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This study aimed to examine the barriers that primary caregivers with children with statutory or emerging special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) face in accessing early childhood education and care (ECEC). It also explored the challenges practitioners experience in supporting these families and sought to co-create solutions to improve ECEC access for children with SEND.

Key findings include:

• Primary caregivers repeatedly described accessing ECEC as a lonely and uncertain journey of navigating complex and fragmented systems of support, often at a considerable emotional cost.
• ECEC settings were an important anchor point for mothers (who more often assume the caregiving role), providing trusted relationships, practical guidance and emotional reassurance.
• However, this support was frequently dependent on individual practitioners and informal relational practices, revealing wider structural weaknesses within the ECEC and SEND systems.

Implications for policy and practice include:

• Provide navigational support through knowledge brokering. Policy implementers should consider how to provide meaningful brokering support to help parents navigate unfamiliar systems and complex processes in a safe and non-judgmental context.

• Shift to needs-led rather than diagnosis-led support. The government should also consider the mechanisms whereby this approach could be implemented in early years practice, specifically in relation to how SEND support is funded and accessed.

• Strengthen workforce capacity in inclusive, relational and trauma-informed practice.

• Improve interagency collaboration and communication across local and specialist services in ECEC, health and social care to reduce fragmentation and ensure a coherent and joined-up system of support.