Your postcode shouldn’t decide your child’s future.

The postcode lottery is real, and it is documented

The National Audit Office’s 2024 review of support for children and young people with special educational needs found that the system “is not delivering better outcomes for children and young people” and that families experience very different services depending on where they live, despite a rising bill to taxpayers. The NAO described the SEND system as financially unsustainable, with provision varying widely by local authority area. (NAO, 2024)

The Department for Education’s own statistics show that the proportion of Education, Health and Care Plans issued within the statutory 20-week deadline has fallen sharply over the past decade, from around 60% in 2017 to below 50% in recent years, with some local authorities issuing fewer than one in five plans on time and others issuing nearly all of them on time. Two children with the same need can get an EHCP a year apart purely based on the council that assesses them. (DfE, EHCP statistics)

The Children’s Commissioner has reported that children referred to NHS mental health services face waits that vary by an order of magnitude between regions, with hundreds of thousands referred each year and a meaningful share waiting more than a year for a second contact, or being closed before treatment begins. (Children’s Commissioner) The Education Policy Institute has documented similar regional gaps in access to early help and SEND provision. (EPI)

The private alternative does not solve this. Independent speech therapists, educational psychologists and child psychologists cluster in cities and the south-east. In rural counties, on the coast, and in post-industrial towns, the nearest qualified private specialist can be an hour’s drive away — if they have any availability at all. Families in those areas effectively have one option, and that option is the waiting list.

The personal why

ChildWize started with Sandra. Before this, she spent years at a special educational needs school in the UK, working day-to-day with children whose support depended far more on luck of geography than on the substance of their need. She saw the same pattern repeat: children with the same diagnoses, the same families pushing just as hard, and wildly different outcomes depending on which side of a county boundary they happened to live on.

After a break from the sector, Sandra wanted to come back to the same problem with broader reach. One classroom, even a good one, can only ever help the children inside it. The children she kept thinking about were the ones nobody had got to yet — in rural counties, on the coast, in towns where the nearest qualified specialist was an hour’s drive and a six-month waitlist away.

Her partner’s background is in business and operations. Between them, the conversation kept arriving at the same answer: the technology to deliver high-quality specialist support online already exists; what doesn’t exist is a platform that puts verified UK child specialists in front of the families who can’t access them locally, at a price that’s visible up front. So they built one. ChildWize is that platform.

What we believe

A child’s postcode shouldn’t determine the support they get. Where a family lives is a fact about geography, not a measure of need. The system should not treat it as one.

Specialists should be reachable wherever families live. Online delivery is not a compromise. For assessment, therapy, parent coaching and ongoing support, video sessions with a qualified specialist remove the geographic barrier without removing the quality of care.

Price should be visible before a parent commits emotionally. Every specialist on ChildWize publishes their session price on their profile. No discovery calls designed to extract a yes before you know the cost.

Evidence and accreditation are non-negotiable. Every specialist is registered with their professional body (HCPC, BACP, BPS, RCSLT or equivalent), DBS-checked, and required to provide evidence of qualifications before they can accept a single booking.

What we are committing to

These are concrete promises, not aspirations:

• Transparent pricing on every specialist profile, before you book.
• Every specialist DBS-checked and accredited by a recognised professional body, with credentials verified by us before they appear on the platform.
• Evening and weekend sessions, because most parents can’t take time out of work for daytime appointments.
• A free 15-minute consultation with a specialist before any paid booking, so you can decide whether the fit is right without paying first.