The PDA Society Education Conference is a practical online event for education professionals and parents committed to improving outcomes for PDA learners.

Hosted by the PDA Society, this fully live event brings together leading specialists, experienced practitioners and PDA adults to explore what genuinely works in educational settings.

This blog is to let you know about the next couple of opportunities to shape our consultation response.
Hopefully you’ve already seen the survey we’ve put out, and the consultative conversation around SSP’s. If not details on both and links to get involved are at the bottom of this blog.
Next we want to focus on two areas where parent carers — and those with experience of education outside traditional settings — have deep, practical insight:

1. How families and schools work together, especially when things go wrong.

2. How absence and education outside school are understood and protected.

If you’ve been following the White Paper and the SEND consultation, you’ll have seen a phrase that could turn out to be really important: Specialist Provision Packages (SPPs). This is the bit of the proposals that I think could be genuinely helpful, or an absolute nightmare, depending on how it’s designed and how it’s used in real life. So, I want to take a closer look at what SPPs are meant to be, why some of us feel hopeful, why many families feel terrified, and what we can do right now to steer this in a safer direction.

There’s been a lot of understandable anxiety about what might be in the government’s white paper. It was released on Monday morning and I’ve spent a bit of time reviewing it since. This blog covers my first thoughts on what is in it, what sits alongside it in the SEND consultation, and what that might mean for your family.

Yesterday, our CEO attended an event to launch Cerebra’s new campaign on systems-generated trauma. As part of this, there was an overview of a powerful new report by Professor Luke Clements and Dr Anna-Laura Aiello, which examines how disabled children and their families are traumatised by dysfunctional public services when they ask for support.

Next week we launch the PDA training hub, a brand-new digital learning space which brings together interactive modules, live events, peer support, podcasts, written resources and more into one easy to access subscription. 

We’d love to take this chance to tell you more about why we’ve made these changes and how they might benefit you.

The Law Commission published its final report on reforming disabled children’s social care last week – and it includes some recommendations that could make a real difference to PDA children and their families.

The House of Lords is asking whether the Autism Act has worked, and what needs to change when the current strategy ends in 2026. We’ve now submitted our full response – and we want to share what we said, what we learned, and why we believe it matters.

Comedian Stuart Laws has supported PDA Society a lot over the last few years. In this Q&A we learn a bit more about Stuart’s autism diagnosis, what motivates him to support charity gigs, and what he’s up to next.

We’re launching a new short-term project – and if you’re aged 16 to 25, identify with a PDA profile, and have things to say about what actually helps in being supported… we want to work with you.

It’s Carers Week, which is a chance to recognise the millions of people across the UK who provide unpaid care to family members and friends.

At the PDA Society, Carers Week is especially meaningful. Almost everyone on our team is a carer themselves. And many of the people we support are too. 

This Carers Week, we wanted to talk about why we are so proud to have a team made up of carers — and how you, if you’re an employer in any field, could make your organisation more carer-friendly and benefit from a bit of their magic too.