Lived experience
My name is Nic Whippey. I am a parent of a neurodivergent child in England. My child was masking — holding everything together at school, falling apart the moment he got home. I knew something was wrong long before any professional agreed. By the time they did, he was in crisis.
I learned the SEND system the hard way: from a phone, during burnout, because nobody was helping. I have a background in neuroscience, which helped me understand what was happening — the biology, the mechanisms, the reasons behind the struggles. I used AI to digest research, make sense of the law, and work out what to do next. And I wrote about it — because putting it into words was how I processed it, and because silence helps nobody.
My child is what I call a SENDbetweener — a child who doesn’t fit the neat boxes, who is too complex for the system’s tick-boxes. Each agency passes the buck. Each fails to see the whole child. Parents of SENDbetweeners are left trying to make sense of a maze of disconnected services, alone, in crisis, with no manual.
From surviving to building
Eventually, surviving was not enough. I am a Senior Research Software Engineer, and I know how to build things. The knowledge I had fought so hard to find — the legal rights, the complaint processes, the language that actually works — could be turned into something other parents could use immediately.
So I took what I know about AI prompting and started building Neurodiversity Decoded — a set of free AI prompt tools for families navigating the SEND system. The first helps you write your EHCNA request. More are coming. Each one is designed to take the knowledge parents shouldn’t have to fight for and put it in your hands, available any time you need it.
Why “Neurodiversity Debugged”
In software engineering, debugging is not a sign of failure — it is how you build something that works. You write code, test it, find the problems, fix them, and repeat. Nothing works perfectly the first time. That process is the work.
I am debugging three things. The system — the education, health, and social care structures that are supposed to help neurodivergent families but are riddled with failures. The understanding — using neuroscience to make sense of how our brains work, not because we are broken, but because the environments we are expected to survive in were never designed for brains like ours. And the software tools themselves — this site and the AI tools are being built and improved as I go, tested against real experience, updated when something does not work.
The law exists. The duties are clear. The rights are written down. But the implementation is broken. Parents spend years debugging a system that should have worked the first time. These tools help you find the bug, name it, and file the report.
If you are a parent going through this, I see you.
Contact
I genuinely appreciate hearing from families using this site. I don’t always have the capacity to reply — I am a parent navigating the same system I am trying to help others with. Please don’t take it personally if you don’t hear back.
If your message relates to the Neurodiversity Decoded — AI support privacy agreement, I will do my best to respond.
- Email:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nicwhippey
- Medium: medium.com/@nic.whippey