23/02/2026
A speaker. A stand-up comedian. The same week, SEND reform was announced.
This Thursday at Dad La Soul we’ve got a dad, our very own Sam Zindel, coming to speak about what it’s actually like to raise a child with SEND needs
Not the polished version.
Not the inspirational LinkedIn post. The real one.
The meetings, the paperwork, the constant low-level anxiety that the support your child relies on could shift again.
And this week, Bridget Phillipson announced another overhaul of SEND provision in England.
Reform. Efficiency. Sustainability. Big, tidy words that sound controlled and sensible when they’re spoken from a podium.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of parents are at their kitchen tables trying to decode what it means for their own child.
I don’t have a SEND child, but I’ve seen the exhaustion on the faces of friends who do.
Not dramatic exhaustion.
Not the kind you post about.
The quiet, bone-deep kind that comes from fighting for years in a system that always seems to require one more form, one more meeting, one more justification of why your child needs what they need.
After the speaker, we’ve got a stand-up comedian. Not doing SEND material. Not turning any of this into a punchline.
Just bringing some light into the room, because sometimes humour is the only thing that makes the weight bearable.
Then we’ll do what we always do at Dad La Soul. We’ll hang out.
We’ll have a drink. We’ll play some tunes. We’ll let dads talk in the gaps between the formal bits, because that’s usually where the real stuff comes out.
This Thursday isn’t about fixing SEND. It’s about proximity.
It’s about being in a room where parents don’t have to explain themselves, and dads don’t have to pretend they’ve got it all figured out.
Policy will keep shifting. Announcements will keep coming.
But in a room with a speaker, a comic, a few (0%) beers and some decent tunes in the background, something else happens.
People realise they’re not the only ones fighting, and because behind every reform is a family trying to hold it together.
Grab a ticket here >
Forget the pub, the networking, and the therapy – It’s a Night Out for Dads (ONLY)
