience of deterioration while waiting}

• ^{Young Minds survey, 2022 (UK) - suicide attempts while waiting for CAMHS support}

• ^{EHCP Timeline / Local Government Ombudsman findings - delay as a funding-avoidance strategy}

• ^{Bristol City Council EHCNA Improvement Plan data, 2025/26 - regional EHCP completion rates}