I have ADHD – brains like mine could benefit Britain

I have ADHD. I know both the positives (energy, creativity) and the negatives (disorganisation, sensitivity) of what it is to be wired differently.

That is why I’m standing with thousands of parents fighting for their SEND children, and why I recently hosted an event in Parliament so mums and dads could tell MPs the truths that the experts often simply don’t get.

As part of its reforms to a system even the last government described as broken, the Department for Education has found another £4 billion for SEND. That’s good news. But if it gets this wrong, ordinary families will pay the price — not just in taxes, but in broken lives.

Here’s the problem for vulnerable children. “Inclusion” in mainstream schools sounds lovely. In the real world, it can be brutal. For a minority of children with special educational needs, compounded by extreme anxiety, trauma and challenging behaviour, the bustling chaos of a noisy mainstream school is unbearable.

The playground, the lunch queue, the joshing and teasing, the constant sensory overload — all can overwhelm.

To bundle these particular children into mainstream in the name of “inclusion” is like asking footballers to share a pitch with cricketers. The footballers will run all over the pitch and the cricket game will be disrupted.

As if struggling every single day to manage their much-loved but extremely challenging children isn’t enough, parents have to endlessly fight the system to get those children the care plan they need.

They find themselves exhausted and thousands of pounds out of pocket getting their cases to tribunals — courts that, in around 97 per cent of cases, find in their favour. Why are they put through that pain when the needs are so clear?

If you think specialist provision is expensive, try the alternative. A child failed by the system can end up in a youth offender institution, costing taxpayers up to £180,000 a year.

Specialist provision in SEND schools costs a fraction of that. And here’s the thing — taking a child struggling with complex needs out of a mainstream class and into a specialist school is good for the child, who gets the care he or she needs, and good for the other 30 children in a mainstream class, whose lessons are no longer disrupted. It’s a win-win.

And what’s more, with the right help, you can flip the equation so that a child who costs the state money in healthcare, court costs and penal institutions can learn, thrive, and contribute an estimated £380,000 to society.

Isn’t that better than schools struggling to accommodate children in a regime that will never work for them and will leave them traumatised or excluded, isolated in side rooms, their parents exhausted and their family broken under the strain?

Mum or dad quits work. The house goes. Everyone ends up on benefits. That is not saving money. That is madness.

We are not against mainstream schools. We want decent provision near home for the kids who can cope there. But you do not fix a broken system by blowing up the bit that works for the most vulnerable, then crossing your fingers. Despite the many fantastic state-run special schools, the fact is there are simply not enough of them. By losing the fantastic specialist independent provision we have, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

In Parliament, the parents spoke up — not as moaners, but as people who love their kids and want them to be the best they can be. As one mother said, for these children, specialist provision is not a choice. It’s a necessity.

Give them the education provision they need, and society will reap the reward from children who have so much to offer — brains which think differently and whose special skills — energy, creativity, hyperfocus — are now increasingly in demand from the tech companies of the future.

As Francis Ford Coppola said: “The things they exclude you from school for are the things they give you lifetime achievement awards for later in life.”

The government has a moral duty here. Get it right and every child wins. Get it wrong and you are not just failing the most vulnerable children. You are failing all children.