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Not Refusing. Unable.: The UK Parent's Manual for School Distress, EBSA, and the Way Through
Paperback
General ParentingSpecial Education
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: May 30 2026
Pages: 106
Weight: 0.34
Height: 0.22 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Where hope begins. - Matthew Ferguson, teacher and parent
When your child can't go to school, you don't need theory. You need the next move.
Written by a former Headteacher and SENCo (and SEN parent), this is the working UK manual for school distress and EBSA - with the scripts, evidence templates, and statutory routes (Section 19, EHCP, EOTAS) that force the system to act.
If your child can't get out of bed, can't get in the car, can't walk through the school gate - this is the book that tells you what to do today, this week, and this month.
It is deliberately not a memoir. It is a manual.
Behind every absence is a story. Not of defiance, as it is so often labelled, but of distress. This book speaks directly into that space. - Rabbi Martin Taubman, forty years in education
WHAT'S INSIDE
- The Sanctuary Home Protocol - a radical low-demand framework to stabilise your child's nervous system
- The Won't vs Can't distinction - the language shift that ends the blame and starts the legal protection
- The Inarguable Evidence Binder - exactly what to log, what your GP needs to see, and what to send to the Local Authority
- Communication scripts - emails, meeting language, and responses to Notice to Improve letters, with the statutory citations already written in
- Section 19 of the Education Act 1996 - the legal duty most parents do not know they can trigger
- The Parental EHCP Blueprint - how to apply directly, without the school's permission
- EOTAS (Education Otherwise Than At School) - the state-funded legal remedy, with case law and a costed package builder
- Functional Skills, IGCSEs, BTECs - realistic qualification routes from home
- The Step-by-Step Deregistration Protocol - clean, legal, and protected from the SAO trap
WITH FOREWORDS BY
Rabbi Martin Taubman, forty years in education, and Matthew Ferguson, teacher of fifteen years and SEN parent.
WHO IT'S FOR
Parents of children of any age who can't access school due to anxiety, distress, autism, PDA, sensory overwhelm, trauma, or burnout - whether you are on day 3 or month 18 of this.
You don't need to read it cover to cover. You need the next step.
Start here.
From The SEND Navigate Library.
sendnavigate.org/book
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