Your first ninety days.
Most providers will tell you what they believe. Very few will tell you what they will actually do, in what order, and what you will be holding at the end of it. This is that, for the twelve weeks after you first message us.
Twelve weeks, in order.
The dates below are the ones we control, and we will hold ourselves to them. What changes in your child in twelve weeks is not one of them — see the last block on this page.
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Day 0
You send a few lines.
Whatever you have noticed, in your own words. No diagnosis, no referral letter, no folder of reports. Most first messages are one paragraph long and that is genuinely enough to start.
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Day 0–1
We reply, and we book twenty minutes.
A message sent during the day is answered the same day. The call itself is twenty minutes with someone who does this every day. There is no assessment inside it and nothing is charged for it.
At the end of the call you will know: what we would do first, roughly what that costs, and whether it should be us at all. If it should not be, we name who instead.
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Week 1
You get a name.
A Family Lead is assigned and introduces themselves. They are the person you message from here on — they chase the school, brief every new practitioner so you do not have to, and reply within one working day. They are salaried, and no part of their pay depends on the size of your programme.
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Weeks 1–3
The functional needs assessment.
Two to three weeks, across the settings your child actually lives in. Someone watches a morning at school or nursery, and someone spends time at home — because the version of your child that appears in a clinic room is not the one you are asking about.
We are looking at what your child can already do, what gets in the way, what triggers what, and what the school can realistically deliver with the staff it has.
What this is not: a diagnosis. Formal diagnosis stays with independent clinicians we neither own nor pay. If one would help, we say so and name people who can do it.
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Week 3–4
The Independence Plan, and the three signatures on it.
Goals in plain English, the intensity of support, the settings it happens in, a projected timeline and the review dates. One page everyone works from — you, the school, and every practitioner who touches it.
It is not finished until you, the school and we all agree with it. Any recommendation above a set intensity needs a second signature from someone here with no commercial role, who can and does send recommendations back.
You are now holding: a written plan, a named person, a fixed assessment fee already paid, and no obligation whatsoever to continue with us.
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Weeks 4–12
The work starts. This is the expensive part, deliberately.
Clinical intervention and home support, plus coaching for you, because the strategies have to survive a Tuesday evening when nobody from Special Minds is in the building. Every session takes data against the goals in the plan.
One monthly programme fee covers it. Reports, phone calls, school meetings and emails are not billed separately — charging for coordination would quietly discourage you from asking for the thing you most need.
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Week 8
The first review, against what we predicted.
At the plan meeting we wrote down what we expected to see by week eight. At week eight we put that next to what actually happened, in front of you, including where we were wrong.
If there has been no progress, the response is to rewrite the plan, re-examine the goal, or refer on. It is not to increase the hours. If more of the same were always the answer to the same not working, nothing could ever fail.
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Day 90
What you are holding.
- A written plan that three parties agreed to, with dated goals
- Eight weeks of session data against those goals, not impressions
- One review that compared a prediction with a result
- An Independence File you own and can export, free, on any day including your last
- A named person who answers within one working day
What will not have happened by day ninety.
This is the section most providers leave out, and it is the one worth reading twice. If any of it is a dealbreaker, it is much better to know now.
Twelve weeks is long enough to know whether a plan is working. It is rarely long enough for the thing you are actually hoping for.
Your child will not be finished.
Ninety days is the beginning of the Build stage, not the end of it. The plan projects how long the whole path is likely to take, and the projection is tested at every review rather than repeated.
Some goals will have been rewritten.
A first plan written about a child you have known for three weeks will get things wrong. Rewriting a goal is the system working. Quietly leaving a goal in place because it was in the original document is the system failing.
You will not have a diagnosis from us.
You may have a referral to someone independent who can give you one. What you will have from us is a functional picture, which is a different and more immediately useful thing to act on.
The fee will not have started coming down.
Support rises before it falls. The reduction is real and it is written into the plan — it belongs to the Transfer and Step Back stages, which are further out than twelve weeks for almost every child.
Both of them are cheap, and both are normal.
A path you cannot leave is not a plan, it is a lock-in. Here are the two points where families most often stop, and what stopping costs at each.
You take the plan and go.
The assessment is sold on its own and priced on its own. The report and the plan are yours. Plenty of families take them to a provider closer to home, or to one we named ourselves because they were the better fit. Nothing further is owed.
You export the file and leave.
Everything — the plan, the goals, the session data, the reports, the reviews and the reason behind every decision — exports in full, at no cost, on the day you ask. We send it to whoever you name, in a format the next provider can actually use.
Straight answers.
Is ninety days a promise?
No. It is a description of a process, not a prediction about your child. The assessment window and the plan meeting are things we control, so we will hold ourselves to them. What changes in a child in twelve weeks is not something anybody can promise, and a provider who does is telling you something they cannot know.
What if we stop after the assessment?
That is a normal outcome and it is priced to be one. The assessment is sold on its own, the report belongs to you, and you can take it to any provider you like. We publish the annual share of assessed children who did not become clients precisely so this is not a claim you have to take on trust.
What does the first ninety days cost?
One fixed fee for the assessment, quoted in writing before it starts and unchanged by what the assessment concludes. Then one monthly programme fee from the point the plan starts, quoted before you agree to it. Nothing is charged for the first call, and nothing is charged separately for reports, school meetings or phone calls.
Do we need a diagnosis before any of this?
No. Our assessment is functional — what your child can already do and what gets in the way — which does not depend on a label. Formal diagnosis stays with independent clinicians we neither own nor pay. If a diagnosis would open a door at school or with an insurer, we will say so and name people who can do it.
What if the school will not co-operate?
It happens, and it is usually about capacity rather than unwillingness. We ask for observation access in writing, we work to the school's own IEP rather than beside it, and we put the case for support in writing so the inclusion team has something specific to respond to. If a school refuses outright, we will tell you what your options are with the regulator in your emirate.
Tell us what you've noticed.
Twenty minutes on the phone with someone who does this every day. No assessment, no cost, and no obligation to become a client at the end of it.
If we're not the right people, we'll tell you who is. That includes naming providers we don't own, and it costs you nothing either way.