SEND workforce impact calculator: how many of your people are raising a child with SEND?
SEND workforce calculator
Of your 1,000 people, around 63 are raising a child with SEND, and 47 of them are cutting their hours or thinking about leaving.
Costing you ≈ £190k to replace, if just 1 in 10 left this year, at £30,614 per mid-level role.
Supporting them would take roughly 19 tailored sessions by Remarkable Minds.
Modelled from DfE, ONS, Sense and Oxford Economics figures, not a survey of your workforce. Range 43 – 90. Runs in your browser; nothing you type leaves this page.
75%
of SEND parents reduce their hours or quit work altogether.1
The blind spot
Most parents of children with SEND never tell their employer. They fear being seen as less committed, less promotable, or first in line when redundancies come.
So the pressure stays invisible. Carer networks stay small, disclosure surveys undercount, and the HR dashboard says everything is fine while experienced people quietly cut their hours or plan an exit.
That is why this page estimates from national prevalence instead: it is usually closer to the truth than anything in your HR system.
1 Sense, 2026.
For employers
Want to see how we support organisations?
When a parent in your team is struggling, they get matched to the right SEND specialist within about a day and walk away with a plan. You keep experienced people who would otherwise cut their hours or leave, absence and presenteeism fall, and it all runs without adding anything to HR's plate.
See how we support organisations
The methodology, in full
We don't know how many SEND families you employ, and neither does anyone else, including your HR system. So we apply well-sourced national statistics to your headcount and show our working at every step.
How many of your employees are working parents?
ONS labour market data puts roughly one in three UK employees as a working parent of a dependent child, so we start at 33% of your headcount. A younger or an older workforce shifts this either way, so treat 33% as a sensible national default rather than a measurement.
How many of those families are navigating SEND?
1.7 million pupils in England have special educational needs, nearly 1 in 5 (Department for Education, 2025). We apply 19% per working parent as the chance their family includes a child with SEND.
This is deliberately conservative: families with more than one child have a higher chance that at least one is affected, and many children with real needs are not yet counted in school data.
How many managers are supporting them?
Assuming an average of 8 direct reports per people manager, we estimate the share of managers likely to have at least one affected parent in their team: 1 minus (1 minus the affected share) to the power of the team size. In most mid-size workforces that lands on roughly 4 in 10 managers.
What does that mean for hours and retention?
We apply two national figures to the affected group: 75% of SEND parents reduce their hours or quit work altogether (Sense, 2026), and 1 in 3 have had to quit a job to manage care (Disabled Children's Partnership, 2026). The support-demand figure is illustrative only: what year one looks like if 1 in 10 affected parents used three specialist sessions.
What would it cost to replace the ones who leave?
Oxford Economics puts the cost of replacing one mid-level UK employee at £30,614, covering recruitment, lost productivity during the gap and onboarding ramp time. Senior roles cost considerably more, often 100 to 200% of salary.
The calculator shows an illustration, not a forecast: what it would cost to replace just 1 in 10 of the affected parents if they left in a year. Given that 1 in 3 SEND parents nationally have already quit a job to manage care, that is a deliberately gentle scenario.
Estimates are rounded to two significant figures and shown with a modelled range, because false precision would be dishonest. Sources: Department for Education, special educational needs in England (2025); Sense (2026); Disabled Children's Partnership (2026); Oxford Economics; ONS families and the labour market data.
The blind-spot report
Want these numbers for your board?
Speak to our team and we'll share your estimate as a shareable one-pager, plus our workforce blind-spot report: why these families rarely show up in HR data, and what employers who support them actually do.
Prefer measured numbers to modelled ones? Register your organisation for The Impact of Neurodiversity on the Workforce 2026, our anonymous workforce survey, and see the real picture for your organisation.
Questions
Calculator FAQs
How accurate is the SEND workforce calculator?
It is a modelled estimate built from national statistics, not a measurement of your workforce. No employer knows the real number, because most parents of children with SEND never tell their employer. The calculator's job is to show the likely scale of something that is invisible in your HR data, with every assumption on show.
Where do the figures come from?
Four main sources: Department for Education data showing 1.7 million pupils in England have special educational needs, nearly 1 in 5 (2025); Sense research finding 75% of SEND parents reduce their hours or quit work altogether (2026); Disabled Children's Partnership research finding 1 in 3 parents of children with SEND have had to quit their job to manage care (2026); and Oxford Economics' figure of £30,614 to replace one mid-level UK employee. The working-parent share of the workforce is based on ONS labour market data.
Why can't we just ask our employees?
You can, but most won't say. Parents routinely hide caring pressure at work because they fear being seen as less committed, less promotable or first in line for redundancy. That is why carer networks and disclosure-based surveys consistently undercount, and why an estimate from national prevalence is often closer to the truth than anything in your HR system.
What counts as SEND?
SEND stands for special educational needs and disabilities. It covers autism, ADHD, dyslexia, speech and language needs, social and emotional needs and more. Many of the children behind these numbers are still waiting for an assessment or a diagnosis, so the pressure on their parents starts long before anything is official.
Is the calculator free, and what happens to what I type?
Yes, it is completely free and the estimate runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere unless you ask us to email you the report, in which case we use your email for that reply and nothing else.
What can employers actually do about this?
The pattern that works is practical, specialist help rather than another wellbeing app. Remarkable Minds gives employers a funded pool of specialist session credits their staff can draw on, with a dedicated Success Manager and anonymised impact reporting (counts only, never names). Sessions are £95 pay-as-you-go, £90 each in a 20-session bundle or £85 each in a 40-session bundle, and for every 10 sessions an organisation books we fund one free session for a family who can't afford one.
Keep reading
More for HR and inclusion leads
The business case, the law and the lived experience behind the numbers, written for the people supporting parent-carer staff.
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AnswerHow much does carer absence cost UK employers?
The £3 billion headline, how it breaks down (attrition, presenteeism, direct absence), and a worked example for a 1,000-person organisation.
AnswerHow many UK employees are unpaid carers?
The 1-in-7 figure, how it breaks down by sub-group, and what the number looks like for a 100-, 1,000- and 10,000-person organisation.
An estimate shows the scale. Support changes it.
Remarkable Minds gives your people a funded pool of specialist session credits: 400+ vetted, DBS-checked SEND specialists, matched within about 24 hours, booked around family life, with anonymised impact reporting, counts only, never names.