About PACE ~ and the parent behind it

Hi, I’m Ruth

I’m a SEND parent in Cornwall and the person behind PACE Project UK.

PACE has grown out of my own experience of trying to navigate the SEND system with my son, particularly through secondary school.

Like many parents, I’ve found myself thinking:

Why didn’t I know this earlier?

There are things I would have questioned sooner, things I would have put in writing, rights I wish I’d understood better and information I simply didn’t know I needed until I needed it.

I’ve also discovered some brilliant provision and opportunities almost by accident, often through another parent, a recommendation or hours of searching.

It made me wonder how much useful knowledge is sitting between SEND parents, and how many valuable opportunities exist locally that families simply don’t know about.

That’s where PACE started.

What I’m building

PACE is currently focused on two things.

Learning from SEND parents

Our first parent project asks what families wish they had known before their child went to secondary school.

I’m gathering those experiences with the aim of identifying common themes and turning what parents have learned into practical, accessible guides for the families coming behind us.

Finding SEND opportunities

I’m also building the Cornwall SEND Opportunity Finder, gradually finding and bringing together alternative provision, specialist support, outdoor and animal-based learning, activities, therapeutic provision, post-16 opportunities and other support that SEND families may find useful.

PACE is starting in Cornwall, but the parent research and resources have the potential to help families much further afield.

A little about my background

Although my reason for starting PACE is very personal, I’m also bringing skills from my work, education and training into the project.

I have a First Class Honours BSc in Media production, with experience in websites, digital systems and online communication, as well as training in marketing through Cambridge Marketing College and experience in web design and developing online projects.

My other work has been in the wellbeing field. I’ve worked as a complementary therapist including Reflexology, and Reiki and trained in mindfulness with Breathworks, and I’m continuing to study areas including somatic approaches.

Those different strands might seem unrelated, but they’re actually very relevant to how I want to build PACE: researching and organising information, communicating complicated subjects clearly, creating accessible online resources, listening carefully to people’s experiences and understanding that families are people, not just cases or statistics.

What I’m not

I’m not a SEND lawyer, educational psychologist or SEND professional, and PACE isn’t intended to replace professional or legal advice.

I’m a parent who has had to learn an enormous amount by navigating the system, researching, asking questions and finding things out, sometimes much later than I wish I had.

I don’t believe one parent’s experience can tell other families what they should do.

But hundreds of parents’ experiences can potentially tell us a great deal about what families wish they’d known sooner.

That’s why I don’t want the PACE parent guides to simply be based on my experience. My experience may have started the idea, but the resources need to be shaped by many different parents, including those whose experiences have been very different from mine.

Building PACE openly

PACE is new and I’m building it gradually.

I’m starting by testing the parent questionnaire, listening to feedback and adding useful provision to the Cornwall SEND Opportunity Finder.

I don’t want to pretend PACE is a large established organisation. It isn’t.

What I do want is to build something useful, credible and genuinely shaped by the questions and experiences of SEND families.

If something you’ve learned could make another parent’s journey a little easier, I’d love PACE to become a way of passing that knowledge on.

Ruth
Founder, PACE Project UK